The Good Immigrant

by Nikesh Shukla

There’s nothing new about a country wanting to cherry-pick the best of all the foreigners who want to come over. Some might even argue that there’s nothing wrong with it. But as I got older, I began to notice more and more that the very moment immigrants were seen as contributing anything less than wholesomely to the national effort, they were viewed with contempt. It was as if, even though we had been born here, we were still seen as guests, our social acceptance only conditional upon our very best behaviour. I began to have less tolerance for this infantilising outlook, particularly when I looked at how much of the capital’s, and indeed the country’s, lowest-paid work was being done by immigrants with very little complaint. If there was anyone ungrateful about their presence in the country, it wasn’t them, it was Britain.