How Has Immigration Transformed Britain in the Last Fifty Years - Essay Example

Topic: How has immigration transformed Britain in the last fifty years Immigration de s the mobility,the movement of people across countries. The phenomenon of immigration has been in existence since time immemorial and the traditional denotations of the term included short-term foreign visitors or other general nationals. Modern day definition of immigration take into cognizance the fact that immigration refers to long-term or permanent moves in the forms of residence whilst it would categorise short term visitors as non-immigrants or expatriates in human resources diction. "The modern concept of immigration is related to the development of nation-states and nationality law. Citizenship in a nation-state confers an inalienable right of residence in that state, but residency of non-citizens is subject to conditions set by immigration law. The emergence of nation-states made immigration a political issue: by definition it is the homeland of a nation defined by shared ethnicity and/or culture." (Wikipedia: Immigration). Statistics on global migration According to the source data presented in the graphics above there is currently a total of 191 million immigrants worldwide. The statistics also unveil that the last 50 years has seen an almost doubling of immigration entailing the movements of 115 million immigrants into developed countries. Official statistics indicate that more than two million foreign nationals have moved to Britain in recent years and nine in 10 of them came from outside Europe. According to the sources, a net 2.3 million immigrants arrived between 1991 and 2006, the majority from Africa and Asia. The other important dimension presented on the facts is that hundreds of thousands of short-term immigrants are not included in official statistics whilst the sources indicate that the counting system is grossly unreliable that it is not feasibly possible to know the true immigrants population of Britain. Through the surge of globalization, various factors trigger the movement of people from their native countries to other countries. The factors can be categorized into social, economic and political. The nineteenth century has particularly experienced phenomenal proportions of immigrations triggered largely by civil and economic strife and unrest in various countries especially in the third world or developing countries categories. Researches that have conducted to assess the impact immigration on the economic aspects of matters have unveiled certain notables in the nature and patterns of immigration in UK for the past 50 years. The movement of foreign nationals into the UK has resulted in the significant increase of the labour supply. This has been so notably in low job realms which are naturally not preferred by British natives. Immigration in the UK has also impacted significantly on Aggregate Demand in cases where there have been more people spending and therefore increasing demand for labour. This has also brought significant dynamics in the wages systems. Immigration into The UK has led to the spiraling for unemployment especially for the foreign nationals owing to largely to various reasons chief of which include the lack of critical skills and proficiency in the English language. This has often led to a diminishing range of available job opportunities resultantly culminating in structural unemployment. This setback has also been aggravated by the realities of racial discrimination in some instances. On positive dimensions immigration in the UK economy which has been dogged by a shortage of certain key public sector workers, especially in London, has helped alleviate labour gaps. This has been in the shape of immigrants getting trained to be nurses, doctors or teachers they can help fill labour market shortages. Also owing to the fact that immigrant is largely of working age, immigrants in the UK have helped overcome the demographic problems inherent in ageing population. As such this has lowered income tax levels whilst the other positive comes in form of Immigrants of working age contributing where they are involved in local work. According to the current Britain Prime Minister Gordon Brown the economic benefits of uncontrolled migration far outweigh the costs. The national leader claims that immigration boosts the economy by 6billion a year and therefore in all logic, must be allowed continue. According to scholar John West however Brown has ignored the crucial findings of Professor David Coleman of Oxford University, an internationally respected population expert. As West states Coleman discovered that the actual cost to our public services is 8.8 billion a year. That's equivalent to 350 for every family in the UK. He said and I quote "there are no merits in the promotion of population growth itself and many reasons to regret it, especially in a country as crowded as the UK". There is overwhelmingly superabundant data on the economic impact of immigration in the UK albeit positive and negative. Not similar energies have been invested into exploring equally the social effects of immigration in the UK. This paper will explore the broad raging effects of the phenomena but will particularly zero in on the social (cultural) dynamic of the subject. Over the past 50 years there has been a surge into the UK for by foreign nationals mainly from Europe, Asia and Africa. People of different nationalities have e been flocking into the UK for different reasons political, social and economic. "The average standard of living in the UK and other developed nations is far higher than in developing nations, and many people in the latter live in extreme poverty. We are using, per capita, much more of the world's resources than people in developing countries. As part of the effort to help developing countries, we should allow people from these countries to migrate to our country and share our affluence. As Weiner (1996) put it: "The moral argument for free migration thus grows out of the reality that there are gross economic inequalities between states". (Immigration: Benefits for the UK-2006). The cited insight captures some realities that have led to the development of UK as contemporary metropolitan. The quotation below sheds light on the social collage that UK has been transformed into in the past years. The presentation will help explore the emergent social and cultural dynamics in the prevailing milieu. "During a five minute walk from the main railway station on Ashburnham Road to the centrally located bus station in Bedford the cosmopolitan nature of the town is manifest. Nextto the railway station is a Dom Polski. Taking the route down Woburn Road one sees an Italian Roman Catholic church, vibrant with weddings at weekends. Turning right onto Alexandra Road, one passes first a West Indian cultural centre, then the Afro Caribbean Miracle Church of God, and on the left another Club Polski. On Alexandra Place one sees an Italian Club and the Bangladeshi Mosque. In front of the Bus Station is Priory Lower School, where young children of all ethnic backgrounds play and fight in the playground. Taking the alternative route from Ashburnham Road is the very busy Midland Road, colorful with ethnic businesses and fashion shops. Here one finds The West Indian Mount Zion Church, Italian, Turkish, Chinese, Indian, halal." (Opcit) The scenario outlined above depicts the magnitude of transformation that UK society has gone through in the past years. The social and cultural effects of the immigration trends in the UK are much evident where there a significant outnumbering of the British natives by foreign nationalities. "In some cases, such as Westminster and Oxford, the high percentages reflect the international character of the city with no predominant ethnic group. In Westminster for instance the largest ethnic group is African and they make up under 4% of the population. In Oxford no minority ethnic group makes up more than 2% of the population." (Opcit) One salient impact of immigration on UK society culture has been though the proliferating phenomena of multiculturalism. This has inevitable effects of acculturation which entails the integration of people's cultures at the points of convergence in countries that are highly metropolitan like Britain. The result of this trend in Britain has the dilution and more significantly the threatening of The British culture by the predominance of foreign ethnical groups. West notes "Our Christian heritage is being suppressed and our way of life with it. People are told to stop wearing crosses in case they offend Muslims and councils such as Waveney District Council refuse to fund Christmas lights because such decorations do not fit in with their "core values of diversity". It has even been suggested that the English flag and St George be dropped because of their association with the Crusades!" This presents impeccable proportions of the extent to which British culture is suffering and in essence diminishing under the pressures of diversity and multiculturalism. Britons concerned about the status quo have launched various campaigns in the bid to get the government to halt mass immigration. West states that recent polls have shown that 75% of British people and over 50% of ethnic minorities want mass immigration halted. Many also concerned about the long-term impact on our public services, quality of life and even our national identity. "We were assured that at most only 13,000 would come here in a single year. Well, in three years over 683,000 came here - the single largest migration in British history. Every part of the UK has been affected. Is it so surprising that many British people are now beginning to feel like strangers in their own land The Campaign to Protect Rural England has warned, "Without urgent action the countryside as we know it will be largely destroyed by the year 2035". (Opcit). Researches also unveil that the traditionally sedate and intact British culture bound by Christian a fundamentals and values is diminishing. Statistics show that there is a proliferation of crime out of the milieu characterised by multiculturalism milieu. There has been apparent surge of extremes of violence and crime evident in the proliferating instances of terrorism. According A. Bartlett (2001) Up to 4,000 terrorism suspects and their supporters are active in Britain, according to the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Stevens. Bartlett also outlines that cannabis cultivation is booming in Britain. Police are raiding three indoor production sites a day and have closed down 1,500 cannabis farms in London alone since 2005. Up to three-quarters of the farms are run by Vietnamese criminal gangs. Also according to an online Campaign for Immigration Reform Black youths are suspected of more than half of reported knife crime among children in the capital, according to confidential figures, but most victims are white. This testifies to the tremendous social and cultural transformations that the British society is imminently undergoing. These perspectives are cemented by statistics on crime which show that foreign prisoners now make up almost one in six of Britain's jail population and are costing the taxpayer almost 400 million a year to keep. What has catalised the impact of immigration on British culture has been the high rate at which foreign groups grow evident trough the birth rate. West highlights that the very high proportion of births to foreign-born mothers in some English cities together with the outflow of city dwellers to the regions explains the very rapid changes taking place in parts of our cities. "White British children are now a minority in almost a fifth of education authorities in England, being outnumbered at primary and secondary schools in 29 of the 150 local education authority areas. Across the country, pupils from ethnic minorities account for almost 22 per cent of those at primary school compared to 20.6 per cent last year. At secondary school, numbers rose at a similar rate, to 17.7 per cent. About one in eight pupils - some 800,000 - do not speak English as a first language." (Bartlett A.: Opcit) This in West's terms again also contributes to the raising of the question of how satisfactory integration can be achieved in areas where British culture itself is already diminishing. "Immigration at the present pace will considerably exacerbate the problem. As the Government's Cohesion Panel put it in July 2004; "The pace of change (for a variety of reasons) is simply too great in some areas at present". (Opcit). One of the significant developments triggered by immigration and yet further exacerbating the impact of immigration on the British culture has been the direct and indirect and reaction to the trend of mass immigration by native Britons. The reaction has been largely characterised by the withdrawal of especially white British natives from areas congested with foreign nationals. "One clear sign of widespread concern is the movement, despite disruption and expense, of native people away from areas heavily settled by immigrants. This movement takes two forms. One is that of white people from areas where immigrants are concentrated to parts of the country where they are, for the time being, significantly fewer.'(Numbers UK: Online Campaign) According to the campaign over half a million have left their natives places of birth and dwelling in ten years. The campaign states that the reasons are due to the fact that most people prefer to live among those who mostly share their language and who are not too dissimilar from themselves. This has adversely affected British culture in the sense that the disserted communities remain with nominal numbers of native Britons, a scenario that culminates in the dilution or total eclipsing of the natives culture by that of the foreign nationals. Robert Putnam, an American academic concurs, "People in ethnically mixed areas are less trusting of their neighbors and live in a more isolated existence, research has found. The greater the diversity, the looser the community bonds and the more withdrawn local residents become. This is aggravated by the reality presented by statistics which show that foreigners normally have higher birth rate that the British natives. "Almost one in four babies (23%) is now born to foreign mothers. On average, foreign women have 2.5 children each, while British mothers have an average of 1.7 children each." (Opcit). The threat by the national Arts Council to cut funding of hundreds of theaters and arts organisations if they are at variance with ethnic targets was the highlight of the proportions to which British cultural and asocial dilemmas have escalated to attributably to the impact and scale of acculturation, cultural-pluralism and multiculturalism all emanating for the reality of a protracted history of mass immigration. The threat was an acknowledgement that British culture is no longer specific but metropolitan. The threat also depicts the magnitude of change the British culture has gone through. The government has also been whipped into the multiculturalism recognition and in fact development attitudes by the forces of metropolitan realities that shape the contemporary British society. Debate is resonating across various academic and various scholarly as well as political forums on whether traditional British culture should be protected through the halting of mass immigration or that immigration and its effects are inevitably and acculturation will give birth to new culture commensurate with contemporary global economic, political and social realities. Which ever perspective one may choose one thing is certain as Card D. asserts, "Immigration is not just an economic conundrum that can be reduced to the needs of the economy and industry; immigration is cultural. Immigrants change the face and complexion of the host society and it is up to the hosts to decide the extent of this transformation." . References Abernethy, V.D. (2000). Population politics . Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick & London . Bartlett, A. (2000). Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Population and Environment. 22, 1: 63-71. Bean, F.D. et al. (1988). Undocumented Mexican immigrants and the earnings of other workers in the United States . Demography 25, 1: 35-52. British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) (2002). Graduate job prospects slide . BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/2439951.stm Card, D. (1996). Immigrant inflows, native outflows, and the local labor market impacts of higher immigration. Working paper # 368, Industrial Relations Section, Princeton University. Card, D. & DiNardo , J. (2000). Do immigrant inflows lead to native outflows American Economic Review 90, 2: 360-367. Coleman, D.A. (1997). Origins of multi-cultural societies and problems of their management under democracy. International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP). International Population Conference, Beijing . IUSSP. Coleman, D.A. (2001). Why borders cannot be open. XXIV General Population Conference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP), Salvador da Bahia , Brazil. Plenary debate no.4, Friday 24 August 2001 Coleman, D.A. & Salt, J. (1992). The British population. Patterns, trends and processes. Oxford University Press. Numbers UK - Campaign for Immigration Reform http://www.numbers-uk.org Accessed 27 July 2008 Wikipedia, Migration, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration Accessed 28 July 2008 John West, The MADNESS of UNCONTROLLED IMMIGRATION, A speech by John West at the UKIP Immigration Conference, 3 Nov 2007 http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/siteinfo/newsround/imconf/ic2.html Accessed 27 July 2008 Immigration. Benefits for the UK, 2002, http://www.population-growth-migration.info/essays/Dr2Pro-immigration.html Accessed 27 July 2008 Read More