Benefits That Immigrants Have Brought to British Society - Article Example

I. Introduction “If when considering the desirability or otherwise of an alien’s presence in the UK doubt arises, benefit should be given to the country not the alien” (Cornelius et al., 1994, 273). Immigration control in Britain, particularly under current Conservative governments, has been created on a line of theories; some are more close to reality than others. The main belief is that independent states have an total right to choose which aliens must be allowed to have access and remain in the territories of the state (Gardiner, 2000). Immigration control is therefore normal and reasonable, and all states have the right to reject entry to unwanted visitors such as offenders, moles, the poor, and other who are looked upon as unpleasant. A second belief is that Britain is rather a small, congested region that is fairly wealthy in global terms; thus it is favourable to immigrants. Regulations are from now crucial to avoid a very big surge of Third World migrants overflowing the region, flooding its customs and traditions, and weakening its hard-won, delicate richness. This is a charming theory, since mass exit from Britain has in the past been more prominent than immigration and since the British have had a considerable confidence in their capability to immerse immigrants at home and preserve their way of life among their original inhabitants settled overseas (ibid, 73). A third belief, which is hardly ever acknowledged, is that while some of immigrants are looked as unwanted strangers, contestants for employment, housing and social security benefits; others are looked at as insiders or pleasurable outsiders, either since they are relatives or since they are believed as more easy to teach or as carrying important capital investment and professional skills. Welcome foreigners, for instance, would involve Japanese and American managers, while welcome insiders would involve individuals of British ancestry as well as the Irish, who are normally considered as insiders in spite of the difficulties in Ulster and the frequently tensed relationships between the governments in London and Dublin (Gardiner, 2000). Britain has traditionally depended on Ireland as her primary source of inexperienced migrant labourers. In 1950s immigration in Ireland was roughly 60,000 per year, somehow larger than immigration from the New Commonwealth. Throughout the debate to control New Commonwealth immigration, all efforts was start to promise that immigration from Ireland must be allowed to continue, owing to its participation to balance the labour scarcity during that time and also since the Irish were believed as being smoothly integrated into the British population (Joppke, 1998, 137). However, the concern is whether the advantages of this immigration to the UK such as filling in during times of labour shortages balance the disadvantages for example as increased racial discrimination. II. The Downbeat Aspect of Immigration for the British Society Britain is in some respects a unexpected case among the democracies in the Western world. British experience illustrate that it is practical to limit unnecessary migration, opposing to the effect that might be obtain from the research of other nations. Those who argue that noninterventionist democracies are powerless to manage present immigration problems should consider the British difference (Hardill, 2001). On the contrary, Britain perhaps will show the limits of democracies to control immigration. Administrations in Britain took action earlier and more strictly to immigration that is non-European than other states, and Britain took advantage of its island nature. Yet even the Thatcher regimes were smart to reduce inflows from the New Commonwealth through merely a few thousand once a year. The privilege of family get-together and the downer of intentional repatriation saw to that. Moreover, the fertility rates within the population of the immigrant and its children are making Britain progressively more actually multiethnic, multiracial, which was the result that policy aimed to keep away from (ibid, 102). Throughout the Second World War, Britain brought in labourers from its colony to strengthen its war try. Even though bulk of these immigrants were sent home after the war, the impoverished conditions in their homelands forced them to go back to Britain; citizens of Jamaica, who were well-acquainted with Britain as an result of their wartime employment, started to arrive in 1948 (Messina, 1995, 686). New Commonwealth (NCW) immigrants contain the major portion of the increase in immigration and in population of foreign-born in Britain. Hence the British society was confronted with a concentrated and mounting immigrant population. The concern is how this influenced the backing and opposition to immigration. Provided with the firm labour markets, available jobs persisted to exceed unemployment, it is likely that backing for immigration did not shrink. Backing for immigration was extremely important in Britain. In the latter part of the 1960, the government predict labour shortages of thousands yearly. Failing industries, particularly the northern textile firms, depended on immigrant labour to sustain their competitive advantage. Also, the British administration itself was aggressively involved in enlisting immigrant employment for the London Transport and the National Health Service (Cornelius et al., 1994, 280). At first, resistance seems to have been tiny. By most descriptions, the immigrants were alternative labourers; specifically, they obtained employment in companies abandoned by the indigenous workforce due to low wages and poor working conditions. They accepted jobs in dull and stagnant manufacturing companies like “textiles and foundries, and in the service sector, in transport and in the National Health Service, that is, in exactly those industries characterized by low capital mobility” (Gardiner, 2000, 76). The freshly arrived immigrants located housing in suburban areas that was abandoned when the indigenous labour force relocated to more good suburban sites. Though, economic slowdown awakens resistance in regions of high immigrant concentration; the decline in 1958 generated ethnic and race rebellions in Nottingham and Notting Hill in London. However, the economic progress in the 1959 election weakens these anxieties, and immigration was by no means actively discussed throughout the campaign (ibid, 77). The recession upset the competition between the indigenous and immigrant populations for welfare benefits or social services and employment alike. Scholar Zig Layton-Henry emphasizes that in spite of the extremely low unemployment rates, there was obviously some of competition between the indigenous and the immigrant labour forces, a competition regulated partly using racist practices (Joppke, 1998, 142). Fascinatingly, and in support of the competition argument, discrimination was primarily felt against those with the paramount experience of the English language and the highest qualifications, most probably because they were rival for better employment. Competition in the labour market was increase by contest over state resources such as countrywide assistance and committee housing. As an affiliate of the Conservative branch of the parliament, Robin Turton claimed, even “where there is the problem of full employment... the position will arise in which there will be more people wanting jobs in a particular town than can be accommodated and looked after” (Young, 1997, 88). This challenge between the native and immigrant populations was more harsh for immigrants of New Commonwealth, in opposite to other aliens, since they were qualified for every available state service. Since the immigrant population consistently had greater rates of unemployment than the indigenous labour force though the sixties, citizens objected bitterly regarding “the number of coloured immigrants receiving national assistance” (ibid, 89). Pressure as well emerges over housing. Immigrant access to committee housing was usually limited by a five-year residence condition. However, demolitions of slum houses demanded relocation of squatters in committee housing. Immigrants who reside in the metropolis and inhabited slums thus trespassed over indigenous citizens on the waiting list for committee housing (Young, 1997). Moreover, schools later on became congested with children, many of them spoke a foreign language. A research conducted by The Institute of Race Relations beginning from the 1960s disclosed the same situation in schools as in the general population. “In 9 percent of public primary and secondary schools immigrant pupils exceeded 10 percent of the student population; half of those (4.4 percent) had an immigrant student population exceeding 20 percent” (Hardill, 2001, 110). Still, majority of these students came from New Commonwealth nations. Foreigners carried with them fewer dependents than the immigrants from NCW, partly since the rights of family reunification were never given to foreigners. In 1960 and 1962, foreign dependents were a considerable percentage of the gross flow. No similar statistics are present for NCW immigrants earlier to regulation, but in the early complete year of regulation when coupons were quite many, dependents comprise 48 percent of the gross flow. Hence, NCW immigrants gained themselves of a wider array of state-provided services. Similar to housing, education was a scarce service in Britain during the time when the administration was restructuring education and trying to boost the population of students in secondary education (ibid, 111). Cultural competition is less pleasing to quantitative estimate compared to housing and education. Yet, investigations of immigrants, and specifically NCW immigrants, point out that they had very much dissimilar cultural standards, ranging from ethnicity, race, language, religion, cuisine, fashion and marital customs (Gardiner, 2000). III. Conclusions The change in structural circumstances, elevated and mounting immigration in concentrated regions, along with local unemployment, immigrant admittance to welfare services, and the congestion of public spaces, is manifest in rising resistance to immigration in affected regions. Policymakers become worried of this resistance and its political relevance using difference means. Policymakers in Britain, as anywhere else in the world, concentrated most attention on small components, specifically, those that might be unfavourable to the opposition if their suggestions were taken for granted. The massive flow of people from various countries to the British society was triggered by the Second World War. After the war, Britain wasn’t able to revert back to its original form. The ever-increasing immigrant population in the British society it seems that carries more disadvantages than advantages, which are discussed above. References Cornelius, W. A. et al. (1994). Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Fisher, T. (2006). Racem Neoliberalism, and Welfare Reform in Britain. Social Justice , 54+. Gardiner, V. (2000). The Changing Geography of the UK. London: Routledge. Hardill, I. (2001). Human Geography of the UK: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Joppke, C. (1998). Challenge to the Nation-State: Immigration in Western Europe and the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Messina, A. M. (1995). Immigration as a Political Dilemma in Britain: Implications for Western Europe. Policy Studies Journal , 686+. Young, J. W. (1997). Britain and the World in the Twentieth Century. London: Arnold. Read More