Is Immigration Moral?
There are mainly five arguments put forth in favour of immigration, none of which are pukka. These are to grant political asylum to people whose lives are in danger for political reasons, rich societies should give poor people a chance to start a new life in a wealthy society in the spirit of the rich sharing with the poor, our industry is in need of foreign experts as our own education system cannot provide these, we want to build a new society and discard the despicable ways of our parents and grandparents and lastly immigration should help to make the UK more cosmopolitan and attractive.
Let's now have a closer look at each of these arguments.
Genuine political asylum seekers are only a tiny number of people that can in no way account for the large influx over the past years. And even among those who are accepted one must wonder why. Why can an Algerian who murdered people in his own country be accepted? And why should someone from Zimbabwe be accepted? Asylum seekers are supposed to go to the nearest safe haven and if you are from Zimbabwe it would be a lot easier to take a bus across the border to South Africa. And if the UK does accept some of these people it can be done on a temporary basis until the situation in their own country has improved. Now that British troops are stationed in the Kosovo and Afghanistan refugees from these countries should return. Granting political asylum in no way means such people should settle in the UK.
Next is the argument of helping the poor. This is especially interesting as the same people who advocate immigration are also responsible for creating poverty in the countries where immigrants come from. The UK is one of the world's biggest exporters of arms and torture instruments. This has two effects. When poor countries spend money on such items they have less to spend on improving the living standard of their people and when using arms and torture instruments a lot of people run away (and who can blame them?). Of course the Government will claim that it is spending huge sums on development aid and that arms exports (they don't like to talk about torture instruments) are legitimate and help stabilize countries. This is mostly rubbish. Arms exports only benefit certain British manufacturers and development aid only helps dictators to stay in power. Without development aid most of these dictators who are to blame for poverty in their countries would have vanished long since. The only thing being developed is a feeling of generosity in donor countries. Another reason one often hears why Britain should let in these poor people is the British Empire. It is claimed that these countries are only poor because we exploited them. However, a brief look at the facts shows this is wrong. Of all the colonies Britain had in Asia and Africa only three are better off today than they were before independence (Malaysia, Mauritius and Singapore). And Hong Kong, which remained a British colony till 1997, has a far higher living standard than any other former British territory and is living proof that far from being exploited, people in the colonies were economically better off than under native rule. Of the former French colonies not one is better off today than before independence. Take Algeria for example. In 1960 French Algeria had a higher per capita GDP than Italy. And then compare the two today. These countries are not poor because of colonial exploitation. They are poor because their governments are corrupt and incompetent. British people are not responsible for sorting out other countries' problems by accepting huge numbers of immigrants. If anyone feels the urge to do something for the poor they can always donate money to private aid organisations.
Next on the list is the bizarre argument of foreign experts, usually they are computer experts or nurses. Because there are not enough of these experts in western Europe we need experts from third world countries. This is not complete nonsense as India has got quite an advanced software industry. The question is, if India can afford to teach people such skills why can't the UK? Either British children are too lazy or stupid to learn computer skills (which is ridiculous) or the Governments education policy is to blame. And if the education policy is to blame we should change this policy rather than import workers. Besides it would hardly be fair to a poor country like India if a rich country like Britain took its top workers away after India paid for their education. We don't want to destroy Indian industry, as the result would only be more poor people there who would then want to come here. And how about nurses? Britain and the US are hiring so many black nurses from South Africa (who can come here with their families), that many hospitals in South Africa don't have enough personnel and are closing many wards leaving patients without adequate care. How moral is that? There are enough jobless people here living off unemployment benefits, but who do we hire? Nurses from Africa. This means that our folks are left without work, we get immigrants we don't want and the health care system in South Africa is being seriously harmed.
The fourth argument says that we want to build a new society. Somehow the British society that developed over the past 1500 years is not good enough anymore. In fact it is quite evil! After all weren't the British responsible for colonialism, slavery and a host of other crimes? It is time that this wicked society became a thing of the past! Or is it? Why must British culture die and who asked the government to do it? There has never been a referendum on immigration and immigration has never been a serious election issue. The fact is that a small radical elite decided to put the latest social theories into practice with ordinary British citizens as their guinea pigs. To put it simply, the government does not and never has had a mandate to socially engineer the UK.
And lastly it is said that immigration has made us more cosmopolitan and attractive as a place to be. Well really now, why would that be? Because of Rastafarians, mosques, religious nuts, African drug gangs, Chinese triads, the Russian mafia and sundry terrorists from around the world? Maybe curry? Sorry, we had that a long time before immigration started and besides, one dish is hardly a good reason to take in millions of immigrants. According to the German daily 'Die Welt' the UK now has a population of about 60 million, out of which some 8 million are of African or Asian origin. This has certainly caused a lot of problems such as pushing up property prices to levels many British can't afford, destroying local communities (if someone from 1950 came to today's London he wouldn't recognise many areas where the original population has been driven out by different groups of immigrants), higher crime rates and posing a long term threat to our culture through the aggressive religion/ideology of Islam. But what is the benefit? Our civil liberties are gradually being eroded either to 'protect' immigrants (freedom of speech; freedom to hire whoever one wants to hire; etc) or to protect us from immigrants (think of the various new laws designed to combat Islamic terrorism; without immigrants these wouldn't be necessary).

Race and criminal Cowardice
Race and criminal cowardice
The original article and other past items can be found here
http://www.right-now.org/archive.htm

From www.right-now.org RN29, Oct-Dec 2000
Race and criminal cowardice
John Woods dissects an unsatisfactory Home Office study of race and crime

I acquired recently a copy of a 1999 Home Office publication entitled Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System: A Home Office publication under Section 95 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991*. The 1999 edition is the fifth in a series, with previous reports issued in 1992, 1994, 1995 and 1997. This remarkable study makes for a most interesting read.

First, you have to wade through the statutory foreword by Jack Straw telling us that we must learn the lessons of the Macpherson report, and purge the criminal justice system of "institutional racism". Then we have another foreword by Mr Justice Rose, Chairman of the Criminal Justice Consultative Committee, stating that we must learn the lessons of the Macpherson Report and purge the criminal justice system of "institutional racism". Then we have an insert from the Commission for Racial Equality telling us that we must learn the lessons of the Macpherson Report and purge the criminal justice system of "institutional racism".

Then we have a discussion on deaths of black people in police custody. Then we are told that blacks are six times more likely to be stopped and searched by police. Then we are told that racist incidents are up by 66% over the last year, "although this is thought to be due to better reporting". Then we have the usual breast-beating about how there are not enough black policemen, prison officers, magistrates or judges. Then we are told that 9% of homicide victims in the UK in the period covered by the survey (1996-99) were black, an over-representation by a factor of four and a half (although we are not told who committed these murders.)

And then - finally - buried half way down Table 7.5 on page 44, we get some real figures. 'Res ipsa loquitor', as they doubtless say in Brixton police station canteen. Bear in mind that 2% of the population of the UK is classified as black. The figures are stark: as of 30th June 1998, 7.1% of those serving prison sentences for burglary were black. The equivalent figure for theft and handling is 7.5%, for sexual offences 8.1%, violence against the person 9.7%, fraud and forgery 13.2% and drugs offences 19%, while for robbery it is a staggering 22.6%.

Now, the massive over-representation of blacks in these categories, could, I am sure, be 'explained' by reference to "institutional racism". There will no doubt be many who hold that these are the only career options open to black youths. But I defy even Lord Macpherson to explain, for example, a four-fold over-representation in sex crimes among blacks by reference to that meaningless concept. Perhaps wisely, the Home Office does not give us a breakdown of the racial origins of the victims of black sexual crime. I would also be interested in seeing the figures for juveniles convicted of sexual offences.

Moreover, virtually every Asian ethnic group within the UK is under-represented in the jails - except in fraud cases. The incarceration rate for Indians is one fourteenth of the black rate. Yet, presumably, Asians must be labouring under the same yoke of societal "institutional racism" as blacks? Furthermore, if we are to explain the six-fold over-representation of blacks in prison by reference to that elastic concept, and we note the fact that whites are over-represented in prison in comparison with Asians, then the logical conclusion would seem to be that the criminal justice system must be "institutionally racist" against whites. But that would be an absurd conclusion.
Blacks represent 2% of the population of the UK, 12% of the jail population and 15% of incarcerated young offenders. Even this, however, does not tell the full story, as the figures do not distinguish between Africans and Afro-Caribbeans. It may be an hypothesis too far, but I would be prepared to wager that the following propositions are true: that the proportion of blacks of African origin incarcerated, although significantly larger than the percentage of whites or Asians, will be significantly smaller than the proportion of Afro-Caribbeans. Therefore the over-representation among Afro-Caribbeans will be even more extraordinary than these figures would suggest. I suspect also that the sociological profile of the type of crime for which Africans are imprisoned will be rather different than that for Afro-Caribbeans. Astoundingly, blacks are over-represented by a factor of six or seven among those incarcerated for fraud and forgery. I suspect that the majority of these will be West Africans rather than West Indians.

Massaging the figures
But the real story here is the way that the Home Office has presented the figures. The statistics would appear to have been set out in a deliberately misleading, confusing and obfuscatory manner, designed to prevent the casual reader from working out the true situation. One has to wade through reams of information on arrest rates in the various county police forces, where very few members of ethnic minorities reside, and the figures for the Met., the West Midlands etc, are buried among them. It is not terribly meaningful to tell us that 99% of those arrested by Dyfed-Powys or Devon & Cornwall Police are white. Moreover, the percentages of arrests for the various different ethnic groups within a particular police area are not compared with the actual ethnic breakdown of the population within that area, except for the Metropolitan Police District and a few others. And these are presented several pages apart, perhaps in the hope that no-one will notice them.

The picture in London
According to the Home Office figures, 7.5 % of the population of London are black. A quarter of all the arrests in the Metropolitan Police District are of black people. As relatively few blacks live in suburban areas of London, I would suggest that they must now represent a majority, or close to it, in arrests in almost every category of crime in the inner London boroughs. Blacks represent 54% of those arrested for robbery in London. In the inner city, this must surely be 80-90%. Again, the race of the victims of these robberies is not recorded. I wonder why not.

Another jaw-dropping statistic: during the period 1996-1999 which this survey covers, 59 black people and 69 white people died from gunshot wounds. The chances of a black person being shot dead are therefore approximately 40 times higher than for a white person. In virtually every case, blacks who died of gunshot wounds were shot by other blacks.

"Racially motivated incidents"
On page 47 of this extraordinary document, one finds another startling statistic relating to "racially motivated incidents". The British Crime Survey, published in 1998, estimates that in 1995, 382,000 offences were racially motivated. Of these, 143,000 were committed against members of ethnic minorities, and 238,000 against white people. This fact is extraordinary enough in itself. More extraordinary still is the lack of further discussion given to it in this report. And of course, the Home Office is not indelicate enough to point out the obvious corollary: if the ethnic minorities comprise 6% of the population of the UK, and are producing 238,000 racial assaults per year, and the white population, who comprise 94% of the population, are producing 143,000 racial assaults per year, it would appear that, on a per capita basis, the ethnic minorities are producing about 25 times more racial assaults than the white population. In fact, this clearly underestimates the discrepancy, since some of the racial assaults against blacks will have been committed by Asians, and some (I would guess a lot) of the assaults on Asians will have been committed by blacks (like the murderous attack on Abdul Bhatti at Notting Hill). Moreover, the British Crime Survey does not tell us who committed the 238,000 racial assaults against whites. I think we may safely assume that the majority were not committed by Sikhs, Parsees, Thais or Hong Kong Chinese.
Obviously, certain caveats must be borne in mind. What constitutes a racial assault? If two motorists of different pigmentations get into an altercation over a parking space, does this constitute a racial incident? If one of them employs racial epithets in the course of the dispute, does it then become one? Fortunately, we now know what constitutes a racial assault, because Macpherson's definition has been accepted by the Government, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, and is reproduced in this document. "A racial incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person". So, if 238,000 white people per year perceive themselves to have been the victims of racist crimes, then they must have been, mustn't they?

Missing the point
On page 15 of the Home Office document, we are told "Much (sic) of these differences were found to be due to socio-demographic factors that are associated with victimisation. For example, ethnic minorities tend, on average, to be younger, of lower socio-economic status, and more often living in higher risk areas". This is an exercise in deliberately missing the point. Certain ethnic minorities - Indians and Chinese, for example - have an average social status which is significantly higher than that of whites, and a crime rate which is approximately half the national average. It is only blacks who are of a significantly lower average social status. And, of course, the Home Office statisticians do not address themselves to the question of why this should be. Blacks certainly do live in higher risk areas. They are higher risk areas for a very good reason.

But then the whole document is an exercise in deliberately missing the point. Almost every civil servant, policeman, judge, prosecutor and journalist is busily missing the point these days, busily pretending that the emperor has got some clothes on, because in Tony's Britain, that's how you keep your job.

The reality of the situation is simply too horrific for liberals to contemplate. Therefore, they choose not to contemplate it, preferring to scapegoat the police, or the judiciary, or the schools, or anyone or anything else, rather than face the facts. Unfortunately, however much we might all wish it, reality will not go away.

John Woods writes from Hertfordshire
* Copies of Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System can be obtained by writing to:
Information & Publications Group,
Room 201, 50 Queen Anne's Gate, London, SW1H 9AT.
Telephone: 020 7273 2084 Fax: 020 7222 0211
E-mail: rds.ho@gtnet.gov.uk
The report can also be obtained from the following web address:
www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/index.htm

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