Inclusiveness in immigration is very important

I have one or two Facebook friends that continually post the most small-minded trash about "foreigners". I should really delete them, but I get a kind of morbid kick from hate-reading their simplistic cartoons, knee-jerk videos and generalist caveman articles saying why anyone with a different skin complexion is either murderously dangerous or just here in Europe for the financial benefits. They are simply wrong, and their thinking is just as dangerous as, if not more than the revoltingly maniacal terrorists they, and indeed all of us, wish to eradicate.

I am the grandson of a Polish immigrant, and empirical witness to the praise he heaped on his adopted country. He loved Great Britain with a passion. He worked on ship maintenance most of his life in dry docks in the East End of London and crucially, he played an important role during the run-up to D-Day and beyond, coming home some weeks after he had left, black from head to foot. My father said he slept for several days afterwards. He held a passion for his adopted country, calling it the greatest nation on Earth (and he had visited many in his career).

Where I am leading to is this: if the people in my country had treated him with scorn, scepticism or segregation, or if they had excluded him from an opportunity to contribute to society, or if they had accused him of profiting from the system, I am sure he would not have stayed long. If my country's newspapers were full of stories about people like him: funny accent, strange gait, shifty eyes... he would never have said anything complimentary about my country at all. But they didn't. And he did.

Why?

Because if you come with a clean conscience, a smile, and a will to be useful, you will go far, provided the people give you a break. If they don't - if they put you in a box, if they don't trust you or "your kind", if they don't try to understand you, or at the very least accept you, then you may as well find a different place to settle. The reason why immigration into the UK has on the whole been successful is due to two factors:

1. Indifference: as long as you're not a bastard, nobody really cares where you're from;
2. The economy: it can absorb newcomers because employers take experience above qualifications.

I am really upset by the country of my grandfather, the land that has been the object of imperialist expansion, whose people have suffered greatly at the hands of oppressors from all points of the compass. I am also upset by the land I call my second home, the Czech Republic, which had a similar history, if not so brutal. The people should know better than to advocate the closing of the doors to people in dire need of help. They may not be Christian, they may not be white, they may not eat pork, they may not speak your language, but they are people. They have heads, hands, hearts, and most of all they have the right to live in peace without fear of persecution or death.

I agree, wholeheartedly, that if you commit a crime, you should be fittingly punished. But to forbid people from entering your country in case they do is a despicable act of heartlessness. Everyone deserves a chance. If you are so scared by people you have never met, if you remain fearful of them and if you don't try to befriend them, how else can they integrate? They will most certainly stick together, because nobody else wants to know them. It is no surprise to me that the recent arrivals do not want to go to Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia or Hungary: why would they, when they have some idea of how badly they will be treated when they get there?

So next time you are faced with a person from a hotter country who looks at you without smiling, or walks past you without looking, ask yourself why - could it be because he/she has had very little contact or bad experiences with local people? Could it be he/she has been attacked by locals and is afraid? Or could it be that he/she is confused by (especially European) locals' innate behaviour of keeping people at an arm's length and mistakenly takes it personally? I have been subject of two of those cases myself, both in Germany and Belgium, so I know how it feels. And I'm white. I can only imagine how much more compounded the feeling must be if I were not.

I haven't finished yet...

I watched a video posted on a group called "We Are Here At Home", a Facebook page where people from the Czech Republic and Slovakia congratulate themselves on their racial purity and point out the barbarism of other nations, e.g. showing rubbish tips and slums in African cities; men in Keffiyeh headgear beating their wives; memes showing darker skinned people saying what they're really coming to Europe for (not for shopping, that's for sure). This is the type of nonsense propaganda the Communists used to distribute, just delivered for another cause. It casts doubt into people's minds and drives them to a very dark place.

I agree, there are many countries in hotter climates with some serious problems with their systems, and their patriarchal ways. There are men in some countries that treat their women and children the same as their cattle. Or worse. There are also a lot of nefarious individuals that should never be allowed into Europe. We all know this. We also know the way the crisis in the summer of 2015 was shockingly badly handled. But this does not mean every single person coming out of Africa or the Middle East has a dastardly plan. Have you seen the utter devastation in the Middle East? If that happened in Europe (which it did), you wouldn't stay at home to wait to be blown up along with your house and possessions. It also doesn't mean that because some may have grown up in corrupt, disorganised or lawless areas, that they are incapable of being organised themselves; quite the opposite, in fact. How many of us, when we become adults, do exactly the opposite of the things we hated most about our past or our upbringing?

There is something sick about people unwilling to extend an olive branch to those in desperate need. There is something psychologically wrong about people who see the colour, religion or the nation before they see the person. There is something sinister about the person who propagates false information about "outsiders", or who actively looks for the opportunity to shock others, or be shocked by the behaviour of those they know little about.

Below is a list of just some of the many successful British people whose provenances lie partly or wholly elsewhere:

Art Malik (actor)
Rita Ora (singer-songwriter)
Asad Ahmad (BBC newsreader)
Riz Lateef (BBC newsreader)
Naseem Hamed (Boxer)
Sajid Javid (Politician)
David Lammy (Politician)
Baroness Warsi (Politician)
Nadiya Hussain (winner of a TV cooking show voted by the public)
Mo Farah (Olympic Sportsman)
Fatima Whitbread (Olympic Sportswoman)
Mudhsuden Singh "Monty" Panesar (Cricketer for England)
Chuka Umunna (Politician)
Gabriel Agbonlahor (Footballer)
Sadiq Khan (Politician)
Adil Ray (Comedian, Actor)
Omid Djalili (Comedian, Actor)
The Saatchi Brothers (Businessmen)
Anish Kapoor (Architect)
Michael Marks (Founder of Marks & Spencer)
Sir Alec Issigonis (Inventor, designer of the Mini car)
Sir Clement Freud (Broadcaster, Writer, Politican, Chef)
Lord Alf Dubs (Politician)

Nadiya Hussain, winner of the Great British Bake-Off 2015
(c) Love Productions/Press Association

Google them and you will find a very interesting story behind every one of them. Some of course suffered from xenophobic abuse (not every story is faultless), but the benignity of the system, coupled with the fact that the vast majority of people are colour-blind and take people at face value, meant they were able to make it in their chosen areas, many with outstanding results. If you treat people as you would like to be treated, you will find they will reciprocate. Only a small number would do differently.

I'll tell you something for nothing: I would never have even thought of writing such a piece as this if it were not for the necessity of putting my point across to some mindless bigots I have recently had the displeasure of discovering are actually parochial purist thugs. And that is because I have never really considered any of the people on that list above, or any other first, second, third-generation immigrant (I baulk at the word) as anything else except British. In some ways I feel like I'm patronising them by having to use them as an example. I have never seen them as anything else except British.

In fact, quite frankly, on an intellectual or human level, there are no foreigners. And I challenge any one of those propagators of hate (you know who you are) to prove otherwise. Look at the personality, the attitude, the potential, before you look at the nationality, ethnic background or religion. There are bad eggs everywhere, just don't put all their associates in the same category. If we did that, this is what we would see:

Football hooliganism = English problem in the 1980s = all English are therefore violent thugs
Marc Dutroux = paedophile and child murderer = all Belgians are murderous sexual deviants
Westboro Baptist Church = brutally xenophobic and homophobic Christian group = all Americans are religious nutcases
Dutch law = lenient on soft drugs and prostitution = all Dutch are perverted junkies
Hungarian government = illiberal and xenophobic = all Hungarians voted for them

For goodness sake, as a Pagan, I sometimes go to the forest at night and remove my clothes. It doesn't make me a flaming exhibitionist... If we peddle the line that everyone is the same because they do this or that, or come from here or there, or they believe in this or that, it tells more about us than it does about them...

I cannot believe, that in 2016, we are once again heading towards isolationism, segregation, and maybe even war. There are no reasons for it, except for those that get their kicks from the feeling they are superior to others. They generally are not - they are just unaware how ridiculous they look. I will not block these Facebook "friends" who post their nonsense, but I will try never to be in the same room as them ever again.

The world in 2050 - part III, the scenarios

So, with the observations of the previous two articles in mind, how can the world look in 40 years?

If you're in the Western hemisphere, I think you have a good chance of finding the place quite different, possibly for the worse. The various scenarios are either chilling or hopeful, with little in the middle.


Scenario 1: China rises and rises

With this in mind, to see 2050, it would be wise to consider the world we live in today, as I said at the beginning. People are becoming less able to concentrate for long periods of time; the effects of the Internet, TV and computer games mean that most people do not really spend long thinking, really contemplating. Politics has become a bit of a soap opera in many democracies, and businesses are more powerful than at any time in history, some being classified in GDP listings alongside nations. China has had a part to play in this temporary, throw-away world we have permitted to come into being. For this reason, China may use this to its advantage, slowly infiltrating people's lives without them knowing, slowly affording itself the purchase of the odd bank here, the odd mining company there, an oil giant or two, plus some car companies, and gradually the world takes on a reddish hue.

Once various strategic firms have been purchased, the only way is up. The world will be a Chinese one. This is not an anomaly. The last three millennia have mostly been Chinese-dominated, with the exception of the 17th to 20th centuries, where the British, Americans and to some extent the Europeans have been in the ascendancy. Now things are going back the other way, and although most forecast this for the year 2050, I think it could be much, much sooner than that. If not already.

The Chinese could quite easily take advantage of the weak economies now at the mercy of the IMF, and choose to invest heavily in them. Imagine: the Chinese bail almost everyone out of the current mess, then start imposing their own policies and ideologies on everyone. I mean, there is no way the West would be able to further criticise China's dismal democratic record if they are the ones who put us back on track again. Furthermore, there would be reason to believe that businessmen and women favoured by the Chinese government would be sent to take control of those companies and banks bought or saved by them, and what then? If you dare criticise, insinuate, even look incredulously at their business policy or political stance, not only will you go out, but you may even be blackballed for various other positions elsewhere after.

Once this slow erosion of our rights has been noticed, only the people pigeonholed as conspiracy theorists, or those classed as slightly deluded will voice their opinions more strongly, but once it is too late, the rest may have understood.

Scenario II: China rises and falls

This is also a possibility, but could only happen if China makes some rash errors or gets too big for its own good. But how big can that be when you are a behemoth already, and have not even begun to execute your masterplan for world domination?

If China is to fail, then it will be a collective effort of everywhere else. And it will have to be done behind their backs - this may be impossible in the world as it is now, but once the Chinese have bought nearly everything that matters, own a sizeable chunk of the banks and have uncalculable mineral reserves to hand, then what would stop them? Only when the governments of the West have paid back their debts to China can they even think about tackling the re-establishment of democracy.

The Internet is currently politically neutral, but for how much longer? It may be a golden period for us, with free access to nearly everything, but with newspapers beginning to charge, with other outlets considering a priority list, it could go the way of US TV, which is full of advertising and only the good stuff is on pay-per-view. There is also nothing stopping China from influencing the future's media and broadcasting; allowing itself a self-congratulatory headline each day.

But there is an alternative.

An alternative so radical, it may not even work, but would be worth it just to keep us democratic: the governments of the Western world should consider having no truck whatsoever with China, keeping their hands free of debt to Asia and keeping it in the family, so to say. There could be an agreement where debt to each other is delayed so that debt to China can be the first repaid. Once that is out of the way, we can squabble amongst ourselves, but at least then we do not have the extra worry of having to do China's bidding.

A further way is that China could be the victim of its own success. Once, we dreamed that countries like Ireland and Spain were the Monaco and Switzerland of the future, but how wrong we were. Although I do not believe for one moment that China will be so complacent, I can see it taking some wrong decisions. Mainly, having too much going on at the same time. Empires always collapse in the end. The Chinese have learned from the Europeans that colonisation does not work as it causes rising anger in the places you colonised. The Chinese have also learned from the Americans and Russians that invasion wins you few friends and causes your expeditory departure from that place far more quickly. So they know now that the best way to conquer is to buy everything. In the corporate sector, where there are no political entities, no land borders, and where business pervades borders like tobacco smoke which does not remain solely in the smokers' area, the Chinese can make their mark where the Western powers failed.

We should not let this happen. However, considering the spineless leaders we have, I am sure they would sell their own grandmothers to make some money.

The world in 2050 - part I, the EU vs China

What will the world be like in 40 years' time? Most historians agree with the Churchillian view, that to look at the future you need to look at the past. By then though, all of that future will have been the past. But maybe we can look ten to twenty years ahead, which might give us clues.

We live, undoubtedly, in the freest and most enlightened society on Earth. And I hope this remains so in the future. But our greatest problem is the rise of the Far East and especially China, with its ability to manoeuvre in the world without asking 27 sovereign countries for permission. China is ahead in Europe's former colonial backyard simply because it can. Democracy is being defeated, even embarrassingly, by China's decisive nature and guilt-free ability to do what is best for China.

If the EU is asked to help in the building of a bridge across a predator-infested river in Africa so children can get to the school on the other side, it will firstly send an EU delegation to assess the impact to nature, the human inhabitants and the economy. It will take its findings back to Brussels, where committees in the European Parliament will sit and discuss matters before this project finally appears on the to-do list, maybe a year, maybe three years later. It is then transferred to the respective European Commission Directorate General for planning and execution. By this time, China will have sent its own delegate, who simply shows up in the village, says "where do you want it?" and calls up some builders to get the job done. In return neither for money, nor for nothing, but for the minerals in the ground around the village.

China is, without regard for ethics or morals, simply acting like the world's rich uncle in order to gain a certain kudos in parts of the world where, when the time comes, their United Nations vote could be crucial. On top of this, it is acting like a drug pusher, in that it makes promises to return with more fixes for the locals. But fixes are just that. Temporary. And no amount of posturing will hide the simple fact that its infrastructure is crumbling because of the temporariness of the structures China builds, and the shoddy workmanship it turns blind eyes to will mean that when the Europeans come back to that village in Africa, they should take a good look at the Chinese bridge, check for subsidance and crumbling, pull it down and build its own.

China is developing a "quick fix" economy for all. You're in a foreign city for a week and you packed one too few shirts? Pop down to the local department store and pick a Chinese one up for about 7€. You won't use it much more after, because the Chinese produce shirts that are too short, where the lowest button is about your navel area and it barely fits into your trousers. There was an article in a UK paper a few years ago about Christmas coming in on a mile-long freight ship from China, that we were now all subject to buying things Chinese. How much of it remains after two years is anyone's guess, but the simple matter is that China will never outdo the status of "Workshop of the World" simply because it relies on you to throw their stuff away and buy another one from the same maker. Workshop of the World implies that your material is so trustworthy you would not buy from anyone else, even if theirs was cheaper. That is why "Made in Germany" or "Made in England" will always have an extra advantage. It is the difference between an antique table of solid oak and a plastic-surfaced, metal-legged screw-down table with a loose fitting. The former you find in a top European restaurant, the latter in a Chinese takeaway.

What does the future hold, therefore, for China? I think it has learned from the Gorbachev break-up of the Soviet Union and does not want this to happen to it. The Chinese are busy promoting real estate in outer-lying cities in China to attract Han Chinese there, further cementing China's grip on its recent acquisitions, especially Tibet, Yunnan, Qinghai and Xinjiang. It is rapidly consolidating its status as polluter-in-chief, and will soon overtake the USA as largest in everything. But the one thing it does not have on its side is affection in the hearts of other countries in the world and this cannot change while China is still seen as a sinister and work-obsessed political entity.

All Europe has to do to gain the momentum is stay the same, because soon its fusty, clunking administrative machinery with its protracted overseas development projects will be seen as a breath of fresh air in comparison to the soulless efficiency, false smiles and black business suits accompanying the Chinese wherever they go.
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The simple answer to the question, "where will China be in 2050?" is that it could go one of two ways.
Either:
It could sink in a treacherous sea of dissatisfaction in its inability to produce proper material and act in an ethical and trustworthy manner, causing buyers, investors and bankers to pull out, and a nasty rise in nationalistic indignation at feeling rejected by the rest of the world. This could have the knock-on effect of galvanising the Chinese against the rest of the world or causing the split-up of its various autonomous regions, over which it has extended its wide-reaching tentacles, from the main body. By the time 2050 comes, China could be half the size in territory, and a quarter of the size in stature.
Or:
It could start the slow process towards allowing human emotion and dignity to be given space alongside work and dump its cosying up to other mean-spirited dictatorships (Zimbabwe, Myanmar) around the world. It could admit to its mistakes of allowing mass profiteering and racketeering to take a leading role in its colonisation of Africa, and start clearing up its own mess, instead of leaving that to the EU and the USA and their allies. It could stop stealing ideas from the EU and the USA and adapting them for its own purposes. It could clean up its fuel burning, whether associated with its addiction to coal or its petrol-guzzling cars. It would take its place as a model reformed nation, a shining beacon to all those nasty little dictatorships in central Asia and Africa.

But, unfortunately, neither is likely to happen. China is likely to get more and more competitive, causing other area of the world to realise the secret to winning this particularly nasty war is to become just as flexible and decisive as China. All I can see is a slow erosion of workers' rights in the EU and USA and a rise in the amount of Chinese-led initiatives. And whilst the EU and the USA are busy spending literally billions keeping terrorists at bay in central Asia and eastern Africa, China's approach is rather than to put sanctions on those countries, or even invade them, costing a lot of money and even more in lives, China just hangs a few diamond-encrusted carrots and wait until they bite.

Should the EU and USA start doing this? It is hard to say, but for all the ethical politics the EU and USA spread is being quite simply negated, even cancelled out, by China's simple interventions. It is the equivalent of a drug pusher looking for a few gophers. Find the bad boys in the school playground ready to earn a bit of cash for some thrills, and he has an inexhaustible supply of mercenaries. I think, for all the good it has been doing in recent years, the EU is currently losing the battle to keep itself afloat, even asking China for assistance in some cases.

I personally think the EU will slowly turn away from social democracy and become big in government edicts, bigger in industrial labour, smaller in intellectual workpower, smaller in military intervention. It needs to, in order to stay in the game. But it will have to go through several enormous periods of civil unrest to achieve it. China, on the other hand, is the one who can afford to stay the same.