Britain's
Conservative Party discovers that it's "Not Racist to Impose Limits on Immigration". In another sign that
threats from the right and
opportunities on the left have pushed it into taking a strong stand for immigration reform, Conservative Party leader Michael Howard ran a
full page ad in last week's Sunday Telegraph with the headline, "I Believe We Must Limit Immigration".
The ad reads, in part:
* "THERE ARE LITERALLY MILLIONS OF PEOPLE IN OTHER COUNTRIES WHO WANT TOCOME AND LIVE HERE. BRITAIN CANNOT TAKE THEM ALL."
* "WE WILL PUT IN PLACE 24-HOUR SECURITY AT PORTS TO PREVENT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION."
* "BRITAIN HAS REACHED A TURNING POINT. OUR COMMUNITIES CANNOT ABSORB NEWCOMERS AT TODAY’S PACE. IMMIGRATION MUST BE BROUGHT UNDER CONTROL. IT IS ESSENTIAL FOR GOOD COMMUNITY RELATIONS, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICES."
Joseph Harker at the
Guardian has the
bien pensant's response: all the excitement about immigration is really just a reflection of the natives' trouble getting over the fact of ethnic difference (i.e., persistent racism). I would suggest that Harker have another look at last year's controversial two part essay (
part I,
part II) by
Prospect editor David Goodhart. Goodhart's discovery -- and he certainly took his time getting around to making it -- is that ethnicity is a central axis of
social conflict in human societies but almost never
in itself a source of
social harmony.
Such issues are the work of sociology, history, and anthropology. They are also, and in a much more basic sense, the work of intuition. Harker just doesn't seem to have the same intuition as the rest of us. The burden would seem to be on him to explain why.
Meanwhile in Rotterdam... murdered Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh's film
Submission has been pulled from the city's film festival amid fears of violence. The Guardian reports:
"The cancellation of the screening came amid reports that a Moroccan-Dutch painter has gone into hiding after an exhibition of his work opened on January 15 in Amsterdam. Rachid Ben Ali reportedly received death threats from groups who were angered by his work, which satirised Islamist militants."
We might learn something from the Europeans after all.
UPDATE: Peter Brimelow on the
evolving debate in the UK.
![[Powered by Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
