Quote:
Originally Posted by Simondi
It's clearly an emotive subject, balancing a sense of basic human compassion against a fear of people who are different.
I wonder though, if for arguments sake China launched an invasion against Australia and New Zealand and succeeded in taking control. Imagine then them handing power back to the indigenous population and removing the rights to freedom of speech, education, religious worship, voting and land ownerhip to white people. Some of the white people then decide to flee to the UK and Europe, after all, we are safe, have peace within our borders, stable governments, honour and respect human rights, have spoken out against the atrocities being committed in their homeland, who knows perhaps we even sent troops there or bombed them  Some flee as families for a better life, others decide to flee here and send money back to their families in Australia or New Zealand as their families are not up for such an arduous journey.
Would we treat them the same or differently as those fleeing from Iran, Yeman, Kurdistan and so on?
A hypothetical question I know, but if they look the same and speak the same as us would we welcome them or turn them back. Would we say you have passed through other countries stay there or tell them if you can afford to pay a trafficker then you don't need to come here
Or would we just blame the French and the EU? |
Indeed so (the first bit) - and not helped by hysteria, which is fed by lazy assumption.
I suspect that your hypothetical mass migration from Aus/NZ would meet a different reception, because people from those countries - like western European countries - share a broadly common background in terms of values and beliefs. There would be much less of 'the fear of people who are different'.
The big irony of this is that Brexit promised the prospect of taking back control of our borders. Overlooking for a moment the fact that we could have had complete control of our borders even within the EU, all that has actually changed is that we have lost a great many EU migrants who worked hard at many of the useful but difficult jobs which many Brits don't fancy, whereas the situation with immigrants from elsewhere hasn't changed at all!