Playing to the worst stereotypes to gin up a right-wing base of odious enmity.
Diversity is not a dirty word. Diversity in population and diversity in religion strengthens communities. We know that there are some who create tensions for all of us when people that are perceived as ‘other’ move into certain local populations and they regard them as forming a risk to the ‘majority’ i.e., the people that look and think exactly like them! They perceive them as strangers. They perceive them as intruders. They perceive them as taking over. These perceptions are reinforced through the right-wing media and the false and hateful narrative of the current administration.
Anyone who can reach past this fog of deceit and disdain knows that new arrivals integrate in unexpected and wonderful ways. They enrich our communities, not debase them, as the right wing would have you believe. People come to the West to try and make a living; they go through struggles to establish themselves and their identities. Transitions come with stresses and strain, but time passes, the newcomers find their feet, contribute to the wider community and feeling like a newbie dissipates.
A lot of the fear we see today around immigration comes from scaremongering, stoking fears and hatred, playing to the worst stereotypes to gin up a right-wing base of odious enmity. Every new community is seen as somehow ‘bad’ by the right wingers that are currently having their moment in the populist sun, but America and Britain are both countries that were settled by migrants. Waves of migrants have settled on our shores and done much to support the economic prosperity of our nations. People move around. That is just what happens. Migration in, migration out. People want to live in all sorts of places for all sorts of reasons.
Economic migrants are inherently seeking out ways to better the fortunes of their families, and who can blame them. They want to work hard to better their lot. The low skilled no skilled economy would flounder without migrants to do the jobs no-one else wants to do for the price that business is prepared to pay.
On top of all of that as two of the richest nations on the planet we have a moral obligation to offer asylum, and if anyone tries to tell me that the crisis in central America, in the Middle East and in some parts of Africa is not producing waves of people who under international law are entitled to seek asylum in a fair, transparent and timely process, I will literally bite them….
