XT802: Migration -- All Things Pass
"XT802: Migration -- All Things Pass" is a short extract about the problems and ultimate outcomes of migrants moving into a western country.
Migration -- All Things Pass
In Britain during the 1950s there was a huge influx of immigrants, particularly from the West Indies, India, and Pakistan. Naturally enough these various ethnic groups tended to settle in particular parts, and in some areas they came to form the majority of the population.
This did lead to problems, not overt discrimination matters necessarily, but strategic problems. For example, in some London suburbs close to where I lived, two-thirds of the young children entering primary school were recent migrants from India. Of course most adult Indians can speak English, but these were children who had learnt to speak an Indian language from their parents at home.
Now these children had to learn to read, to read English, a language they did not even know. It could be an immense problem. Of course the authorities could bring resources to bear on the problem, say by taking on Indian-speaking teachers to bring the children's English up to speed, and they did what they could. But what were the lost one-third, the local English children, to do in the same class at the time?
There were also moral dilemmas. When I was about to migrate to Australia in 1964, the house I had been buying was in a suburb in which Indian migrants had started to buy and live. There were none in my street. There was the normal anti-migrant bias in the area, and my neighbour pleaded with me not to sell my house to an Indian -- it would lower house values, and he would have to put up with the results of cramming perhaps three Indian families into the house, while I was well clear.
I did my best to satisfy him. The problem was, no English person would consider buying a house in that suburb then, because it was considered in the process of being "taken over by the Indians". Instead, they would look in another suburb -- that was free choice. In the end, the house went to an Indian buyer -- there were no others in the market, and I needed to sell.
All Things Pass
But all things pass. A generation on, most of the population speak the same London accent, only old Granny in the back room reminding them of the difficulties of those from another culture, another time and place. Those poor children trying to learn to read a language they could not speak are now running banks and businesses, or treating patients of all the skin colours going. When the old Indian fellow with rheumatism problems is brought in, the local doctor feels grateful he can grope back into his ethnic past to find the words to console him with.
At home, his English-born wife has been shopping and bought sweet potatoes at the local supermarket to eat with the evening meal. His sons are on the way home from the local basketball match, they have bought some curry puffs from the local fish-and-chip shop, and are gazing uneasily at some dark old gentleman who is asking them directions in a language they know not one word of.
And so the last Proposition of this article:
Proposition 113F***. A syston will be advantaged by the highest possible immigration rate it can cope with.
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Extract from MT113: With Stars Upon Thars -- SIOS and Infocap Flow.
Latest version on Web, 2016 Jun 3
