'I'm sick of waking up to racist lie that immigrants are our biggest problem'

11 December 2023 , 18:46

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'Don't be drawn in by the government's transparent xenophobia' (Image: Getty Images)

A middle-aged white man on social media two weeks ago posted a picture of himself in a hospital bed. “I was set upon by a group of immigrants,” he said. “They gave me a triple heart bypass and saved my life.”

That’s the truth about immigration in this country. This is a land enriched by the arrival of human beings from elsewhere across decades. Aren’t you sick of waking up every day to the racist, rancid lie that it remains this country’s biggest problem?

I am. Sick of seeing a new generation groomed to go to school, college and work to hate and fear those unlike them. Sick of Westminster’s bidding war of cruelty to see who can demonise those in need the most. Sick of proven political liars like Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak, platformed on TV and radio as they claim unchallenged that arrivals to this country do not share ‘British values’ - as if they own the franchise.

Sick of the country tut-tutting and moving on instead of demanding action over the kind of language that could have constituted a resigning matter years ago.

Migrants off the south coast of England (AFP via Getty Images)

Sick of the claim that stopping the boats is the British people’s biggest priority when most are more concerned about heating, eating, the cost of living, seeing a GP and paying their rents or mortgages with interest rates going up.

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And no – none of that has anything to do with immigrants (I can’t believe I’m having to write that in 2023). Think about what the £290million already spent could have been better used for. Or the £700m earmarked to manage the arrival of migrants on small boats until 2030. The Government banks on misdirecting us away from austerity towards a section of our society it insists on using as scapegoats.

But we’ve done the numbers before. Most of the people who come here (check the figures) work, pay their taxes and contribute to the economy. They work on the transport system and in the NHS - just as they did in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. They clean and care for the elderly whose bodies Boris Johnson and his cronies would have let pile high during Covid.

The percentage of people at the centre of the Government’s bid to steer you away from that inquiry, Johnson and Sunak’s missing WhatsApp messages, PPE fraud and their razing to the ground of every section of our society, is relatively tiny. Even then, what the racists and charlatans in power have done is close off the legal routes to ensure it takes forever to process applications to be here legitimately. People-smuggling clearly has been an issue for years but this Government is among those doing the trafficking.

Think about it. A financial arrangement remains in place for human beings, arriving here in search of help, to be ferried to another party in Rwanda. All we are missing are the ships and the chains. Not that I should have to justify – 50 years after the likes of Enoch Powell – the right of non British people to be here, when this country has a long, dark history of crimes and misdemeanours around the world.

But people coming to study (39%) is the main reason for most of the 968,000 non-EU migrants in this country now, followed by work (33%) and humanitarian reasons (9%). The latest racist wheeze, dressed up as government policy, is to keep out any spouse not originally from the UK if they don’t earn over £38,000. Most junior doctors don’t earn that much. The state pension and the minimum wage are also far lower. But then you’ll already know that.

It is a naked attempt to enforce the Government’s even more transparent xenophobia. Don’t be drawn in.

Benjamin Zephaniah

Rest in peace, Benjamin

Benjamin Zephaniah would easily have written me off this page with far fewer words and infinitely more delicious turns of phrase.

His passing last week at just 65 saw a literary giant snatched away from us. His rise to the top of performance poetry, however, united millions and inspired generations. May he rest in peace.

Darren Lewis