10:22am Tuesday 16th March 2010
By Reader's letter
COUNCILLOR Tracey Simpson-Laing mentions past migration as if it justifies present levels (Letters, March 12).
I am married to a Kenyan Sikh who has more than 1,000 relatives in England, and I don’t object to immigration as long as it’s controlled and justified.
A large cohort of the present immigrants are not committed to democracy and equality, and some 500,000 to one million are here illegally.
This is what many people are concerned about, including immigrants such as my wife.
This is the issue: the politicians’ denial of the strain it is putting on social cohesion, security and resources, and their failure to ask the voters’ permission.
Coun Simpson-Laing implies that past migration was desirable.
The Romans were a slave society which destroyed most of the Celtic Iron-Age civilisation, decimating whole tribes and sadistically murdering leaders of any groups which resisted.
The Saxons did the same. These were invasions which destroyed the nation as the inhabitants knew it.
The Normans, a Viking tribe, ravaged the whole country, and their later descendants were at the forefront of the colonisation of America.
I wonder if Coun Simpson-Laing knows that the Scottish Simpsons are offspring of the Norman Frasers? (I also have the Irish-Norman Reilly blood). She also mentions William of Orange.
The result of Protestant-Catholic rivalry over the years resulted in a huge percentage of the population being killed, culminating in 40 per cent of the Irish perishing in the Civil War as a result of Cromwellian action.
Mass migration always has a price: ask the Aboriginies or native Americans.
It is professional politicians such as Coun Simpson-Laing who have made us hostages to fortune by their casual attitude to one of the two greatest existential threats to this country (the other being EU membership).
John Simpson, Church Road, York.
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