Invasion or immigration? (From York Press)

Invasion or immigration?

10:05am Friday 19th March 2010 in

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The question of immigration is usually dealt with in terms of the effect it has, rather than on the causes of it.

As John Simpson (Soapbox, March 16) points out, any invasion by a people or state with a superior military force, eg the Romans, imposes social change, which many of the native inhabitants deeply resent. We should see the “military immigration” of British forces into Iraq and Afghanistan in that light. The Romans too saw their cultural and social systems as being unquestionably superior to the inhabitants’ way of life.

Since this country has not been invaded and occupied by a foreign power since the 11th century, Mr Simpson’s objection must be to immigrants who come here peaceably. We need to ask why they come here. Some, like the Jewish victims of 19th-century pogroms in Russia, came to escape persecution. Successive recent British governments have enacted laws making it as difficult as possible for people escaping persecution to be granted asylum.

Most come as economic migrants, many from countries where Western business interests control the economy so that no one except an elite of political cronies can earn a living wage. People here, who want to live in a society where their neighbours are like them, should understand that many immigrants feel the same. Those, who have reluctantly left their families, and their culture to work here, do so because the global economic system means that they cannot earn a decent living if they stay at home.

Our economy benefits from their being paid poverty wages in their own countries and for working at low wages in this country. Immigrants send back home £4 billion a year. If we let them earn that money in their own country, they would not come here.

Maurice Vassie, Cartmans Cottage, Deighton, York.

• With reference to the heading for the letter sent by Coun Tracey Simpson-Laing (Two thousand years of immigration, March 12), it would appear that she doesn’t know the difference between immigration and invasion. No doubt if we had lost the Second World War, she would have described the Germans as the latest wave of “immigrants”.

If Coun Simpson-Laing wants to count the various invasions as “immigration” and highlight the benefits of the same she might like to consider some of the results of theses “immigrations”.

The Romans killed many of the then population, including their religion (the Druids). They did bring benefits, but didn’t intermarry with the locals to any great extent. The legionaries may have done so, but they were from many different nationalities.

The Danes “immigrated” to our shores, raping, killing and taking over the farms and property of the indigenous population. The next group of “immigrants” were the Normans, friendly migrants indeed. In the Harrying Of The North they killed and consequently starved about 100,000 people. By today’s population standards that would equate to ten million people being killed in the north of England. What a great benefit that was to the locals!

As for the benefits, Coun Simpson-Laing seems limited to mentioning her brilliant Polish dentist and the fact that our tastes for foreign food has expanded the restaurant trade. I’m not sure of the great advantages of that to the country as a whole.

Why is it that even local politicians think that any contrary argument to their view is either a political argument or racist? I think the real point on this issue is population. For England alone the population figures and estimates are: 1086, 1.4 to 1.9 million; 1377, 2.2 to 3.1 million; 1750, 5.74 million; 1801, (start of census) 8.3 million; 1951, 42 million, 2001, 49.4 million, 2004, 50.93 million, estimated 2011, 52 million; estimated 2031, 57 million.

M Hadaway, Haxby, York.