immigration

It has been reported that John Howard (former Australian Prime Minister) has made a number of comments about immigrants in Australia needing to shut up and live by “our rules” rather than moaning about their rights etc. As part of this he defended routine bugging of Australian mosques after the Bali bombing.

Of course, most of this has turned into urban legend, subject to the usual twisting, misrepresentation and embellishment from those trying to use his comments to support their anti-immigration agenda. Even so, is it just me or are these sorts of comments from (ex) government officials in a country made up almost entirely of immigrants whose forefathers brutally repressed the indigenous population, just a little on the ironic side?

Perhaps subconsciously the argument being made is actually “put up with being spied on, or – if you don’t like it – simply round us up, steal our land and rights, and force us to live in government sponsored compounds, just like we did with the Aborigines”.

Incidentally, I came across this in discussion with someone who opposes UK immigration. As part of the discussion he used a wonderfully misleading metaphor – the type we’ve all seen before. In this case, he likened immigration to taking a British family of five, and then forcing them to take in four extra people, who they’d need to clothe, feed, keep warm etc. Four extra people? That sounds like a lot – an 80% increase in fact.

So, let’s look at the – albeit very approximate – figures (hurray!):

UK population = 60 million
Gross annual immigration = 500,000
Gross annual emigration = 300,000
Net annual immigration = 200,000

200,000 represents a one third of one percent increase.

So, immigration isn’t really like adding four more people to a family of five – it’s more like adding a gerbil. Which doesn’t sound quite so dramatic or problematic, does it?