I'd much prefer a fair, controlled immigration rather than people sneaking into the country, potentially bringing in diseases that were extinct here, like TB.

We've always had TB. There was a ward dedicated to it in the town I grew up in 20 years ago.
If you're a non EU migrant, it's actually really difficult to immigrate here legally.

I know it's really hard to immigrate, hence why people are trying to sneak in.
Surely it would be better to be able to keep record of who comes in.
Kids aren't being vaccinated for a lot of these diseases as routine anymore, even in London, which I find crazy.
It would not take much at all to get an epidemic of MMR/ TB.

You can't immunise a nation against any disease with border controls unless you put tourists into quarantine.

Most people aren't in contact with tourists everyday.


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The thing about contagion is that you don't have to be. Other people can do that bit, and then you just have to be in contact with them.

A country is how rich it is and what ideas its population tend to hold dear.

For instance, the UK is a rich, secular, social democracy. It is not "white" or "christian".

Any "influx" or "invasion" of clashing cultures, morals, is highly ephemeral and very restricted to "pockets".

The second generation Pakistanis/Indians/Jamaicans are not as Pakistani/Indian/Jamaican as their parents, and the pattern will continue through the generations until the immigrants are not seen as "different" at all (and the rest of the general population absorb, very slightly, bits (usually the best bits, music food, fashion) of their cultures. Our culture becomes richer, as long as the underlying moral and political landscape is a healthy, strong one, and won't be overrun by invading ideas.

So we're totally safe, and xenophobia is a paranoia which is not based in reality.

Your'e right to an extent but I think we have to worry a little about ghettoisation. When the first Asians or Jamaicans arrived, they didn't really have any choice but to integrate. If they wanted a tradesman, he was probably native to the area. Ditto for people they had to buy things from etc. So they had to learn the local customs and laws and in some cases had to learn to speak English. And also the indigenous people saw them and interacted with them, got to know them and found that they were actually in most ways actually just like them. That encouraged mixing and cross-culturalisation. Essentially we were all thrown together by circumstance and we learned to get on.

But it doesn't always work that way, at least it doesn't seem to any more. I don't particularly have any problem if say a Polish guy wants to open a shop here and sell Polish goods that aren't available in the mainstream shops. But nevertheless, if you're say a Polish tradesman and you come to the UK but you buy the large majority of your goods from a Polish shopkeeper who imports all his stock and you work pretty much exclusively for other Polish migrants and you get a satellite dish and watch Polish TV in the evening, you haven't really integrated at all.

And this is kind of understandable because integrating is actually quite hard - you have to learn a different language, understand different laws and customs, maybe give up some thing you love and accept some things you find weird. I know too this is equally true of Brits in Spain who watch Sky TV and buy Heinz beans and what have you, so we're no better than any other bunch. We're all human and we all take the easy option a lot of the time if it's offered.

It seems to me globalisation has allowed migration without integration much more easily - regardless of where you're from, whatever you want is pretty much available to you wherever you happen to be. As a result, we're becoming more insular from each other and I don't like that. I think it's bad for us all.

Once you're an adult, you find all of that integration business pointless, like throwing away your experience and starting again... no it doesn't work on that timescale, it happens when you're a child. Which is one of the reasons why I don't like faith schools.

It's on the time scale of generations, integration happens over decades. Children will hopefully always be able to teach their parents how to be less prejudiced.

You see that here a lot with Turkish and Eastern Block immigrants. Many Turkish women who have been in the country for a decade still don't speak any German.

At the German language school where I went, there was a Turkish Muslim woman, she had finally persuaded her husband to let her learn German, because it was getting more and more difficult to get by with only Turkish, now that their son was growing up. It was also difficult to go shopping.

The "Einsiedler" (former Soviet Block "Germans" - i.e. those that were in areas that were Germany before the end of the war, Prussia and points East, who still consider themselves German, tend to stick together in large communities.

As to me, I married a German woman and I probably speak around 10 minutes of English a month and I probably watch less than 30 minutes of English language films or TV in a month on average.

Same here, however, if I wanted, I could have moved to a French quarter in London and joined a French community which has French shops and cinemas, , French doctors and vets even French hairdressers and never have to speak English outside work. What's the point it having moved away if you do that?


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