National Identity Theft
May 9, 2008
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"Now
a new king arose over Egypt... He said to his people, "Look, the
Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let
us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase... Therefore they set
taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labour. They built
cities... for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they
multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the
Israelites." (Exodus 1:8-12)
These
words, central to our
recent Passover celebration, came to mind while I was thinking about
the British immigration policies. I can't figure out whether the UK is
the most xenophobic country I've ever lived in, or whether it just acts
like it. On the one hand, the UK has a well-deserved reputation as a
sanctuary for the persecuted and would-be persecutors temporarily out
of office. On the other hand, UK politicians, who (one presumes) know
better, seem to cheer themselves up when they're feeling blue by
attacking immigrants, either directly or (more commonly) by
insinuation. The same is true for pillars of society like the BBC.
Immigrants are corroding the fabric of society, hence the need for
ever-mounting restrictions. They
are unleashing a crime wave on peace-loving Britons (at about the
same rate per capita as the native hoodlums, but at least you
understand what a British thug is screaming while he kicks your head
in, or at least, you could if he weren't so drunk). (Who trusts pointy-headed statistics anyway?) And, worst of
all, after they've sneaked in here with their legal chicanery,
following their perverse urges to clean our toilets and mop up bodily
fluids in NHS hospitals, they're breeding.
That's right, the same Polish nurses who are keeping the NHS maternity
wards from dissolving into a mass of MAR, are now bringing those wards
to the point of collapse by having babies themselves.* And there's nothing we can do about it! Or so one would have thought...
The
Home Office is on the case, to keep London from drowning in
curry-stained nappies. (It won't keep out the kielbasa-chomping hordes,
alas, because European law undermines UK sovereignty guarantees basic human and economic rights to EU citizens.)
One
little-known discrimination against foreigners in the UK is the
prohibition on foreigners marrying in the UK without express permission
from the Home Office. Most countries apply mild to severe sanctions on
couples who cohabitate without marrying. More progressive regimes in
the west have tended toward equalisation of treatment, recognising the
de facto family arrangements above the legalistic definitions of
marriage. (Canada is among the more extreme, recognising essentially no
distinction between married and cohabiting (called "common law
married") couples.) The UK combines unusually strong sanctions against
unmarried couples -- no pensions or inheritance rights, and unmarried
fathers have no automatic parental rights -- with unusually high
hurdles to marriage. Particularly for foreigners. If you are not a
legal permanent resident of the UK ("indefinite leave to remain" is the
technical term) The current price for a "Certificate of Approval" is
£295, and if your betrothed is also un-British he or she (make sure to
pick the right one!) will also pay £295. Then you get to wait for "20
to 70 business days". The details are available here. The High Court in London declared
the law in violation of The European Convention on Human Rights, but
for your average red-blooded UK politician Human Rights are only
challenges to be overcome. (Start going down the path of Human Rights,
and next thing you know the tumbrils are rolling...) There seem to have
been some changes -- for instance, removing a bizarre provision that
excluded Church of England weddings from the CoA requirement. But
simply allowing people to marry without government approval is not
something the government is willing to countenance. (Do the British
require a financial incentive to marry compatriots, rather than
throwing themselves at foreigners? There might be a secret study
lurking behind the policy.)
Of
course, biology is a stubborn thing, so the marriage ban may not
actually stop the foreigners from multiplying and spreading. But that's
a matter to take up after the next election.
*"The NHS is spending £350m a year to provide maternity services for foreign-born mothers," writes the BBC.
Funny that they don't mention that the UK was, until a few years ago, a
net exporter of population, and even now the balance is fairly close.
Instead of this headline they might with equal justice have remarked
that the emigration of British women of childbearing age "is saving the
NHS £200m a year, that they would otherwise have spent when those women
gave birth in Britain." But it's a common fallacy, to count the costs
you incur, because they are present and salient, and not the costs you
avoid, which are, by definition, absent. Recently, an MP spoke in the Commons to accuse the BBC of fomenting violence against Poles.