Tuesday, June 17, 2014
A “hardline view of immigrants? Come off it.
A "hardline view of immigrants? Come off it.
NO. That's the political-class spin.
The supposed conclusion of those behind the latest NatCen Social Research British Social Attitudes survey is false. What they found is expression of common-sense and not "anti-migrant" but anti-'political class' – a well-deserved curse on the policy-makers.
To make out that ordinary people en mass are xenophobic [sic] is to show scientific illiteracy. Research into in-grouping psychology reveals that it's all about in-group 'love', not out-group 'hate'.
The authors of the survey point out that the better off / better educated are more pro-immigration (60% graduates v 17% of the rest). Of course they are! THEY are the more prejudiced: against ordinary people. Their natural elitist-separatism is heavily compounded by the great backlash by the political-Left (the elite) against 'the workers' for not buying the 'progressive project'. They've been educated OUT of common-sense and into a gullibility re 'PC'-nobbled stats.
What's more, ordinary folk are right on all these topics: even when the snooties running the survey think they've got 'em trapped.
That a quarter reckon migrants come here for benefits is a low proportion when you consider that in the UK benefits system being inextricable with the laxity re immigration and the near certainty to never being thrown out, there is a major cushion underpinning the willingness of migrants to come here for work, let alone for 'family reunion', etc.
When nearly a half reckon immigration leads to rising crime rates, they are simply reflecting what is known to result from both past and present inflows: the heavily disproportionate perpetration of street crime by 'blacks' and the criminal activities of Roma.
With only just over a half even of Londoners reckoning immigration is good for the economy (it's 28% in the rest of UK), people are indicating their accurate perception of the huge strain on infrastructure and the dis-economies of scale this produces: the need to incur vast expense to build a new supra level of new infrastructure.
And the now more than half the population who reckon to be "truly British" you need British ancestry are fully in line with all the recent research demolishing the "we're a nation of migrants" tosh. It turns out (from Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA extensive studies) that the vast majority of UK citizens can trace their descent directly back to the mesolithic (middle stone age) and paleolithic (old stone age).
The rest of what is discovered in the new survey is even more straightforward common-sense: To be "truly British" you must speak English (95%), have lived most of your life here (77%), or have been born here (74%); legal immigrants who are not (as yet) British citizens shouldn't be entitled to the same rights as British citizens (actually, surprisingly low at 27%); EU migrants should wait three years+ for benefits (61%).
One of the study authors stated that people were "unaware of policies to control immigration" What ... like the recently rushed-through rule that benefits (supposedly) can't be claimed until you've been here for three months? That's a weird interpretation of 'controlling' immigration. Ordinary folk aren't stupid enough to be taken in that there is in place any 'control' worthy of the term.
Overall – not just re the economy – 47% regard immigration as negative; 31% positive. This is the most surprising stat from the whole survey: how come more than half are still hoodwinked?
# posted by Steve Moxon @ 8:16 am 
