Is my best friend racist?

America is a nation of immigrants (mostly). They have specific things (4th July, pledge of allegiance at school) to integrate new immigrants into American culture and it largely works.

the UK could welcome migrants and make it possible for them to integrate if we welcomed people better

@nomas oh well that’s alright then

I think it’s complex. Many people come because they want to live differently than how they lived before. As an immigrant it is very hard to properly integrate - make local friendships and be part of the community. How many on here have close friends who are immigrants?
If the only community that accepts them is the immigrants who arrived earlier, they stick together and practice that culture.
But also most do adapt at least some of the local culture.

There were 19 Afghans charged with sexual offences up to end of 2023.

I’d hardly call that an epidemic of Afghans rampaging down the country 🙄

And how have you tried to involve immigrants in your community? Have you invited them to a cup of tea?

YABU. She's spot on and shares the same opinion as the silent majority...

Sadly you are completely wrong. Statistics demonstrate that men from Afghan backgrounds are far more likely to commit sex crimes than the general population.

Thats not because Afghans, as a race, are inherently evil, it’s because they have grown up in a society steeped in extreme misogyny. If you separated a white English boy at birth, and raised him in Taliban Afghanistan, he’d also likely be more misogynist. It’s culture not race.

Attempting to shut down concerns about other cultures with phoney cries of “racism” is something more and more people are rightly reacting against.

Maybe you'd be more inclined to agree with her if you had first hand experience of it.

It's a very real problem.

I agree with her, it's sad that wanting to protect British culture and history and being proud of those things is now considered racist

Another person putting Islam beyond critical examination.

Simplistically labelling people who raise issues with Islam, 'Islamophobic', and therefore hindering efforts to address reasonable concerns.

Desperate measures, really.

The national insurance tax reduction will benefit all Indian immigrants on all salaries, but especially those earning up to £50,000 a year because of the way the tax tapers.

This is naive…. Many Islamic cultures do not have the values you presume they do, especially regarding women. All cultures are not harmless, and I would apply that to some sub-cultures in which some white English people partake.

Liberal minded, tolerant people are becoming more and more exasperated by those who want to shut down concerns about cultures that aren’t compatible with core British values of tolerance and freedom by shouting “racism”… This is a primary factor behind why Reform is doing so well.

Your friend is right. It’s actually refreshing that there are people out there who are realistic about this sort of thing.

If I migrate to another country, I will make every effort to learn their language and to get involved in the community. It is far harder for the host country residents and less beneficial for them to learn my language and to alter their lives around me.

I have not mentioned anyone’s race. If we allow the worlds immigrants to flood this country without integration then we will become those countries they are fleeing.

The race card seems to be always used to shut down healthy discussions around migration.

I agree with your friend

Rich people tend to be given incentives. But the vast majority of immigrants aren’t on golden visas and pay taxes like ordinary citizens.

You asked a question about tax. I answered it. The answer in brief is we do offer preferential tax regimes to immigrants.

You’re going off on a tangent here. The vast majority of immigrants pay the same taxes as everyone else.

Tell us you don’t have any black or brown friends without telling us you don’t have any black or brown friends.

Expats in Saudi are offered the same tax situation as locals. By contrast, western governments tend to have higher taxes for their own citizens and preferential lower tax regimes such as golden visas for rich expats. The tightening of those rules on non-doms in the U.K., which limits the number of years they can benefits from such a tax regime, has caused ruffles. However Starmer has just signed a treaty with India which means British employers will not have to pay employer National Insurance (average 13.8%) on thr salaries of Indus national who move to the U.K. for their first 3 years here. That will create a high tax incentive to employ Indian nationals instead of British nationals.

I agree with your friend Op, and I'm a second generation immigrant to the UK.

These are extremely generic. Culture is lived daily. Highly abstract, universal western values are not enough to ensure successful integration. It’s actually indicative of a cultural mismatch we’ve had between our government and people in recent years. Britain has inherited a king tradition of grassroots-up practices, such as common law, a representative parliament that is very many centuries older than our democracy and which influenced our FPTP model, and even our philosophy. The British (and American) philosophical tradition is inductive. It prefers a form of logic based on accumulated experience. By contrast, the French (and broader European) model is based on deductive logic that uses a priori, top-down truths, just as it’s constitutional legal system is based on top-down laws or edicts, not common law. Our politicians have long had a love affair with the French way of doing things and have made all sorts of decisions that are antithetical to our tradition of government and jurisprudence. The idea that you can reduce British values to an abstracted list is one of them.

It’s possible to have high levels of culturally uninterested immigration if they are expats who go home and don’t put increasing pressure on the host population. That’s the model popular in the Middle East.

Would those uninterested immigrants be offered tax free salaries? And how would that go down with the rest of the population?