How British are you?

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Obviously, when the "protesters" say they are protesting immigration and want "the boat people" to go home what they mean is brown people, not immigrants, but they cannot say this because they are not racist.

So, in their minds, how British do you need to be? The young man who committed the crime that triggered this was Welsh with immigrant parents, so clearly, the children of immigrants are not welcome. What about grandchildren of immigrants? Or great-grandchildren? Are you allowed to stay if you have one British parent?

I'm musing because based on the people I know the country would be empty if we went more than 2 generations back. My Grandmother was an immigrant so I assume I would have to leave, not sure about the DC but DD2 is clearly of Romanian descent so I'd not fancy her chances of being able to stay.

Would you be able to stay?

An immigrant can be called English if it is their ethnicity and in their DNA but not just because they were born in England or Scotland or Wales. They are British if they have lived here since birth or if they have acquired citizenship.

I feel some people do not understand the differance.

European immigrants would call themselves Polish or French or Ukrainian but become a British citizen and still be French or whatever.

I have lived in Canada where the nationality of Canadian would be prefixed by an indication of their ethnicity - so Polish-Canadian, Irish-Canadian etc were the norm. It is an indication of someones enthnicity which is important to each of us - it makes us what we are.

Most are legal immigrants & since the riots are targeting any brown person, how can you tell who is illegal and legal.

How about Brits express outrage at the 100s of countries your government continues to f up, pollute and steal resources from..!

Once they have done so, they are perfectly entitled to be in the UK until their claim is assessed. Only when it has been refused do they become “illegal”. It is not their fault that UK public services are so appalling that their claims take sometimes years to be processed.

This bears repeating.

Everyone, pretty much, wants the same thing; swift processing of asylum claims. The migrants want it because living in temporary accommodation while waiting is awful. Racists want it because there would be fewer 'men in hostels and hotels'. Everyone else wants it because it's humane and cheaper to process asylum claims quickly.

The ONLY people who benefit from delays and hold-ups are divisive politicians like Farage and the Tories. They benefit from division, hostility and having someone visible to blame. None of the rest of us do. Unfortunately they are the ones with the power to speed up the system.

This is English racism. I don’t see any mobs in Scotland, Wales or NI shouting about wanting their country back or looting Greggs.

And they are very clear they mean “England” not “the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”

The people coming here in boats are coming here illegally, being housed in hotels, given meals and clothes, are getting healthcare, etc. They haven't paid into anything, they don't bring anything to contribute to anything, and are here - I'll repeat it - illegally. That's why people don't want them here. Nothing at all to do with their colour or race
The above statement is what I am hearing also.
The two main subgroups of
Albanians are the Gegs (Ghegs) in the north and the Tosks in the south.
These subgroups are not ethnically different to white Europeans (Italian/Greek) are they? Albanians are about 20% of the illegal boat arrivals. I think unhappy people are wishing to challenge their right to remain/stop them arriving just as much as the other illegal immigrants.

Fairly obviously you can be any colour and be British, since you just have to born here, or gain British Citizenship. Though some people refer to themselves as “black British” or “British Asian” etc.

Equally obviously you can’t be indigenous to Northern Europe and be any colour; people who are indigenous to Northern Europe look like me - with pale skin, straightish hair, slim noses, thin lips etc.

I would presume that non-indigenous people (either British or not) is who the rioters would like to expel.

Well, according to the DNA, I'm 87% Anglo Saxon. The rest is Irish, Scandinavian, Middle European. I've done my family tree back to about 1480,we stayed in roughly the same place for all that time.

The rioters are treating everyone brown the same when there are many brown people that were born and lived here their whole lives because their parents were invited to the Uk in the 50s and 60s.

Asylum seekers can’t work so can’t pay in until their application is processed. The backlog is years long.

I don’t see signs that white people from Eastern Europe are considered differently either. They are often blamed for keeping wages low because they will take physically difficult jobs that English people will not (eg fruit picking ) and simultaneously getting all the freebies.

If the thugs really wanted a discussion about immigration then they’d start from the position that you don’t have to be white to be English and that those non-white people who are born and bred here are as culturally English as them. They’d acknowledge that legal migrants are a benefit to the economy and culture and not treat them with the same suspicion as the “boat people”

Shouldn't this post say "How English are you?"

Isn't being British a matter of citizenship?

There was rioting in Belfast.

@reluctantbrit im in a similar place and the ‘not fully feeling British’ is one of the reason that stops me from even trying to apply.
Because despite 25+ years in the country, I still have a slight accent and ‘where are you from?’ is often the first question asked. It makes me feel like I’ll never be seen as British.
(Never mind that my dh is a white blond, pale brit and my dcs are British too.)

BUT it is true I’d have less problem than brown/black peoole who have been in the U.K. for several generations. 😢😢

In Australia we still have a huge number of immigrants as a proportion of the Australian population though. About a third of us are born overseas, higher than in the UK and 50% have at least one overseas born parent. At my kids’ school, nearly 50% speak a language other than English. And despite the fact that Australia is strict about people arriving by boat, they still accepted refugees via the UN pathway, many of whom came from African countries.
I think the situation in the UK is more about economic stressors projected onto immigrants. When everyone is well off and inequality isn’t too bad, people don’t tend to go after immigrants as scapegoats then.

Many Western countries eg Canada, US have been taking in immigration because of the demographic changes of an aging society living longer but with fewer young people entering the workforce due to decreased fertility. So immigration has been used as a way to maintain the tax base and skills in the workforce.

One half of me would be fine.

To be fair, the only genuine Australians are indigenous people. Who aren't treated the best.

The rest of the population are very much descended from immigrants.

My grandmother was an immigrant so I'm a quarter summat else.

I don’t see signs that white people from Eastern Europe are considered differently either. They are often blamed for keeping wages low because they will take physically difficult jobs that English people will not (eg fruit picking ) and simultaneously getting all the freebies.

The second you're second generation it all changes for us. I've literally pointed out my Polish ancestry to people ranting on about Polish people 'stealing jobs' and they ignore it. The same is not true for PoC whose family has been in the UK for much longer than mine.

The willingness to do really hard work for low pay didn't last a generation in my case

If they are asylum seeker's they aren't illegal until their claim has been assessed, denied and they have failed to leave.

Same with the USA!

There seems to be an emphasis on the fact that the people arriving and claiming asylum are being housed in hotels.

Do people imagine they are getting room service with all the bells and whistles at the taxpayers' expense?

No, in fact the immigration rules in place now would mean I'd never have been born.

They don't realise it's at least 2 bunk beds to an (otherwise bare) room.

I was including Welsh, Irish, and Scottish, hence British, not English, because I am assuming, despite the perpetrator being Welsh, Tommy Robinson and his crew are OK with the Welsh staying in the UK/England.

I get that they're thick and have probably not thought out their argument at all beyond repeating "I'm not racist but..." on social media every three minutes but surely, at least some of them, realise a lot them are less British/English than some of the people they are targeting.

There are no indigenous people of Britain and there haven't been for nearly a thousand years. I thoroughly enjoy being a mutt with Northern French, Irish, Scottish, Dutch and Greek heritage.

My mother, her siblings, her father and his siblings would have to leave on sight.

I thought ( incorrectly ) most white British people had a unique and humbled outlook based on our countries extensive history, being invaded time and time again to the point where the pain of that was dulled by such a vast amount of time and then our eventual role in dominating half the world when creating an Empire. The ironic cycle we followed and learning to make amends with the peoples within the commonwealth.

To me being British means to put things right where wrong has been done, whether that's by our hands or not.

However the rioting shows that great swaiths of our society are no better than white european desended Americans wanting to build a wall.

I'm disappointed in us, our educational system has really failed.

This isn't about where you were born, this is about the colour of your skin.

@Saschka

This is English racism. I don’t see any mobs in Scotland, Wales or NI shouting about wanting their country back or looting Greggs.

And they are very clear they mean “England” not “the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

There have already been riots and violence in Northern a Ireland.

BBC Scotland is reporting that there are acts been planned in Scotland.

Tommy Robinson has an event planned in a Glasgow next month.

Racism is just as prevalent in Scotland. It's just not spilled over into violence yet.

Scot's aren't special. We just think we are.

Did my ancestry and I was hoping to find something interesting, but terribly boring English people all the way back to 1600s/1700s. Not even a bit of Welsh or Scottish to add to the mix. But I don't think of myself as any more deserving to live in this country than any black/Asian whatever ethnicity coworkers and friends. This week's riots and similar previous protests of EDL et al. Just makes me embarrassed and ashamed. Frightening people and destroying property while using the Southport as some kind of excuse and then trying to burn down a hotel with people inside it, absolute madness
I also caught myself wondering what they would consider British enough to be allowed to stay if they got their way .
Noone is saying we shouldn't check the backgrounds of those arriving in the country. But there are many people displaced at the moment with issues around the world and there needs to be a better process around this. Throwing bricks at police and burning down towns isn't going to achieve anything except for creating more divides in communities and costing local authorities and businesses money to clean up their mess