The 13%

[enthusiasmcurbed]

Apparently we are losing our identity to immigrants. It's the massive figure of 13%. Now, the biggest bugbear I have with this is that my Mum came from South Africa in 1949. Just when the Afrikaans came into power and decided my Mum and her family where the wrong colour. Thank God Britain gave my family a home. God knows where I would have ended up without the UK. ( I heard this crap from my North east born, never been anywhere else £100,000 per year manager).

How does the current wave of immigration compare to the 1950s when we needed people from the commonwealth to work in the cotton mills in Lancashire and run London Transport LazyLohan?

My German born half Jewish mother was more British than many Brits are today. She was a staunch royalist as well.

Actually I think targeted migration which addresses a need is a good thing. I think migration at the levels we saw in the 50s and 60s was probably positive for everybody.

To go back to find a similar level of migration you have to go back more than 1000 years and it didn't normally end well for the people living in Britain at the time.

See also, Rome and the Goths.

Part of my family came to the UK as a result of fleeing anti-Jewish pogroms. But that actually makes me worry more about the abuse of the asylum system and I currently think it's very ineffective as it fails to help those who are at the greatest risk and has become a tool for economic migration. That link needs breaking and the system needs to go back to helping those at the greatest risk. To be honest I doubt my family would have made it here if the same circumstances had applied then. I think it's far more likely a mob would have looted them then used what they stole to make their own way to the west so that they could claim asylum because of unrest in their country.

Well, I know a fair bit about Islam having lived in an Islamic country for a while, but I'd be happy to do some "proper research" on the threats currently posed by Islam if you could point me to some peer-reviewed academic research on the subject, published in reputable academic journals. No other sources, please.

Why on earth would you need someone to do that? Have you never heard of the Ottoman Empire and the invasions, oppression and human rights abuses involved? The conquering expansion of the Abbasid Caliphate? The invasion of Persia and the Safavid Empire and the choice they gave of conversion, exile or death?

But hey, I guess if you will only explore any knowledge of it's presented to you by other people via academic journals then you wouldn't know much at all would you? You'd just limit yourself to knowledge which confirmed what you already thought....

I suppose you're one of these people who thinks that only Europeans have ever had oppressive empires right?

Don't think there's any more room left tbh
I think we have accommodated a lot of people who were in need of help which was right but some areas are saturated. Public services are struggling. Transport a nightmare and areas I am no longer welcome- which is the bit that irritates me more than anything. I think we should help people but we can't help anymore - when will it stop?
I live in an area very much affected

I also had a relationship with a British born Muslim man- you can guess how it ended I'm sure. His family were of the opinion that there was to be no integration. Cliche?

Lazy, I am familiar with many aspects of Islamic history, but if you read my post carefully, you will see that I was asking for links to research on the threats currently posed by Islam. And yes, if I am going to do "proper research", I prefer reputable academic sources over right-wing propaganda. I make no apology for that.

How would you approach research on this subject?

HermiOne, you sound like an extremely disturbed individual. How sad for you.

Looking at the ONS data yesterday I was surprised to see that the figure for Brighton is 16% rather than 13% - the same as some outer London boroughs or Wolverhampton for instance. I think it was about 5% in the 2004 census.

That does seems like quite a big change on the face of it and you do see more Polish and Turkish convenience stores, more Spanish tapas restaurants, a few women wearing burkhas and men in traditional Islamic dress, and other people around who look/sound as though they might be from eastern or southern Europe, the ME, sub-Saharan Africa, China etc etc - although I imagine many of the people of chinese appearance are actually tourists/ language students and there have been established communities from Sudan and asylum seekers from Iraq and Afganistan for example living on the south coast for a long time.

I realise that Brighton has long been more diverse in other ways with its gay and trans community, has differed demographically and in socio-economic terms from nearby coastal towns and other parts of the SE

it's a real life example of a major change over a fairly short period of time which doesn't fit the narrative of 'swamping', loss of local culture
/identity /'Islamicisation' being promoted by some PP here.

why dont you do some proper research on islam and its history of invading free societies

Well.....according to the education i received in the UK i was under the impression that the British Empire was built upon the invasion of 'free societies' by 'Christians'..........America and Australia were also invaded by 'Christians', the land stolen from the indigenous who were then marginalized to the fringes of society and treated abhorrently.

Kampeki what exactly do you think academic journals are? Some kind of oracle of the future? Can you please tell me what events in the recent past have been accurately foretold by a consensus of academic opinion? Also if you think that academia is entirely impartial I suggest you look into why and by whom academic studies are funded. You might also like to consider that in this country Universities in this country are one of the main beneficiaries of immigration. Which doesn't exactly make for an environment which is conducive for criticism. It would be like presenting the board of UBS Warburg with a tract telling them they should embrace anti-capitalism.

You're also mislead if you think that type of paper could be peer reviewed for accuracy in the way a scientific one could be. Because they are by their nature largely subjective.

SugarOnTop, if you think the West has the monopoly in dodgy imperial pasts you are very much wrong. And the assumption that our Empire was an entirely malevolent force an outdated notion which went out with Marxist historians.

Plus if you want to look into some of the worst excesses of the British Empire such as African slavery you will find that this was a pre-existing system which was begun by Muslims which we simply tapped into.

Also I think you'll find that in the case of Australia and America it wasn't so much an invasion as large scale immigration of Europeans who then went about imposing their culture on the existing one. Which in many ways feels familiar.

Britain needs immigrants as its indigenous population is too low and too ill educated to do the jobs that are needed.

Immigrants come here to work as they can make enough here to live decently and send money home to their dirt poor families.

Indigenous Brits claim benefits at 6 times the rate of immigrants

Countries that close their borders to immigrants have faced 20 years of stagnation and recession with no end in sight Japan by the way

If you do not want immigration, take the jobs they do :

• picking veg in 8 our shifts in the pouring rain

is a job that immigrants have done for 80 years because Brits do not want to.

Be thankful that immigrants pay taxes to support Brits.

So lazy, how would you approach research on this topic? What sources of information would you consider to be suitable for the purposes of assessing the threat?

Hey Lazy - if you think the West has the monopoly in dodgy imperial pasts you are very much wrong

where did i say that the West has a monopoly on dodgy imperial pasts?
where did i say that was my thinking?

i simply pointed out your selective memory with regards to history and the facts.

as for the assumption that our Empire was an entirely malevolent force an outdated notion which went out with Marxist historians
is simply not true. There were plenty of people back then AND now who regard Western occupation and control of their lands as a 'malevolent force'. THAT is what has always played a big part in breeding terrorism.

slavery.....was a pre-existing system which was begun by Muslims which we simply tapped into
Oh - so that makes it ok then How very christian of them, take advantage of vulnerable people and at the same time employ double standards via preaching christian values/morals and forced conversions to Christianity. Hypocrites can't take the moral high ground no matter how much they protest.

As for slavery itself - it was NOT begun by muslims...and i don't need a degree in history to work that one out. A quicke google search tells me that the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BC) is one of the earliest records of slavery which refers to it as an established institution. The Babylonians who invented this Code were not muslims.

Here's a bit more info for you - follow the link if you wish to expand your knowledge:

"It's thought that as many people were enslaved in the Eastern slave trade as in the Atlantic slave trade"
"It's ironic that when the Atlantic slave trade was abolished the Eastern trade expanded"
"Slavery was common in pre-Islamic times and accepted by many ancient legal systems and it continued under Islam"
"It's misleading to use phrases such as 'Islamic slavery' and 'Muslim slave trade' since the Atlantic slave trade is not called the Christian slave trade, even though most of those responsible for it were Christians"

www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/slavery_1.shtml

Thank god people like you can do fuck all to stop immigration.

Britain needs immigrants as its indigenous population is too low and too ill educated to do the jobs that are needed.

Have you considered, Talk that immigrants such as yourself saying that type of thing might push an on-the-fence observer into the arms of UKIP?

(Besides, the obvious answer to an insufficiently or inappropriately educated populace is to provide better education, so I'm not sure it's the best argument to deploy)

I have to say I think it's so ironic that people moan about unemployment in the UK as work is available there are just a culture that means people don't think they should have to migrate to find work and not do work they don't want to, not live away from their families, not do anything they are over qualified for...

The 'Europeans' you refer to in regards to America and Australia were CHRISTIANS who were supported and supplied all the ammunition needed by their white, christian (Catholic and Protestant) governments to overthrow the indigenous and establish their own christian colonies.

i don't see islam or muslims having behaved that way in Britain.

Stop regurgitating the Britain First rubbish.

Now you've tipped over into an narrative of utter bollocks Random

Why do low paid Brits always have to be slated (sooner or later) on any pro-immigration thread?

I must be very disturbed too, like Hermione, but I am very worried.

Apparently we are losing our identity to immigrants In the case of some identities, jingoistic, ignorant, britain first nonesense that might be a good thing

Arsenic
Why do low paid Brits always have to be slated (sooner or later) on any pro-immigration thread?
Simple
They slag us off because of where we were born.
We slag them off because they are lazy good for nothings who scrounge benefits

I've lived here for over 45 years, I know of what I speak

What would really really help understanding is more (and detailed) individual accounts of migrants' lives.

I wonder if there are any charities doing oral history work with this wave of refugees.

Nice Talk; Helpful; Persuasive; Conciliatory

I grew up near many small towns with no work (thanks Thatcher), no prospects, few with aspirations. Yet people don't leave to find work - they don't migrate, they remain there living on benefits. It's been like that for several generations. It's incredibly sad but they don't want to risk moving away and doing whatever work they can find to better themselves. It's a micro-cultural rut but it exists.

My MIL is both a migrant and a pensioner benefit claimant. Poor cow must get it both ways!

Oh no wait, she doesnt. Because she doesnt meet pricks.