immigration
the left and anti-immigrant movements
Submitted by antarchi on October 22, 2010 - 22:29I think there is a failure in this standard, liberal, multicultural vision, which means every ethnic group, whatever, to itself, all we need is a neutral legal framework guaranteeing the coexistence of groups. Sorry if I shock someone, but I think we do need what Germans call Leitkultur, leading culture. Just it shouldn’t be nationally defined. We should fight for that. Yes, I agree with right-wingers. We need a set of values accepted by all. But what will these values be, my god? We neglected this a little bit. You know that it’s not just this abstract liberal model: you have your world, I have my world, we just need a neutral legal network—how we will politely ignore each other.
My second point would have been that it’s absolutely crucial how this anti-immigrant explosion is linked to the withdrawal of leftist politics, especially in the matters of economy and so on. It is as if the left, being obsessed by the idea that we shouldn’t appear as reactionary in the economic sense, that is to say that "No, no, no, we are not the old trade union representatives of the working class, we are for postmodern digital capitalism" and so on. They don’t want to touch the working class or so-called lower ordinary people. And here right-wingers enter. Do you know, the horrible paradox is that, apart from some small leftist fringe parties, the only serious political force in Europe today which still is ready to appeal to the ordinary working people are the right-wing anti-immigrants? So you see, we, the leftists, we have no right, absolutely no right, to take this arrogant view of offended tolerant people who are horrored—no, we should ask the question, how we enabled what is going on.
IRAQI REFUGEES
Submitted by antarchi on October 30, 2007 - 01:41Under international refugee law, a collective responsibility to share the burden of a refugee crisis is held by all states in the wider international community. Such an obligation attaches directly to states party to the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention). As clearly stated in the Convention's preamble, "the grant of asylum may place unduly heavy burdens on certain countries, and that a satisfactory solution of a problem of which the United Nations has recognized the international scope and nature cannot therefore be achieved without international co-operation".
From Millions in flight: the Iraqi refugee crisis (Amnesty International, Sept. 2007)
757 Zambian nurses
Submitted by antarchi on October 13, 2007 - 01:28The UK still relies on health workers from poor countries: As issues of immigration refuse to leave the mainstream political debate, the reality appears to be that many of our vital public services could not function without the arrival of skilled professionals from overseas. In the last five years alone, the UK has imported 289 trained nurses from Malawi, 364 from Botswana and 757 from Zambia. South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho and Zimbabwe also send nurses trained in the health systems of Africa to work in the NHS. The popular myth of the UK being a soft-touch for health tourists, masks a reality in which we are being tended in our sick beds by nurses that many poor countries can ill afford to lose.
‘China-dependence' going up for life in UK October 2007
