The danger with that argument

(Ie an argument that says “look at this great immigrant, immigrants are a bonus for Britain”)

is that it legitimises the flip side argument of “look at this s**t immigrant who’s raped a child/robbed a bank/running a drug gang”.

You can’t say that one is a proper argument FOR immigration without accepting that the other is an argument AGAINST immigration. Abd that’s dangerous.

It’s not sensible, in my view, to argue that immigration as a whole is good or bad by pointing at individual cases. Immigrants are just people: you’re going to get some great ones, some s**t ones, and a lot of ordinary ones. It’s necessary to consider the impact of immigration as a whole in order to assess policy, though I would concede that the bloc of immigrants can appropriately be broken down by unifying sub-factors as long as they’re macro enough eg ethnicity, age, sex, religion, education

Posted By: Old Git, Nov 4, 11:50:07