Islam versus Europe

The Independent today contains a series of vignettes of immigrants who are supposedly making a positive contribution to Britain. The introduction of the article makes the following ridiculous claim:

But the stories also hint at the economic and cultural benefits immigration has brought. Immigrants contribute £6bn to the UK economy, according to Treasury figures.

The idea that immigration has contributed only £6 billion to the British economy is almost mind-boggling in its sheer foolishness. It shows clearly how intellectually meagre the pro-immigration arguments are. £6 billion is equivalent to about 0.25 per cent of British GDP in one year. Would it really have been worth allowing all of these savages to come to our country, take over our cities, set crime levels sky-rocketing, introduce a terrorist threat and destroy the natural cohesion of our nation for the laughable sum of £6 billion? We give more than that away in foreign aid in one year.

Of course, the journalist is simply clueless. Migrants must have contributed far more than that to the British economy. Most likely this figure was lifted from the article published in the Guardian yesterday by the risible Medhi Hasan.

A government study in 2007 estimated that migrants contributed about £6bn to output growth the previous year. That's equivalent to a 1.5% cut in the basic rate of income tax. Can we talk about this?

Let's think about this. The Independent journalist has failed to grasp the simple fact that the figure Hasan quoted refers to one year only and has instead interpreted it as the total contribution migrants have made to the British economy. But let's consider Hasan's claim, now. In recent years Britain has been experiencing immigration of around 500,000 - 600,000 thousand per year. Let's say 600,000 to simplify the calculation. If all those people did was raise GDP by £6 billion, it would mean they were earning on average £10,000 each year. This is well below the average wage in Britain, meaning they were actually reducing our per capita GDP just by being here. MigrationWatch has calculated that migrants must earn £27K per year before they become net contributors. Those earning 10K per year are accessing a range of government services and benefits their tax contributions don't pay for. So Hasan's argument, intended to demonstrate how immigration is enriching us, in fact does the opposite.

The Guardian offered another mind-bogglingly clueless response to Cameron's speech from the immigrant Zrinka Bralo. The line this time was that immigration was inevitable, like rain: just something we have to put up with:

As long as we think that immigrants can somehow be stopped before they reach our shores, we will be stuck in this circular debate of numbers, controls and blame.

...

A true debate will be possible when we all accept that immigration is an inescapable global phenomenon.

In an editorial, the Independent even contrived to blame the British victims of Muslim ethnic cleansing:

Mr Cameron failed to mention that, just as some migrant communities have failed to integrate, so have some host communities. The "white flight" seen in places such as Bradford and East London has been well documented. If separatism from ethnic minorities is deplorable, so too surely is its counterpart. The Prime Minister gave the unfortunate impression that he regards integration as a one-way street.

I have heard so many accounts of Europeans being subjected to campaigns of harassment from Muslim colonist populations, campaigns which almost invariably end up by forcing them out of the area, that it would seem that Muslims pursue this collectively as a deliberate tactic. The Belgian Green Party MP, Luckas Vander Taelen, even wrote about the harassment he and other Europeans had experienced in a Mohammedan-dominated area of Brussels. He had initially been a multi-cult believer; unlike most of them, however, he actually lived in an area the immigrants came to. The experience forced him to change his views. He described how women were regularly insulted as "whores" and "sluts"; how Europeans would hurry to do their shopping in the mornings because no one would dare go out after 2pm; how little children would spit at him on the street and tell him to piss off.

Yet when Europeans eventually flee the Muslim-colonised areas, the Utopians blame the victims and rationalise it as racism.

Overall, the response of the left press to Cameron's speech clearly illustrates the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the proponents of mass immigration. These people like to present themselves as a moral and intellectual elite holding back the seething mass of dumb, uninformed plebs. In reality, though, it is they who are uninformed. Their arguments evaporate upon the slightest scrutiny. Yet still it is their hands on the tiller, steering our countries towards destruction.