The controversial British plan to deport some illegal immigrants to Rwanda has run into a bit of rough weather, with opponents physically stopping the eviction in some cases and others clamouring for even stricter measures.
“Immigrants are people who have given up their family’s safety net, to risk everything by leaving for another country with different customs and culture,” says journalist and author Tom Arms. “They are entrepreneurs, people willing to take risks, and are an important part of any society,” says Arms, who migrated to the UK from the US 55 years ago, albeit “not from Africa, but from a country club in Virginia, US”.
But there are a lot of migrants, and the conservative party led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been saying for years that they are going to reduce the number of immigrants coming to this country, he says.”At one point they said they would bring down to under 10,000, but last year, there were 700,000…so obviously they have failed.”
Of course, many of these are legal migrants, “but in the case of those being sent to Rwanda, they are illegal migrants, people who climbed into small boats from the coast of France and risked their lives crossing the channel to seek asylum in the UK.”
“A number of them are economic migrants, and there are roughly about 50,000 of them each year. But that’s 50,000 out of 700,000, but they are the most visible ones.” Which makes the most political migrants, and they have become the focal point for the immigrant debate here in the UK, he says.
Those who argue that we are an island country and pretty soon we won’t even have standing room are very socially conservative. They believe in a homogenous Britain. They feel that culture is under threat. It’s not just the jobs, not just taking up queuing space in the national health service and emergency rooms, (for them) it is basically people coming from a different culture, “and don’t understand us, they speak a foreign language, and they are not British or White” says Arms.
On the other side are the people who tend to call themselves Liberal, who encourage multi-culturalism, they like the idea of having a mix of cultures in the country. They like going to “curry houses”, and enjoy meeting people from different societies, cultures and countries.
Then there’s the question of jobs. “Immigrants, generally speaking tend to take up the most poorly paid jobs in any community. They are new to the country. they can’t pick and choose the way other people can. They are generally bus drivers, construction workers, trying to get their family’s foot on the ladder. But their children are different, and their grandchildren work very hard, go to universities and end up becoming doctors and lawyers,” says Arms.
From an estimated 15 million displaced people worldwide due to wars and famines and other reasons, the number rose to 86 million in 2023, and that was before the war in Gaza and the Sudan. “So it’s probably over 90 million now,” he says.
Resentment against migrants is growing across the entire northern hemisphere, he argues. It is one of the reasons for the rise of the right wing in Europe and America.
But what happens to the migrants who might actually get sent Rwanda? Is there an element of racism and even an anti-Muslim sentiment in this rising resentment against migrants? Are there no go zones in the UK which practice Sharia laws, which fuel this resentment against migrants? Why do these refugees prefer western nations to Arab or west Asian countries? Is there a screening process for refugees being considered?
To find out the answers to these questions, watch the full interview.
