Damn, this thread is not to the usual OcUK GD standards (as bad as said standards are).
Dear god it hurts to read this thread. Personal offense ahoy.
Now lets do The British thing which all proud British people with British heritage and British honour do. Blame the immigrants. *Picard facepalm*
Most English families are in fact foreigners if you look back far enough. Either from Nordish lands, Indian descent (1960s especially) or a mixture of European or Celtic. We've been invaded more times than the Middle East.
There are very few true, dare I say "pureblood" English. Why would we stop the immigration process considering our history of adopting foreign culture into our own? Plus we're a very diverse country in terms of population, I don't understand how people can see that as a bad thing.
Alternatively can we agree to disagree and leaving it there. Damn, this thread is not to the usual OcUK GD standards (as bad as said standards are).
Sorry, but you are you really saying that because we've been invaded before in the past we shouldn't mind if we're being invaded again?
Immigration was a lot higher during the 60s from India. Also a time when people thought we were being invaded. It was to our benefit then and it is again today.
It doesn't sound like many people in this thread actually know what an asylum seeker is entitled to in the UK.
The difference being those people were invited and encouraged at the time by government for a specific reason, to fulfil a skills shortage in the UK.
Supporting UKIP makes you a racist?
People think it's worth the risk dying to get to the UK, countless have drowned in the Med crossing to Europe, Italy doesn't do anything because they know they just pass through and end up in Calais to try to get into the UK.
Actually, they were actively discouraged and prevented from settling in UK. The "we are full", "too many of them coming" and "it doesn't look like our town anymore" rhetoric was omnipresent throughout 50ies, 60ies and 70ies and forces behind it were much more powerful politically. 1960ies Nigel Farage was called Enoch Powell (although that's unfair to Enoch, there is an intellectual abyss between the two individuals) and his rhetoric attracted vote of almost identical electorate spectrum to that enjoyed at present by UKIP.
There are fantastic digitised reportages and documentaries available on youtube showing people interviewed about immigration issues of the time and it's uncanny how little changed in catch phrase driven vocabulary of the "send them back" proponents over 40 or 50 years.
The major examples of official government recruitment schemes were firstly a group of 1,200 British Hondurians who were recruited to fell timber in Scotland. Secondly, about 1,000 West Indian technicians and trainees who were recruited for service in munitions factories in Merseyside and Lancashire. Mr Learie Constantine, later Lord Constantine, was employed by the Minister of Labour as welfare officer to look after this group of men during their war service. Thirdly, 10,000 West Indians were recruited for service in the Royal Air Force to work in Britain as ground crews. Finally, thousands of colonial seamen were either recruited or voluntarily enlisted in the Merchant Navy. Some of these were based at British ports.
http://www.historytoday.com/zig-henry/new-commonwealth-migrants-1945-62