4.4.5.3   The Impact of Immigration on Society

(This is an archived page, from the Patterns of Power Edition 3 book.  Current versions are at book contents).

People have moral and social concerns about immigrants: they have different values and they change the character of the areas they live in.  Asylum-seekers ‘don’t look like us’, which seems to be sufficient reason for some people to feel antagonism towards them.  For example, a much-quoted editorial in the Manchester Evening Chronicle in 1905 wrote:

“that the dirty, destitute, diseased, verminous and criminal foreigner who dumps himself on our soil … shall be forbidden to land”.[1]

This attitude was relatively new to Britain, having been triggered by the arrival of 100,000 Jewish refugees from Russia in the last decade of the 19th century.  The British had been proud of their tolerance up until this point, but the scale of the influx caused disquiet which was then exploited to develop into xenophobia.[2]  As described in the previous sub-section (4.4.5.2), leaders can foment hostility towards minority groups if they want to.

Unfamiliarity cannot be a valid justification for hostility towards another person.  Undeniably, though, people are disturbed by changes in their neighbourhoods and are suspicious of people who might behave differently; some might see immigration as a threat to their existing culture, as a form of dilution or unwanted change.[3]   They don’t need to lose their existing culture, though, just because they see other cultures in their midst.

Immigrants are more likely to be peacefully accepted if moral leaders from the host community and the immigrants themselves take the appropriate measures, as described later (4.4.7.4).