So the sceptred isle is now really going to be overrun with foreigners: that has been Britains favourite horror story for some time, and everyone White returned to it with obvious relish last week. An anonymous demographer had concluded that less than half of everyone in Britain will be White in another century. And as if to help that, it was revealed that the Labour government will now relax immigration rules to let more foreigners in.
It has the feel of the fifties and sixties. Faced with a skills shortage, Britain imported labour freely from Commonwealth countries like India, Pakistan and the Caribbean. The racist backlash followed swiftly. Both Labour and Tory governments worked in turns to block all primary immigration by 1971. Labour today had just to talk about opening those doors a little to send England into hysteria. There isnt an issue like immigration that makes it so swiftly to the level of national debate.
Entry into Britain has been eased already. Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown relaxed immigration procedures for information technology pundits in this years Budget. Indians seem to have lost the least time moving to Britain to fill those gaps. The exodus from India to Britain was getting close to 10,000 a year before the rules for information technology workers were relaxed; now it is rising steadily and rapidly.
Close to 10,000 people from the Indian subcontinent arrived in Britain on the basis of work permits last year - a fourfold increase since 1990. Most of these were from India, and they are mainly in the information technology business. A rapidly increasing number of work permits have been issued by Britain over the past few years. The total number of people from the Indian subcontinent who arrived in Britain on work permits rose from 4,640 in 1996 to 6,100 in 1997 to 7,930 in 1998 - the year till which Home Office figures are available. That number is reported to have risen sharply over the last year. Relaxed rules this year, therefore, mean more and more people pouring into the isle.
"We see the change every day," says Reena Menon, an employment consultant who processes work applications from information technology professionals. "Finding work for IT people is good business." At least 30 Indian firms in London have made it their business to fit Indian IT professionals into Britains slots.
And slots there are many. A survey conducted by the venture capitalist group 3I revealed earlier this year that more than half of British businesses are suffering from a paucity of skilled employees. The problem is acute in south England where about two-thirds of businesses have complained of shortage of skills. And the south is where London is, and where the businesses are.
About half the businessmen surveyed said the education system was less than satisfactory, and thats at least half the reason that Britain is unable to meet its own needs. Few British lads go through school working and studying. More likely, they are smoking and drinking beer. When they cant do the job and someone else has to, they cry foul.
Jonathan Russel, director of transactions for 3I, says most businesses are offering more training and money to retain skills. Yet Britain is finding itself unable to meet market needs on the strength of a substantially unskilled work force.
British firms face competition from global companies like the Bangalore-based Infosys and find they cannot cope. Many Indian IT companies are planning to make London the hub of their new business in Europe. Infosys chief Narayanamurthy told Outlook: "There is now considerable emphasis in expanding the market in Europe, particularly in the UK." So far the concentration has been on the US market. Says he: "The new push will take place in Europe." Already, Indian companies are now showing a much higher growth rate in Europe, somewhere between 70 to 90 per cent.
That growth from Europe becomes an inevitable stepping stone to migration. Thus far the British have been cautious. The total of 7,930 work permits issued to people from the Indian subcontinent in 1998 included 2,150 for 12 months or more and 3,210 for less than 12 months. The remaining 2,580 arrived as dependants. But Britains gaps will need more than a short-term fill. Britain must see either immigrants come in or its economy slow down and collapse.
Already, the modalities for new immigration are being worked out. The debate has begun on following the Canadian point system for letting in immigrants. The Canadians award points under various categories: 10 for being aged 21 to 44, up to 16 for a post-graduate degree, up to 18 for certain skills, 10 for a job offer, 15 for fluency in English and a bonus five points for having relatives resident in Canada. If you can hit a total of 70, you can migrate to Canada. Currently, Canada is the favoured destination for Indian migrants. It needs Indian skills and labour in several professions.
So does Britain. It isnt just IT thats seeing the shortage. Britain is short of doctors, nurses, policemen, bus drivers, construction workers...the list goes on. Britain has been recruiting nurses already from South Africa and Eastern Europe, both conveniently White hunting grounds. The Home Office has proposed recruiting policemen from mainland Europe. The need grows; but acknowledging it is a scandal and meeting it a surrender.
British newspapers have been projecting panic-stricken demographic patterns. Britain, we are told, needs a reproduction rate of 2.1 to maintain present levels of population. But the figure is lower than needed at 1.7. And within this lies the known pattern: immigrants have many more children than native Whites who often do not marry or have children. If just the Whites continue to be the way they are, and immigrants reproduce the way they do, Whites will be a minority in Britain by the year 2100, and you can have a Patel as prime minister by simple majority. To that add a policy of now inviting immigrants who could come in substantial numbers from India, and it might all happen within this century.
Quite suddenly all of White Britain seems to be talking the language of the supposedly racist and right-wing British National Party (bnp). This party, which now claims to be "fighting anti-White racism", says that "White children are now a minority in Londons schools." And that "a foreign language is spoken as the main tongue in a third of London homes."
All this is true, and nearly a third of the population of London will be non-White within just a few years. The bnp calls this an "ethnic cleansing of London of its White British inhabitants and culture". The Conservative Party speaks a PC-processed version of the same language. Says Conservative Party shadow home secretary Anne Widdecombe: "We already have a work permit scheme which allows you to import labour where you cant get local skills. Im not against bringing in skills from outside, but what doesnt make good economic sense is to use that as a first resort, rather than trying to skill your own work force first. " That isnt working, but the Tories will nevertheless press ahead with strong opposition to new immigration at the annual party conference in October.
Immigration is set now to become the issue for the general election in 2002 if Blairs new Labour opens Britains doors to any more immigration. The British prime minister could have done more for the Conservative Party here than William Hague ever could have imagined to have done. The US President, Bill Clinton had said last year that "in a little more than 50 years, there will be no majority race in America". Which means simply that Whites will not be the majority race any more. Sooner than anyone thought, the world will be dealing with a new kind of America and a new kind of Britain.
