The British prime minister’s self-flagellating approach to immigration is as morally unjust as it is counterproductive.
The British prime minister’s self-flagellating approach to immigration is as morally unjust as it is counterproductive.
A s immigration continues to top the list of British voters’ concerns, Prime Minister Andy Burnham now believes he has found the magic pill: forcing relatively well-off, homogeneous parts of the country to accept a higher share of new arrivals. Far from solving the problem, this plan will only spread misery around.
Stating that everyone needs to “play their part,” Burnham announced that newly arrived migrants will increasingly be placed in wealthy, homogeneous areas — leafy suburbs in southern England as of yet untouched by multiculturalism. The southeast village of Piddington, with a population of 400, is set to receive upwards of 1,250 asylum seekers, immediately turning the village into a majority-minority area. In response, villagers are planning a symbolic referendum on leaving Britain and joining the United States.
To Burnham, Britain’s migration problem is that immigrants are too heavily concentrated in a small number of towns and areas, such as Tower Hamlets in London. There is some truth to this: A smaller volume of migrants, combined with a better initial distribution, may have reduced the risk of insular, self-segregating communities forming in the first place. Without those, the organized crime networks — including the infamous rape gangs — also may not have formed and would not have had communities to shelter them.
Now, however, it is much too late.
Britain is already struggling with “white flight.” From 2001 to 2021, the number of white Britons living in London dropped by over 1 million even as the city kept growing. Britain’s second largest city of Birmingham has seen a drop of 150,000, again against the backdrop of an overall growing population.
Perhaps this move is intended to “punish” those who left for greener, still-British pastures. If so, it won’t work. Rather, with no safe place left to turn to in their own country, more Brits will simply choose to emigrate. Already, millionaires are increasingly voting with their feet, with the number of British millionaires now being lower than at any point since 2008. Others may soon follow.
Making matters worse, this change in policy is likely to act as a pull factor for would-be immigrants: The prospect of receiving housing in a leafy suburb in Essex or Oxfordshire will for sure be more attractive than the prospect of being housed in a dorm with other asylum seekers in Tower Hamlets or Bradford. As much as Burnham insists he would like to reduce the number of asylum seekers, courts are blocking even modest measures toward that aim, while human smugglers show signs of adapting to enforcement. To further incentivize immigration without first having secured the borders is abject madness.
Sadly, this approach fits very well with the core idea of Andy Burnham’s ideology, which I have dubbed “geographic Marxism” — the idea that wealthy regions of Britain are wealthy at the expense of the poor. To hear Burnham tell it, the London government’s inability over several decades to consider the well-being of non-capital residents would make the Panem President Coriolanus Snow of the Hunger Games blush.
This “geographic Marxism” also informs his approach to immigration: The problem is not that Britain as a whole has welcomed too many migrants, but that some areas — like the village of Piddington — have welcomed too few, selfishly enjoying homogeneity at the expense of areas like Tower Hamlets.
To hear supporters tell it, policies like these are necessary to encourage assimilation into British society. For the existing population in majority-minority enclaves, it’s unlikely that the distribution of new arrivals will make much of a difference. Families in these areas with newly arrived relatives placed in leafy suburbs or rural towns will still be able to keep in touch using social media and any number of messaging apps. Social media can also be used to “check up” on geographically distant family members to ensure they are still obeying the norms of their home countries, effectively enforcing self-segregation. It bears repeating: The internet has broken assimilation.
As for the criminal networks, they, too, no longer depend on geographical proximity: Gangs today rely on social media to advertise and recruit youngsters. In one case, a gang leader in Chile ran a Telegram messaging group where Swedish teenagers as young as 13 were hired to carry out crimes, including murder, in Sweden and Denmark. To suggest that criminals would be unable to reach and recruit among newly arrived immigrants if they were housed in another part of the country is nothing but wishful thinking. It is far more likely that policies like these will enable networks to operate in parts of Britain that have so far been spared.
Crucially, Burnham continues Labour’s long-standing habit of holding Britain and the British majority responsible for the assimilation of immigrants. The failure of migrants to assimilate is blamed on the majority population, and policy revolves around what more the majority ought to do and ought to offer to the minority to encourage the latter not to take part in crimes: “A free apartment in Tower Hamlets wasn’t good enough? You still don’t feel like you want to be British? Okay, then how about a nice cottage in Oxfordshire?”
This self-flagellating approach to immigration is as morally unjust as it is counterproductive, indirectly teaching immigrants to blame the British for their troubles, rather than be grateful for the opportunities and welfare offered to them by a foreign country.
In the end, geographic redistribution will not fix Britain’s immigration woes; it will simply export them, while accelerating the flight of the country’s best and brightest. Misery loves company, and Burnham appears ever more determined to ensure all of Britain receives its fair share.