The quintessential British accent is admirable. It makes the American brand sound non-British. The English deserve a natural claim to the most utilitarian language appropriately called English. Even the cockney accent, with its stereotypical British rendition of ‘isn’t it’ as ‘innit’ and mate as ‘mai,’ sometimes sounds beautiful. But, beneath the lovely accent and deep down in the cupa (cup of tea) is also the quintessential British hypocrisy. The average Briton is uncomfortable around anybody who doesn’t look and speak like them. Yet, they are not altogether dismissive of the gains from immigration, especially where immigrant care services benefit their elderly, a survey has shown.
A recent transatlantic trends poll on immigration in the USA, France, Canada, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, found that 59% of Britons believed that there are too many immigrants in Britain. In the other countries, 10% or less thought immigrants were a problem. 7 out of 10 people in Britain think their government is not doing enough to control immigration. A quarter of British people also want immigrants banned from accessing the NHS and state schools. The ratio ranged between 1% and 5% in the other countries. “The British are also the most likely to say that immigrants took jobs from native-born workers”, according to the survey commissioned by the German Marshall Fund (GMF), a US based organisation.
I am passionate about the British people and I love their monarchy. Shapely Martine McCutcheon remains my favourite actress. And for obvious reasons, Andrew Marr is an inspiration. For six years, Britain was home, where I also had some education and worked. I didn’t see or feel any serious discrimination. In fact, where we took liberties as student-immigrants, Britain didn’t bite. It barked in only a few instances just to show that there were laws that governed our actions and inactions as members of a decent society. The only time I felt some racism was when a white British colleague worker called me a f…ing black rat. Folks urged me to go to the police and start a process that could earn me some good money. Other immigrants had made money through some lump-sum payments from racial discrimination cases. And they had not been called rats. One had only been casually referred to as “one of those people,” and he was silently compensated. I had become part of Britain and loved everybody. Nearly all my heroes are British. I sing God Bless the Queen. How do I contest my neighbour in a court of law over a rat?
Besides, going to court to prove or disprove that I looked like a rat, could produce some uncomfortable results. Of course, nobody would expect to find that the prosecution would actually be able establish that I indeed looked like a rat, but these were the times that teenage British boys were ruling the country with knives, knifing people and recording the scenes on their mobile phones for their viewing pleasure. Even if I won the case, I would be reduced to a rat or even a worse rodent immediately I made my way out of the court room. I had penned an article shortly before the rat incident about the fingerprinting of international students in Britain, in which I lamented why already hard-pressed students had to leave a bit of their humanity on computer screens like terrorists whenever they had to renew their visas to study in British universities. The practice had continued. Today, the student immigrant in Britain may not be called a rat like me, but he lives in a rat hole of restrictions and fear of authorities who are making education too expensive.
Still, Britain was home, and a good home, too. The then Gordon-Brown economic management had made it possible for immigrants to express their economic might by working the hours to build good mansions in their home countries. Some very hard-working ones had been able to marry and divorce for the second time, after building mansions for their ex-mothers in-law. They had even been generous enough to allow their exes to keep the properties because the immigration situation, as threatening as it was, was always promising enough to, at least, give immigrants a decent livelihood and some savings. A lot more had been able to pay their way through chains of degrees and other professional qualifications. A typical successful student immigrant at the time left Britain with at least an MBA, membership of a professional body, particularly the ACCA (lots of simpletons were ‘chattering’ in alarming numbers), a car, a house already completed for habitation, and two children. And this was after some six years, and in some cases, even four. Usually the wives went ahead and the husbands followed or they both shook the cold dust off their feet at the same time and bid Britain adieu, never to return.
You don’t live among people who are anxious of strangers and make away with what the nationals themselves cannot sometimes afford. So, I was surprised at the results of the survey. But while I am surprised, the British immigration minister, Damian Green, is reported by the BBC as saying he is not surprised at all that Britons are the most unfriendly people towards immigrants among all the G8 countries. That means I may well have been a rat in Britain and I didn’t know. I feel betrayed somewhat. I had carried on in hope while in Britain, satisfied in the truism that a stumble sometimes prevented a fall, so there was the need to make concessions and suck things in when you lived in somebody else’s country. I had also been wise enough to have learnt to travel hopefully, than to arrive. Immigrants, I had always preached, should always learn to fit in and stop complaining of discrimination, when they haven’t sorted out simple tribal clashes in their home countries. The multicultural experience alone was priceless, I would write.
Well, today, I am tempted to put a price on it. With Charlotte Larbi still fresh on our minds, it makes a lot of sense to ask why the people of Britain are happy to have immigrant doctors, nurses and care professionals work to keep them healthy, and at the same time, do not want their kids to access the NHS and their state schools? Why do Britons hate to see immigrants in employment when they (immigrants) do the jobs they don’t want to do? Like Charlotte, some students served jail terms, and where they were lucky, quickly deported when they were found working shifts their colleagues had rejected. Even though it was generally a free country where some illegal immigrants held large baby outdoorings in 4-Star hotels, a lot more lived in total fear and economic deprivation. They were, ironically, often those who were caught at the right place (work) at the wrong time. So, many immigrants only pretend to make Britain home. They live in constant hope to ‘resourcefully’ escape from a free country where it is possible to feel accepted and prosper. But, while North-American immigrants look forward to a Great Dream (these days a nightmare), British immigrants boast of a Dream Escape, because they have long overstayed their welcome. Could Jane have been a lovely pretence, too?
Kwesi Tawiah-Benjamin is a journalist. He lives in Ottawa, Canada.
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