The immigration debate in the UK is one-sided. It is not really a debate because the opposition is muted. There is no counternarrative. The immigrant community is not engaged. It is now apparent that only an immigrant-based political party could properly articulate the immigrant case. The Irish, Scots, and Welsh long ago realised this, so they setup their own ethnic-based political parties. The Yoruba Party in the UK (YPUK) was launched in February 2024, to provide political voice for the UK Yoruba community, and to articulate their concerns. We are a party of immigrants and this is our considered contribution to the immigration debate.
The YPUK starting point is this: immigration is a necessity for modern nations. The UK officially imports immigrants to do jobs Britons do not want or cannot do. Immigrants come also without government invitation to do this work that Britons do not want or cannot do, in a hidden untaxed economy worth 11% of GDP. It makes economic sense therefore for the UK to develop a coherent immigration policy, but this is not possible because a shifting bed of falsehoods is at the core of government thinking.
The false narrative
30,000 immigrants came by boat to the UK last year, a number not enough to fill the Wembley Stadium in London, yet the Conservative, Labour and Reform parties say this small number of people pose existential threat to 69 million Britons. The Conservative, Labour and Reform parties tell Britons that their country is being invaded by hordes of immigrants, that immigrants are a much larger share of the population than they actually are. They tell the public that immigrants are so many as to threaten national identity and indigenous tradition. More crucially, they tell the public that immigrants are getting money from the government that they ought not be getting. The Conservative, Labour and Reform parties say that money going to immigrants starved public services like the NHS. This is simply not true.
The counternarrative
In their false narratives, the Conservative, Labour and Reform parties conceal from the public the fact that net spend by the UK government on immigration is almost zero. Last year, the government spent £4.7 billion on asylum support, largely driven by hotel costs, and £500 million on immigration enforcement. In that same period, the government collected from immigrants over £4.1 billion in various fees and charges. These include citizenship application fees, Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS), Immigration Skills Charge (ISC), and visas. An immigrant wanting to become a UK citizen would spend about £30,000 in cumulative fees. In addition to this direct source of income to the UK government, immigrants also contributed some £3.3 billion in taxes and in costs to access public services. In other words, money out equals money in. Politicians know that they would lose anti-immigration support if the public knew that immigration cost them almost nothing.
Effects of the false narrative
Unfortunately, the false narratives come at a cost. The vituperative anti-immigration rhetoric of Conservative, Labour and Reform politicians has had 2 negative effects on the public: namely, fear and hatred. We know it is fear by the expression of discomfort, and increase in hate speech. We know it is fear by the rise in crimes against immigrants. We know it is fear by the increase in support for anti-immigrant policies. We know it is fear by media and politicians linking immigrants to crimes and to all manner of society’s problems. We know it is fear by the focus on perceived negative impacts.
Hatred of immigrants also is a creature of the politicians. It is manufactured hatred. Most ordinary Britons who have had direct contact with immigrants have a much more positive view of immigrants, particularly when it came to work ethic. Conservative, Labour and Reform politicians use immigration as tool to conceal the inadequacies of their political parties. They use immigration purely to achieve electoral advantage.
The negative attitude toward, and treatment of, immigrants make Britain the loser, unable to exploit the emotional attachment that peoples of the ex-colonies still have for Britain; that is the ‘Windrush Factor’. Britain ought to be exploiting this emotional connection in economic partnerships in diverse projects in the ex-colonies. This would have the effect of improving the economic doldrums in which Britain has emersed itself for the last 5 or so decades. It is astonishingly inept of Britain that it heads 56 nations of the Commonwealth, with a combined population of 2.7 billion people, and yet Britain is not at the top of the wealth tree. Britain sits outside the political tent that it erected complaining and gesticulating whilst China is doing in Africa what Britain with its colonial advantage ought to be doing; that is, Build. Build, Build. History tells us that a poor Africa means a poor Britain.
Beneficiaries of the false narratives
Certainly not the public. Politicians: immigrants are the perfect foil to distract from economic incompetence, and to distract from politicians generally not knowing what to do to halt the rising cost of living. The British press: negative stories about immigrants sells newspapers. Social media platforms: abusing immigrants enhanced traffic to the likes of Facebook and Twitter or X. Racists: hatred is feel good factor for these psychologically damaged individuals ill-equipped to compete with immigrants. Government: fear of immigrant enables the government to curtail civil liberties for everyone. Protest groups are labelled terrorist and banned. Peaceful demonstrations and public marches are curtailed or restricted. Britons practically have to hang their ids around their necks outside of their homes.
YPUK to UK government
YPUK pleads for fairness and justice for immigrants.
Integrate immigrants into the work force as soon as practicable.
Move asylum seekers from ‘hotels’ into inexpensive ‘lodgings’ dispersed all over.
Make relatives guarantors and guardians of immigrants who have them.
Identify and register skills and qualifications of immigrants at the point of entry.
Generate economic activities in the Commonwealth to create a global economic power.
Reduce the anti-immigrant rhetoric and espouse a more positive one.
Abnegate coups, political violence and intimidation, genocide and pogroms, and wars.
Nullify racism whenever, wherever.
Treat immigrants as human beings in need, not as criminals to put in detention camps.
Concluding remarks
Migration is a fundamental human right. Asylum seeking is a fundamental human right. Human beings have always migrated. Human beings have always sought asylum.
Behind the UK immigration policy is the perception that as immigrants come from poor countries, they are economic migrants to be treated atrociously. The fact is, immigrants to the UK come mainly from UK’s ex-colonies, ironically impoverished by the UK itself. YPUK would remind Britons that Nigeria was not always a poor country. In 1900, the total value of trade between Britain and Nigeria was £3.5 million (more than £50 billion in today’s money). By 1913, the value of trade had more than trebled, by 1918, it had reached £17 million (more than £250 billion in today’s money). Trade with America in 1917 was £1.8 million (£2.7 billion in today’s money).
Nigeria’s trade with the British Empire was more than 60% of the total in 1913 and had reached more than 80% of the total by 1917. In other words, the value of British trade with Nigeria in those days was second to none. Nigeria contributed £6 million to Britain’s effort to pay off the Imperial War Debt; the interest and sinking fund on this money reached £13 million (about £195 billion in today’s money) spread over 36 years, meaning that Nigerians were still secretly paying for WWI on behalf of the UK perhaps beyond the 1950s.
Now you know!
Baasegun (Dr) Olusola Oni
Leader, Yoruba Party in the UK. (YPUK)