Opinion : Is ‘a hostile environment’ the little brother of ‘ethnic cleansing’?

Ivor | April 21, 2018

No doubt everyone is aware of the ‘Windrush scandal’ that has featured in the national news recently.

What a disgrace.

Thousands of honest, decent and law abiding people and their children who were invited to come to the UK during a time of mass immigration to help rebuild the country after the Second World War have ended up being treated as alien dirt and had their lives ruined.

If such a thing was to happen in another country the UK Government would be the first to speak up, criticise and demand action. However it seems this time it’s actually the powers that be in this country who have created the situation.

It seems the shameful ‘Windrush scandal’ crisis was brought about by a ‘‘hostile environment’ immigration policy‘ implemented by our own government.

The sad truth is that problems with current immigration policy go far beyond this weeks events related to the Windrush Generation, indeed in general families are being broken up while delays in processing documents are being branded as ‘inhumane’.

Even as far back as 2015 news articles were being reported in the national media with headlines such as ‘Immigration rule ‘has split 15,000 children from a parent’‘.

As we have seen this week with the Windrush scandal, the current immigration rules are catching out honest, decent and law abiding people who would do good for our country.

So how does the world view the UK now? Well just the other day the Washington Post in America ran a news item entitled ‘The Windrush scandal shows that Britain has never fully accepted black people‘. Is this how our country needs to regarded as we venture alone into the post Brexit world?

As one person said to me recently: ‘There’s no need for ordinary people to be racist towards foreigners as the government is doing it for us!‘.

It has been said that stopping the free movement of people from the EU to the UK was a key driver in the outcome of the 2016 European Union referendum result.

Indeed news agencies have reported a ‘Record fall in net migration to UK in year after Brexit vote‘. Of course Brexit itself is all about nationalism and separating our country from other nations while becoming insular.

Speaking personally my good self finds the direction our country is taking in immigration very worrying.

Think back to what happen in the Yugoslav Wars of the early 1990’s. That too involved a hatred of other races and resulted in the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ being coined. Maybe the Yugoslav war criminals, when tried at The Hague, should have ‘offered compensation‘ to their victims? It seems to be an acceptable form of recompense in this country….

Here in the UK we may not have full ‘ethnic cleaning’ yet but do we have its little brother namely ‘a hostile environment’?

Listening to the representatives of the powers that be speaking about immigration on TV and radio yours truly often wonders if they have a leather overcoat tucked away at the back their wardrobe or if perhaps Leni Riefenstahl is directing the broadcast?

No doubt there are sadly many who agree with the ‘hostile environment’ immigration policy.

For those who agree with the ‘hostile environment’ immigration policy here’s a short film especially for you featuring a man who also created a hostile environment for certain sections of the community in the country he governed. For those who don’t agree hopefully the film will serve as a reminder of the horrors that can follow :