Immigration: A Controlled Cultural Process

in Transitional Townships

by Michael Mifsud,

Entrepreneur, International Consultant

Malaga, Spain

 

 

Would planned intervention at emigration source locations prove cheaper and more constructive in the long run than the derailed, hurriedly organized short term efforts we see today?

 

That, in my opinion, is what the whole issue of mass immigration is all about.

Turning a disaster into a major source of contribution to the aspirations of the rest of the world community is not as difficult as it sounds, but it needs heart and design. Expedience in these cases is not only disrupting the political balance in the recipient countries but destroying public  faith in everything they always believed in as inviolable.  We are seeing this now and what has been done so very badly  appears to have to stay done, but short of involving violent methods out of place at this stage of our evolution,  it is impossible to do anymore than keep an eye on cultural irritation. But the time for planning is now and the challenge is inspiring.

 

When writing about matters of this nature for the bottom line readers (which academics, in my opinion, are), the fun of playing about with words to ladle out romantic contents brimming with politically correct assumptions is not in my book.   Using literary devices to keep the reader interested and indulge in story telling to capture the minds of the sentimental and diehard dreamers is not in my book either – least of all when dealing with such a heart rending subject as compulsive emigration. The cultural shifts of large masses of people finding homes in other cultures is not  compatible with democratic growth and  in reality represent a  modern phenomenon that is threatening the very roots of modern social evolution in the West.   Yet, the subject itself contains enough material for those who want to exploit its advantages either politically or commercially to produce  moments of cruel dramatic impact that  undermine the resolve of those who know it cannot be done overnight. The reality of the subject and  the horrific aspects of forced emigration  requires a variety of factors to be taken into account. Neither one side or the other, meaning immigrant and host country, will satisfy each other’s needs in the short or long term. It is just a discordant unnatural confluence likely  to harm both. Cultures do not mix other than in thin layers which prepare the base for the final blend as happened with say Halloween, Santa Claus and international arms length festivals based on charitable appeal.

 

Clarity of definition of the problem and the needs of acceptable intervention are crucial from the outset, and deviation of the stream into other waters with unlimited absorption is the most obvious choice as it always is in times of evacuation.   In short, reality must be expressed to those intending to emigrate from their stricken countries, at the very outset.  It must provide the consolation that their destinies will be managed by people who care and that they will be taken where they will find a solution to their lives and return home when they wish.  Where and how,  has to be left to trained personnel capable of transmitting the illusion of future security under well managed international teams.

 

It goes without saying that at many levels of effective decision making related to humane issues, there are those willing to sabotage attempts at finding middle course solutions  –  purely perhaps  because they have hidden motives and not necessarily those one would expect.  It is sad to discover from experience that important issues involving the destruction of human lives are often swept aside and tackled too late even when genocide itself has already reared its evil head. It happened with Timor and Croatia, Rwanda and Nigeria without having to raise the sticky specter of Germany.   Why, in the name of common sense,  is it all allowed to happen?   It is beyond deciphering and distressing.  Instead of tackling issues building up to the problem or even at the onset, it is always too late to staunch the terrifying avalanche.   Diplomatic expedience or calculated morbidity on the part of those who believe that people get what they ask for,  is often found in loud lobbies whose ideals are far from acceptable but who may also be instruments in other,  more evil hands?

 

Many a dictator is not just unbalanced, but visibly ill and getting his people to go down with his own personal boat is part of the problem.  For the alarmed population, already under the siege of fear, running out into nowhere is a natural recourse.  Why these leaders and their entourage are allowed by moral forces to cause these catastrophes is beyond any intelligent, sensitive person to understand, especially with the experience and knowledge of history itself as to what will follow if not stopped in time. Legal invasion as a natural signed-for UN process has failed because it has not been done properly and at the right time. It is sad to think of all those who have given everything including the remnants of their tortured lives – for absolutely nothing.  Thousands of rebels  can be shot down “legally” by trigger-happy despots,  yet those top five or six  against which the “rebels”  are fighting for basic freedoms always seem to stay in place despite eliminating their own at will during the course of the whole process of mere  political imbalance. It does not make sense and conspiratorial theories are born as a result.   Making these centre core assassins disappear preventively,  overnight and presenting  them before international tribunals under agreed non-punitive conditions, would be well accepted by most of the world moral bases. Hands rise in horror at the thought by the politically correct, but then,  have they ever dared to look back at those mutilated bodies strewn across the countries and contemplated perhaps that tactical removal of the culprits would have spared them?  It would without doubt  create a sense of temporary liberation even if others came in reluctantly to fill the power void but it would prevent that  which our present rickety, over committee-fied  and distrusted institutions allowed to happen.   It would, after all, be no more than just defense of real human rights and not manufactured legal verbiage designed to pretend it is something else. In short, defending the alienable rights of criminal leaders appears to be a more important issue than effectively preventing them from foreseeable intentions.

 

That is immigration in a nutshell – a subject not even remotely contemplated by some and viewed with terror by others as they see their culture and their sense of home destroyed not just by noisy neighbors but ones which make you feel perhaps that you should be the ones to move out. Whilst these lost souls, despoiled of human dignity and everything they ever had to live for (including tortured massacred families), scratch at doors  (for a respite at least) on their way to heaven knows where, others pop their champagne bottles in the swimming pools of mansions preparing sometimes for attendance at another of those interminable open forums which never seem to grasp the need to act immediately.  Not a pleasant thought. 

 

Presently and without a system in place, the stragglers, the weak, the lost and the desperate fall foul of those who utilize and remove them at will for pleasure, perversity  or economic gain.  Behind all this is prostitution, hard labor and human organ trade. We call it im/emigration but it is an assembly line of derailed societies led by people of low intelligence kept in power by brute force.  They kill and terrorize their own to be able to keep taking the largest share of the national income by not having to feed or house them.  Some of these deviants even have children to hand those fortunes down to, but with a blood legacy that should be made clear to the despots,  long before they breed these dreams.  And who should tell them? Certainly not the international institutions like the polite UN and International Courts which are bound by political discretion and diplomacy.  These  appear to thrive on theatrical display and whose high rostrum figures  overlook a broad spectrum of an inadmissible number of obvious psychopaths unwilling and incapable of understanding such simple things like ethics or human values.  It sounds a little harsh, even to me, but the sad reality is that many would love to be able to extricate themselves from the burden of human rights conventions knowing they will have to break them to get to where they want to go.

 

Immigration, as I wrote in the first part of this paper, is plainly divided into two mainstream elements  –  organic,  stemming from people already assimilated and accepted and who will become future patriarchs of their own cultural and religious roots within the host society  –  and those who tumble in by self appointed right and ill considered public opinion to create problems from the start.  Only the respectful and grateful few will in time come close to the culture of their original hosts and perhaps even fight to stop others coming in with similar aspirations in mind. Those driven by other motives, including religious ones, unfortunately camouflage their intentions initially and their whole life purpose has nothing to do with contribution.  For many, immigration has turned into a viable business opportunity paid for by whichever paymaster. The shadows of their presence among the wretched and condemned are not easy to hide.

 

 Having lived in a cosmopolitan city like London practically all my adult life, memories of these encounters with outsiders were originally composed of “Northerners”  and to my snooty friends in the city centre, even anything that could be called “suburban” was an immigrant. 

 

The acceptance of West Asians (primarily Pakistanis) into the West as a result of the Ugandan Diaspora fell in with that of the  Commonwealth Pakistanis and Bangladeshi who seemed to find successful trading as simple as signing the first lease on a commercial property.  Despite the amusement which their spoken English caused and the manner of delivery which often caused hilarious responses, the corner shopkeepers appeared as silently as they arrived and the saris were as prominent as the queuing clients,  proud of their  polite and servile West Asian newsagents and who praised them for covering the retail needs comfortably.  Today, these West Asians have moved mountains to get their businesses on the front line and many have made fortunes and earned their oats socially. Even the sacred House of Lords ushered them in as they took to stand and defend the principles which are often overlooked today by the more aggressive and demanding immigrant.  A high number of these wrong type of import seemingly expect to be kept for having suffered so much in their own crumbling society as if the West and the host country was the accomplice. Some have even publicly decried their treatment despite the subsidies, expecting comforts that they never got at home.

 

The same thing happened with the Caribbean wave  and in particular the Rastafarians who even created their own ghettoes (if they can really be called that), to the extent that Brixton became the renowned British Harlem. Their music and their creative talent however provided cultural values which, as we all know with people like Bob Marley  and Eddie Grant (to mention a couple), became household words which the younger and more resilient to the cultural invasion took to with great gusto.  London can take it of course but it was not the case with Northern Counties that suffered much of which we have seen in most parts of Europe with the fire and hatred that had been foreseen and ignored.   It would mark the British people forever and plant an instinctive sense of defense against immigrant labor for a long time to come.

 

But then those were Halcyon days for most others and it became uglier against the light of time and the apparent difference between one immigrant and another.   Perhaps for the unemployed and socially deprived with the drug world on their doorsteps, they  represented  a neglected voice but  worse was to come as they fed into the sales systems of the “pay as you work” black market racketeers.

 

What was to follow in terms of feeding into the needs of these imported minorities  would have been reminiscent of the worst of the literature of writers like Orwell or Huxley, as in Brave New World.  Cheap labor born of the indirect threat of  survival would alter the social balance of supply and demand and impose a burden on the fragile benefits schemes of most developed societies which would bring cries of unfairness to the streets.  The very first signs of dangerous cultural division and intransigence came with the generous contribution by  the host States anxious to avoid imbalances, of cultural teaching centers and places of worship to keep them occupied and deflect the need.   Where neither West Asian, Caribbean or African presence had in the past ever raised any more than a very upper class eyebrow, it  sent a shiver of apprehension through those strung on the day to day chore of making a decent living.  For them it allowed the most dangerous of the cultural conflicts, the religious, to become a foreseeable reality. The inflexible law of indigenous cultural preservation as a sovereign base had been breached. In the UK a prominent government figure called Enoch Powell delivered his famous “Rivers of Blood” speech that hit world attention. He became the Cassandra of Troy but causing little more than just a ripple of concern. Unfortunately the mistakes had already been made and the battle fronts carved out with little intention on either side of the fence to allow any rights to be eroded by anything.   The rise of the Nationalist Right was guaranteed against the cry of  “our country back” whilst the Marxist Left in the bureaucracy skillfully utilized the issue to create sentimental support of the downtrodden.  Whilst racial issues are obviously moral ones, they were beginning to hoist the right wing flag well above the horizon and give the syndicates something to illustrate their so called protection of values to impress their members and in so doing,  altering the course of development of the political structures.  They in fact began to dilute the power of the major parties which were caught in historical dreams unaware of the realities of the cultural changes which uncontrolled immigration were creating.

 

The unwritten law of the inviolability of cultural identity did not strike home politically and glib attempts at economic aids to countries of origin in a bid to staunch  emigration at source were obvious losers. Much of the funds never got to its proper use. The new generations of immigrants would not be integrated.  That was becoming increasingly obvious especially with a much wider field of war and famine opening up exponentially. The very pillars of state are now shaken by uncontrollable immigration as can be seen with the issue of Brexit and the impossible absorption of over-liberal places like Sweden.  Canada, United States and Australia among others had done their jobs very well and put Britain to shame when the first signs of internecine war shook the streets of more than one city of the country and where immigrant density had reached implosion levels.  These are purely examples without mention of what has happened in  Germany and Holland where the immigrant population has defied all local cultural values and introduced a false morality often classified as modern and progressive. They were in fact penetrating the crypto Marxist structures that seem to flourish in the bureaucracy and bring these forces into play in their own interests as mentioned before and which can be seen in most European States today.   The seeds of immigrant  discontent are  not just in Europe but throughout the world, as seen in the sad situations as far away as Fiji,  when an immigrant West Asian minority took the Government over and in so doing dug deep into what had always been an endearing and colorful cultural scenario born of family and intense religious respect. Behind it all, it can and will be said, the garish and intrinsically evil ancient barbarities of an ancient culture had evolved under British Rule and without undue pressure turned into one single social expression of healthy and affectionate people. Immigration could and would restore this dangerous cultural expression. In short it is a forbearer of violence at its worst.  Whilst in this case the immigrants were the invaders, they were civilizers and the changes they produced resulted in a harmonious relationship albeit under discipline with very admirable results. Civilizers and immigrants therefore cannot, as some would try  to prove, be considered the same thing in cultural implications. The same applies to practically every primitive culture exposed gradually to customs of civilizers historically. The immigration/invasion came with a price and perhaps one that is now not acceptable, but their discipline forged new cultural values which have lasted in the main. In India, the language issue was solved as the invading culture created a new educational and effective means of  communication hitherto unimagined.  Those  who respected the best of their subjects, even if intolerant to their  unacceptable issues knew they  were only there on lease and often relished their stays because of the differences. The natural indigenous cultures now under rule of foreign law would be seen as a base for the social reforms that would enable the new emerging administration to eventually take it all over. It happened throughout the colonial world and was a product of the times. Despite the seamy attributions by those who delight in denigrating great powers, in most cases awesome structures were set up and without which these countries would have never survived in due course.  Examples of  presently “uncivilized” countries which have fallen prey to forces of occupation can be seen today in their unexampled poverty, political corruption and genocidal civil wars. It is mainly from these areas that uncontrolled immigration derives.

 

It is best to leave those issues there for the time being and concentrate on the reality of the historical mass movement of peoples who have been brought up to think of Shangri-La and El Dorado as Europe if not the USA.  As targets for the so called economic immigrants brought up on glossy television scenarios fostered by Hollywood and political propaganda, every means of transport or payment to get there seems little by comparison to the heaven they would inherit.  The concept of food and money for all on arrival meant taking benefits as a matter of right without as much as putting anything in or even remotely identifying with the behavior and cultural acceptance that would go with it.  Whoever can confuse this mentality with charitable or altruistic response, has got the rod by the wrong end.  That sort of immigration has only one single result  –  the destruction of the host culture and the violence that has seen civil wars erupt in the streets as if from nowhere. We see it in nature and cannot deny the results. It can and is already happening in the European enclaves which have been manipulated all too often by the blind do-gooders, especially in the extreme left factions whose psychological approach to these issues are more akin to sentimental values based on fiction, than to good government or belief in cohesive civilizations.  A strong cultural force  has and will continue to create empires where people have roofs over their heads and sleep on undemanding stomachs but it can only do so with great respect to the culture they work on and which has taken many a generation to foster.   For Socialism, culture is regressive and added to the unreality of their base beliefs in natural equality, it goes without saying that the immigrant appeal, not to mention the so called religious freedom issue, as said, prompts them to support the issue.   

 

The answer therefore  is obviously YES to organic, home grown immigrant mixes designed to blend and NO to those who bring with them the instruments of design to change the ways of their hosts  –  and impose demands which they should have left behind when they fled from their own discredited cultures.

 

How to achieve successful endings to these mass movements is therefore a matter of coordination and humane “isolation” to bring out the best and the dedicated support from those who truly deserve a helping hand.  The present refugee camps were designed as short term living quarters, but in times of war as happened in the 40’s they proved successful enough to keep mortality rates to normal in many well run communities. They were designed for long stays. They saved the lives of its occupants by removing them from the city centre bombing that would kill millions of those left behind.  The answer obviously lies in a planned variation of these instruments of resettlement  and the expertise of a hardcore team determined to give  the immigrants a quality of life dependent on their own efforts and aspirations.  In  short, living workshops that would grow with them into identifiable towns under strict design and acceptably flexible social controls.

 

The thought that immediately comes to mind are the larger uninhabited islands which can within a process of months, rather than years,  provide for the basic supply of generated electricity and desalinated water. Housing and general evolution of town structures which will become lifelong for some, is as easy as the establishment of modern community  dormitory boroughs, which are complete in themselves.  Handicraft and low key manufacturing projects will always find markets and especially if the guiding committees include marketing talent for the processes.  The only proviso in the restrictive sense, is that apart from general gathering centers for entertainment and teaching,  religious expression would have to  be confined to the home and centre teachers operating under the  acute understanding of the division between religion and civic commitment. In short, the avoidance of cultural rivalry or radicalism in public would not be allowed to  flourish under the applied conditions. In effect, cultural or religious reunions would not be allowed other than in folklore display.   Explaining it to the residents is not a difficult task if its dangers are made clear to all concerned and its deleterious effects on the growth of the community,  marked out clearly without reservations.  A constitution therefore well understood by the real immigrants of need, must stand at the core of their townships and overall cohesive and fruitful efforts designed to encourage them to stay on for as long as they wish as “citizens of these islands” and if chosen, return  to their own countries as and when they feel ready to do so.  The main prohibition would be the inability to travel to any country not prepared to take them on, even if they had family there.  However, they could  organize for their families to join them in the new territories as soon as the township consolidated.

 

How to get them there is probably a little more complex than taking care of them in comfortable self assembled communities where they could raise and educate their children with ease and evolve towards high level institutions that they would be proud of  in order to  help the social evolution process.

 

Getting close to war zones is not the easiest of things, but offshore military hospital ships or converted liners with every facility for whole communities on board, are easily set into practice and if diplomacy cannot guarantee their safety as happened with the last moments in Rwanda, safe ports within reasonable distance could be anchoring points.  The Red Cross could organize protection and transport to fill the ships up quickly whilst the next one was being prepared.  The question of food and medical attention  and in particular high protein supplements in bulk would without doubt sustain the travelers during and after their journey to their destinations. 

 

It goes without saying that the wrong type of immigrant – the economic one with eyes set on the social services of other countries, if not more sinister objectives, would pull out of this stream at the point of disclosure of destinations not bargained for. Those searching for a new life at any cost like those adrift in the Mediterranean would more than likely lend themselves to schemes of this sort and hopefully opt for the townships rather than enter that calamitous chain.  It would be assumed that sovereignty of these islands, depending on their sovereign owners would not be forthcoming even after a lengthy period and as often happens in these cases, an acceptance of such issues would be signed for at the outset.   Having reached levels of education and cultural stability, they would all  be eligible eventually, under given quotas, to pick consular approved destinations of their choice and relinquish the authority and identity of these intermediate and controlled lifestyles, being free to return to visit or stay at any time within conditions,  if any,  established by the governing committee of these townships.

Such a scheme would include the term sustainable and become cultural bridges which could within a period of twenty years also help the warring zones  from which these immigrants came from, to recover their identity after the establishment not just of law and order, but acceptable democratic government devoid of religious impositions.

 

These schemes which could be operational within a year, would require cooperation between a variety of countries with islands to spare and prepared  to contribute towards its success, both technically and economically and with aid and support from international organizations.  The results would solve one of the greatest challenges to modern democratic states unwilling and indeed incapable of absorbing destabilizing cultures.  It would also enable overloaded countries to consider the schemes as a means of returning to normality and ease the political tension by encouraging the virtues of these townships.  It happened with Australia and Canada albeit on a different drawing board and scale.

 

The carefully organized exodus of myriads, although daunting, has historical success stories recorded and the Balkans, for example, were one of those staging posts which later developed nations of mixed identity capable, until recently,  to sustain reasonable living standards albeit under various and often conflicting dogmatic governments.  Even monarchies rising from the turbulence of different types of military conflicts  were able to anchor safely for a while but which unfortunately  fell foul of perhaps the greatest political disaster of all times – the rise of the unlikely charade  of a communist system imposed by non-democratic means.  By effectively hiding its real hypocritical nature in the face of impossible targets it allied with the easily manipulated peasantry with blind promises.   The stricken inhabitants of these area were as always  prepared to believe in anything that settled the question of the next day. New townships therefore, despite the apparent simplicity, have to take note of the dangers which mixed communities represent ideologically and settle for a merit based system devoid of preferences which could consolidate opposition.

 

Finally, this essay, for want of a better word, is but an outline of the creation of what could come to mean emergent transitory nations and finer details are not necessary in the face of the ready availability of professional urban planners, social scientists and people with heart and mind ready to give faith to others.  Priests and mind meddlers would hopefully have no more say than to project their prayers for their spiritual happiness from afar and allow the real experts to get on with the jobs.  Making it a matter of pure good organizational work, not just  to feed and shelter those severely scoured minds but also line up with healthy encouragement as success breeds success.  To provide the land of plenty for those willing to earn it  must imply respect for others to be allowed  to do the same until such time as community needs are affected by overcrowding. As examples of humane understanding of needs and meeting them, the concept would be of interest to selected educational representatives who could visit and learn from the experiences. Bearing in mind what the immediate future holds in terms of climatic changes and population shifts, perhaps the time is now to get on with the job.

 

The experimental townships as set up hurriedly by Britain during the second world war in a variety of friendly countries had their problems but of no more consequence than any comprised of people of any nationality away from their homelands.  I and my parents survived and kept enough  romantic memories to want to see our nursery teachers again. Some had never even seen a black person in the flesh and expected tensions did not materialize, nor did educational and health aspirations suffer in any way.  Allowing for the normal rejection of most modern countries fighting as hard as any of them to float above economic trends, there is no choice but to re-channel and support with every available funding to provide what could be called flat pack communities designed to stay.  The end results of real intelligence, ingenuity and heart could be surprisingly contributive in the overall interests of modern societies prepared to accept these educationally prepared members in a not too distant future.