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Tuesday 30 April 2013

How has immigration changed Britain?




 From BBC News Politics 30 April 2013

"The BBC's Political Editor Nick Robinson visits Peterborough to find out how immigration has changed Britain.
The former market town in Cambridgeshire, now a city, used to be "very English and very white", he says, but in the last decade 24,000 immigrants have arrived.
He meets a number of locals, including one man who had arrived in Peterborough only the day before.
Second generation immigrant, Karam, said his father - a Sikh who moved to Peterborough from the Punjab years ago - would be "shocked" by the city today and he claimed many new immigrants "don't mix in".
Nick Robinson's film is one of four in The Editors, BBC One at 23:25 BST on Monday 29 April and afterwards on the BBC iPlayer."

Politicians have suddenly woken up to the fact that people have legitimate concerns about immigration, succinctly expressed in this BBC News item. The subject is Peterborough where we are told that one in eight of the population is an immigrant, one fifth were born abroad and ten per cent of households speak no English. It could be any number of towns and cities where integration has failed and, as indicated in the film, indigenous populations feel like foreigners in their own land, especially the elderly who have seen their environment change completely. A 'Google Maps' image of English Street where part of the film was shot highlights a constant problem, that of parking where some appear to be above the law. Perhaps the motorists in this screen shot all have blue badges but that is not my experience as I struggle to find somewhere to park while others simply please themselves. 


Also mentioned in the film was the problem of schools where English is no longer the first language. Recently the Mail reported: "Anglican school where 75% of the pupils are Muslim drops Christian hymns from assemblies". Where is the sense in all this?  

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