For at least the past 20 years, Britain’s political and cultural elites have claimed that immigration has been nothing but a blessing for the nation. They claim it grows the economy. That it makes Britain as a society less insular and more diverse. That it has moral as well as economic benefits.
Among vast swathes of the British public, however, a very different view has taken hold. They have experienced the reality of our increasingly porous borders. They have seen how the importation of cheap labour, far from growing the economy in real (per capita) terms, has merely suppressed wages. They have seen how immigration-fuelled population growth has put even more pressure on struggling public services. And they have witnessed what ‘diversity’ means in practice – the creation of religious and ethnic enclaves, riven with anti-Semitism and intolerance.
Exactly like Canada.
