BNP call for end to immigration from Muslim nations

[pampango]

Source: BBC

The British National Party (BNP) are calling for an end to immigration from Muslim nations, saying this presents a "deadly threat" to the UK. The BNP also plan to give grants to encourage some UK residents to return to "their lands of ethnic origin". The BNP recently changed their whites-only membership policy after it was ruled unlawful by the courts.

The BNP are campaigning on a platform of curbing immigration, only allowing new migrants in "exceptional circumstances" and pledging to deport all illegal immigrants.

Mr Griffin said there was only one new commitment on immigration in the manifesto - which would see all citizenship grants approved since 1997 reviewed to see whether they are still "appropriate". Mr Griffin said the UK was "full-up" and it was time to "close the doors". Mr Griffin said his party would support "decent settled minorities who accept that Britain should remain British".

Among other pledges, the BNP wants to leave the European Union, withdraw British troops from Afghanistan and abolish regional development agencies and other quangos (quasi-autonomous NGO's). It calls for restrictions on imports from China to help protect jobs in British manufacturing and avert "economic disaster".

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8639097.stm

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On the other hand, the Liberal Democrats are proposing a plan to legalize many of the UK's illegal immigrants and is generally pro-immigration. (Their manifesto: "We will allow people who have been in Britain without the correct papers for 10 years, but speak English, have a clean record and want to live here long-term to earn their citizenship.") They also are very pro-EU to the point of wanting the UK to join the Euro-zone - seemingly a risky position given the problems the Euro-zone is having right now and the historic resistance shown by the British to adopting the euro. I guess the best you can say about it is that they must really believe that more integration with the EU is a good thing, since they certainly are not proposing it because it's politically popular. It's not.

The Labour Party and the Conservative Party are more towards the middle of the immigration issue, proposing to "control" it and "cap" it, respectively, and in their attitudes towards the EU.

[fascisthunter]

1. stupid

way to fan the flames of xenophobia of Muslims.

[tomm2thumbs]

2. it's about time! now they can stop checking my shoes at the airport!

:sarcasm:

[sui generis]

3. I'm going to be emotionally honest here at some risk

The touchpoints of my youth were growing up in Germany, with family in quaint little medieval villages in Bavaria, and with tourism and the military presence being the main source of "xeno" experience for most.

Ironically, in my youth, the Yugoslavians were the "mexicans" of central Europe, then east Germans, then Italians, and now anyone with dark hair and a Slav appearance is treated the way immigrant Mexicans are treated in parts of the Southwest. But if you were black or chinese or from the Indian subcontinent, or Eurasian, you were exotic and not treated with the same social stratification that appears today.

I think there are two fronts that drive xenophobia in Europe, the first being the same ignorant ideas about menial jobs being taken by immigrants when there are the non-menial unemployed. What does THAT sound like.

The second one is preservation of culture. Europe has much laxer standards about nudity and acceptance of human variety, generally speaking, than some of the people filtering into the country wearing burkas and practicing fundamentalist forms of their faith, and bringing their often socially conservative country-of-origin cultures with them.

To some it seems like moving backwards to accommodate people whose women must cover their hair, and who view women as chattel, and it's certainly the experience that of all the cultures in Europe, Islam is the religious culture most easily exploited by extremists and fundamentalists and reactionaries.

My first reaction is I agree - any small country should control the "mix" of inflow if nothing else then for adoption of the immigration population by the larger population. If America suddenly discovered a planet with poor little green people who ritually eat puppies, and didn't limit their immigration flow, the same kind of visceral reactions would take place, whether any puppies were in fact ritually eaten or not.

It's more complicated than just cultural change and xenophobia. In Europe we've seen nearly two thousand years of religious war, persecution and strife that has resulted FINALLY in acceptance of sectarian differences, and a somewhat declining population in those denominations.

In Islam, a fairly young religion, that process is just now building a head of steam, with even the term "Jihad" being coopted and misused, and a absolute horror of separation of mosque and state (except in Turkey, which ironically was also the center of Byzantium).

I don't necessarily agree with them, but I understand it from a gut level. I can honestly say I don't LIKE the culture of Islam as practiced in countries that immigrants typically flee from. I don't want to see that come to the rose-tinted memories of my youth and threaten to move what I think of as socially superior to the U.S., in most cases, move backwards.

The question is not what to do to stop cultural change. The question the British should be considering is how to moderate cultural change so that it can be thought of as acceptable and less threatening. Locking the gate is not the answer any more than opening the gates indiscriminately is the answer.

[dipsydoodle]

4. Broadly speaking

these issues didn't arise with either of the historic high levels of immigration which were from the West Indies in the fifties and from Uganda in the seventies. The reason in both cases was that both groups concerned willingly adopted our way of life here in the UK. That in some instances is not the case with Muslims and hence the issue which will probably just get worse as time goes by.

[harmonicon]

5. I saw some BNP bastard on TV last night and it made me SO fucking angry...

These people really are the worst of the worst. They're fucking Nazis, plain and simple, though luckily less popular. In particular, I was mad for these reasons: 1. for all of their hatred of foreigners, if it weren't for foreigners, these fuckers would be speaking German now. It was people like my American grandfather who risked his life in WWII to save England's ass. 2. I'm an immigrant to the UK, and I'll be damned if I haven't done more in my few years here for the betterment of my community than all BNP members put together ever will.

[Stella_Artois]

6. With all due respect

"1. for all of their hatred of foreigners, if it weren't for foreigners, these fuckers would be speaking German now. It was people like my American grandfather who risked his life in WWII to save England's ass."

Did you cut and paste that from FreeRepublic ? Really ? If it wasn't for foreigners we'd be speaking German ? The Germans WERE the foreigners. And unless your grandfather was one of the dozen or so Americans who flew in 1940, perhaps all sorts of other people from all sorts of countries but mainly British had the most direct involvement in saving us.

America fought the Germans directly as a result of the Germans declaring war on America. Fine sentiments played part, but America fought Germany because America had to. We'd never have been on the winning side without the US, but with a very few exceptions individual Americans fought the Germans because thats where the US military sent them.

"I'll be damned if I haven't done more in my few years here for the betterment of my community than all BNP members put together ever will"

I'm sure you have, and good for you. You could have said that without being a dick.

[harmonicon]

9. as you said, "We'd never have been on the winning side without the US"

That was my point. Further, organizations like the EU were set up so that things like WWII could never happen again, and the BNP doesn't want to play any role in it... it's international cooperation which has created a world where it's even possible for their party to exist, and they want to destroy it. I just think they're hypocrites for this reason.

[Stella_Artois]

10. No it wasn't

You said something about "saving our ass"

We'd never had been on the winning side without the USSR either, given that 80% of German casualites happened on the eastern front. The US would never have been on the winning side against the Germans without the UK and USSR, given that one nation tied down the vast majority of German manpower, and the others navy and airforce kept an island close to the continent out of German hands.

[harmonicon]

11. yes, but no one I know personally fought for the USSR

I was highlighting my personal connection. ... sorry?

[alp227]

7. The BNP's policy is the UK's persona non grata policy run amok

The UK government also pre-emptively banned some foreigners from entering. For example, American rapper Snoop Dogg and (hate) radio host Michael Savage are banned from entering the UK. The BNP is wrong to scapegoat all Muslims as a harm. Does it not occur to them that some people from Algeria, Egypt, etc. want to escape the radical Islamic environment for British freedom?

"Get rid of all the Muslims" seems to be the brand new anti-immigrant talking point in both the US and UK. In the US, Bryan Fischer of the Christian right org American Family Association is generally anti-immigrant and has called for deportation of all Muslims from the US.

[classysassy]

8. Stop exporting oil to the UK

bet they'll their m inds pronto.