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Comment by mattmanser | Hacker News Reader

Disclaimer: I voted remain.

You can easily tell people's immigration status. I walked into my local Lidl about 7 years ago and didn't hear an english voice for the entire 30 min shop. That was the first time I realised how out of control immigration to the UK had become.

I voted remain, but if you think we can't tell who's english, or you think it's a lie that huge areas have been ghettozied in virtually every major city, you're either blind or unobservant or simply don't have a diverse contact with many areas of our society.

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You can go into shops in Wales where nobody speaks English either.

Yes, there are ghettoes, but (as in European countries which have experienced terrorism problems) that doesn't mean the occupants are immigrants. People can be born here and not have English as a first language.

(Also, non-immigrants have very little idea how large the barriers to immigration are these days..)

>People can be born here and not have English as a first language.

Only this is less common than the other.

Besides, for those anti-immigrant, whether "born here" or "newly arrived" doesn't matter much. If they are not of English, Scottish, etc ancestry, they are immigrants.

So saying that the e.g. the terrorists in Germany were German because they were born in the country is a little beside the point when they are clearly from middle-eastern origin for example.

> for those anti-immigrant, whether "born here" or "newly arrived" doesn't matter much. If they are not of English, Scottish, etc ancestry, they are immigrants.

Well, now here we have a problem, because immigration policy can only apply to people who are legally considered immigrants. The word for expelling large numbers of people who were born in the country but not of the dominant ethnicity is "ethnic cleansing".

> The word for expelling large numbers of people who were born in the country but not of the dominant ethnicity is "ethnic cleansing".

In London, if population trends are any indication, this sentence applies just as well to English people...

>The word for expelling large numbers of people who were born in the country but not of the dominant ethnicity is "ethnic cleansing".

They might not want them expelled, but simply counted along with new immigrants in estimations of the cumulative amount of people of foreign ethnicities that resulted by immigration (and thus in decisions whether immigration has been "too much" or not).

> You can go into shops in Wales where nobody speaks English either

Are they speaking Welsh, or another non-native language?

> You can go into shops in Wales where nobody speaks English either.

Which is obviously not the case

> but (as in European countries which have experienced terrorism problems) that doesn't mean the occupants are immigrants.

Correct, but most of them are

> Also, non-immigrants have very little idea how large the barriers to immigration are these days.

That's true, the barriers for legal immigration are high. But it seems a lot of people merely overstay their visas/permissions to stay or ask for asylum on alleged circumstances that are hard to prove. And also there is some welfare abuse, both from EU and non EU-nationals

Wales: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cynwyd-town-i...

(local people get upset about migrants moving into their community and refusing to speak the language, only in this case the language is Welsh and the "migrants" are English-speaking. In this case the Welsh people are nearly always bilingual but would prefer to communicate in Welsh.)

Oh, by "obviously not the case" I was not referring to Welsh shops (which in some regions do not speak English, the same happens in some parts of Ireland/Scotland), but that the case where "nobody spoke English" mentioned above

The article you referenced is a nice view on what happens when the roles are switched

Are you talking about Welsh? If so that's a fairly silly objection. I'm not sure what your point is at all.

That "free movement of people" right the papers keep talking about? That we would need to keep if we wanted access to the single market? That means there are no barriers to EU migrants.

Almost 50% of the record 335,000[1] that migrated to the UK last year were from the EU, which has no barriers. Although I admit it clearly shows the UK government has no actual intention of stopping immigration if it's still letting 195,000 odd non-EU migrants in.

As a bit of a side note, I would thoroughly recommend reading Ayesha's Gift, a recent release, to get a glimpse into the world of immigrants in the UK, the racism they face, but also the consequences of not integrating them properly and how their culture can be entirely alien to ours. It's also an excellent true crime book.

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati...

"huge areas have been ghettozied in virtually every major city"

Yes, but not just Britain. You hear a lot of Polish around your local Lidl? Well, there's some Spanish bloke also complaining about the amount of English he's hearing in his local Lidl.

Did you see their passports? Do you know what permission to remain they held?

How does that change if they're an immigrant or not?

Let me turn that around: if someone is an immigrant forever even once they have achieved indefinite leave to remain, in what sense is it even possible for them to assimilate?

How are you turning that around? You're just misunderstanding the meaning of the words assimilate and immigrant.

You're an immigrant till the day you die if you move to a foreign country, but you can integrate with your host country.

Immigrant definition: a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country.

Someone who lives temporarily is a migrant.

"You can easily tell people's immigration status"

My point was that you have no idea what status a person holds. They could be citizens who prefer to speak a different language. They could be on holiday. They could be students. They could be in the country without permission. They could be anywhere on the spectrum of immigration permission. You don't know their status.

Besides, I went to a shop the other day and not a single person was speaking Irish. They were CLEARLY immigrants.

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