Immigration
Powell's opposition to mass immigration derived from his nationalist outlook. Powell claimed that the children of Commonwealth immigrants to Britain did "not, by being born in England, become an Englishman. In law he becomes a United Kingdom citizen by birth; in fact he is a West Indian or an Asian still...he will by the very nature of things have lost one country without gaining another". Powell claimed that Commonwealth immigration to Britain post-1945 was "in point of numbers out of all comparison greater than anything these islands have ever experienced before in a thousand years of history". Powell asserted that as this immigration was concentrated in urban areas, the result would be violence: "I do not believe it is in human nature that a country...should passively watch the transformation of whole areas which lie at the heart of it into alien territory". Powell claimed his warnings were political:
It is the belief that self-identification of each part with the whole is the one essential pre-condition of being a parliamentary nation, and that the massive shift in the composition of the population of the inner metropolis and of major towns and cities of England will produce, not fortuitously or avoidably, but by the sheer inevitabilities of human nature in society, ever increasing and more dangerous alienation.
He further believed that "parliamentary democracy disintegrates when the national homogeneity of the electorate is broken down by a large and sharp alteration in the composition of the population". To prevent "civil war" Powell advocated a system of voluntary repatriation for immigrants and their descendants, and in February 1967 he wrote:
The best I can dare hope for is that by the end of the century we shall not be left with a growing and more menacing phenomenon but with fixed and almost traditional 'foreign' areas in certain towns and cities which will remain as the lasting monument of a moment of national aberration.
Read more about this topic: Powellism, Powellism, Nationalism
Famous quotes containing the word immigration:
“America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“The admission of Oriental immigrants who cannot be amalgamated with our people has been made the subject either of prohibitory clauses in our treaties and statutes or of strict administrative regulations secured by diplomatic negotiations. I sincerely hope that we may continue to minimize the evils likely to arise from such immigration without unnecessary friction and by mutual concessions between self-respecting governments.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“I was interested to see how a pioneer lived on this side of the country. His life is in some respects more adventurous than that of his brother in the West; for he contends with winter as well as the wilderness, and there is a greater interval of time at least between him and the army which is to follow. Here immigration is a tide which may ebb when it has swept away the pines; there it is not a tide, but an inundation, and roads and other improvements come steadily rushing after.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)