A crucial factor in drawing migrants in dinghies to our shores is our language, says Mary Kenny
Like many people, I suspect, I have mixed feelings about the migrants who arrive in Kent on dinghies. Yes, it’s illegal, dangerous and the numbers are concerning; but wouldn’t you also be sorry for individuals and families who take huge risks to find a better life? And ‘economic migrants’ aren’t new. Friedrich Engels wrote viciously about the Irish arriving in Britain in the mid- Victorian age – flooding into English cities at an uncontrollable rate. The author of the Communist Manifesto condemned these ‘barely civilised’ Hibernian migrants, who slept with their pigs and ate nothing but potatoes: they would have a ‘degrading’ influence on the native English. They should be stopped! Shouldn’t he have had an element of human sympathy for people who were just poor and looking for work? Yet here’s an interesting aspect of today’s situation: a ‘pull factor’ in attracting migrants to Britain is part of a...
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