The Sunday Poast
Immigration, impolitics and why the woke won't fight.
GM.
I’ve had a raft of new subscriptions in recent weeks, so I’d just like to say welcome to new subscribers (and welcome home to the old warriors).
I’ve been writing away from PVI recently so I thought I’d give a quick update on my writings elsewhere, should you not be getting enough Tom Jones to see you through these cold winter months.
First up I wrote for CapX on why the government was right to reduce the number of student dependents, as it had become a way to bypass the more difficult normal work visa routes – albeit a more profitable option for universities, and a lower-friction option for migrants:
Many of these students are utilising the visa system to access the workforce whilst bypassing the immigration system – this is the phenomenon of the ‘Deliveroo Visa’. International students, recruited from abroad by universities keen to fill their coffers and armed with one academic years’ worth of fees, join ‘rip-off’ universities as a way ‘to circumvent all the salary and other requirements of the normal work visa routes, which are supposedly there to make migration a bit more selective, so more beneficial’. As a result, many simply drop out of university to enter the workforce. The UK average dropout rate is 8%, rising to 25% for Indian and Bangladeshi students. Many of those who drop out – and, indeed, those who finish their studies – then enter the workforce in low-wage jobs where, after five years, they gain indefinite leave to remain.
I also wrote for The Critic on immigrationnisme, ‘the self-righteous thesis that immigration is both inevitable and good’, and the dishonesty that causes in Britain’s immigration debate:
The debate around the student dependent visas illustrates this well. For many, there is simply no case to be made for restricting student dependents because there is simply no case to be made for reducing immigration as a whole. Immigration is good, there are many people arriving on student dependent visas, therefore the system is working fine. The reality — that the system is being gamed — is of little consequence. It must stand as it is; a change designed to reduce immigration, even if it only reverts us to 2018, is beyond consideration.
But, as Taguieff points out, “The ethics of conviction, especially if it is forced, is not policy.” We must reject not only impolitics, but immigrationnisme itself. No matter how many times the gun is fired, immigration continues to fail in providing a golden bullet, and we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that immigration is inevitable no matter what we do. It is not; “the ultimate hidden truth of the world”, as David Graeber noted, “is that it is something that we make and could just as easily make differently.” Nothing is written.
I also wrote for Con Home asking why we’re surprised Gen Z, the Wokest Generation, won’t fight - and if they have a country worth fighting for:
Who can blame them? They have grown up in a cultural milieu that denigrates Britain’s culture and history to the point that the idea it is even worthy of respect – never mind dying for – is ridiculous. Why would anyone want to defend a nation built on slavery and fuelled by imperial nostalgia? A nation of bootlickers indeed. This may be reinforced by the world events that shaped them; born in the late 1990s and early 2010s, many Gen Zers will have seen the effects of the decades-long war in Afghanistan and Iraq without understanding the reasoning – such as it was.
Conservatives have not just presided over this woke turn of society; they have enabled it. By refusing to tackle intergenerational disparity, they have given the next generations no stake in society. The adage ‘’If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain’ is not true because once you get to 30 you start reading Burke and start thinking he had some great ideas. It is that as you age you build up a store of financial and social capital that gives you a station worth conserving.
Conservatives have done nowhere near enough to tackle the widespread denigration of this country’s history and reputation, preferring an endless air war on woke instead of boots on the ground. But if we are not prepared to defend Britain – ‘my country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right’ – why should we expect Gen Z to?
La lucha no es negociable