Posted on June 23, 2011

Just What Does It Mean to Be Called British These Days?

Leo McKinstry, Free Republic, June 13, 2011

The nation state is the greatest vehicle ever invented by mankind for the promotion of democracy and prosperity.

That is because it is essentially an extension of the family with citizens enjoying a shared sense of belonging, unity and heritage.

The tragedy of modern Britain is that our traditional identity is under remorseless political attack.

Mass immigration, the dogma of multiculturalism and the growing power of the European Union have conspired to undermine our British nationhood.

Our once unified country is in danger of becoming nothing more than a land mass filled with disparate peoples.

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In the year to March 2011 no fewer than 586,000 immigrants were granted entry, the vast majority from Asia and Africa. It was by far the highest total in our history, more than 10 times the average level of immigration in the Eighties.

As border controls weaken so the concept of British citizenship is becoming increasingly meaningless. The right to hold a British passport used to be cherished but today that privilege has been utterly devalued.

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Earlier this month a Parliamentary committee revealed that the Home Office had effectively granted an amnesty to 160,000 bogus refugees, allowing them to settle here permanently and claim benefits.

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There will soon be a vast new influx of arrivals from Bulgaria and Romania once the citizens of those two member states are allowed to travel and settle anywhere in Europe without restrictions, as the Brussels Parliament recommended last week.

Even worse more than 70 million Turkish Muslims will have the right to come to Britain if Turkey is granted EU membership, as the coalition wants.

What we are witnessing is a grotesque form of assisted national suicide.

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All around us we can see the dire consequences of the immigration free-for-all, whether it be the spread of sharia law or the prevalence of violent gangs in our inner cities or the rise of Islamic extremism.

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But now that ethic has been shattered. We are now forced to support millions of people who have absolutely no connection to Britain, such as the 12-strong Ethiopian family recently given a huge house in East London at a cost to the taxpayer of more than £75,000 a year.

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AN EVEN greater myth beloved of the Left is that Britain is “a nation of immigrants” so there is supposedly nothing unique about the modern influx from Asia and Africa. But this is just a lie.

In fact Britain was until the Seventies one of the most homogenous nations. Moreover the small numbers that arrived here, such as Irish labourers, or Jewish or French refugees fleeing religious persecution, were steeped in the Judeo-Christian culture that built our civilisation.

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In a land where the once uplifting ideal of national pride has been transmuted into nothing more than xenophobia decline is inevitable.