Most of us come from families that immigrated into the UK. Maybe milleniums ago, but we are mainly mongrels from immigrants. Make no doubt about it
I am with mercury on this one.
There are very few peoples who aren't 'mongrels', but there has been a core population of similar people in the UK for a very long time. Immigration has always continued and most immigrants have integrated with little to show their differences but their names. Daphne du Maurier and Eddie Izzard have Huguenot surnames, for example.
Immigration has not really affected the British culture because it seemed to occur at a level that allowed assimilation. The big groups that I know about are Jamaicans, Pakistanis and Ugandan Asians. They are assimilating and some that I have spoken to were voting to leave the EU.
More recently there has been no mention of assimilation, 'multiculturalism' has been the word. Has it worked? Perhaps in London, which has always been more diverse but there have been problems. How can teachers teach effectively when a high proportion of their pupils don't speak English? Policemen regularly need interpreters to speak to those they arrest.
I have no problem with immigration and no problem with the ethnicity of the immigrants. I do have a problem when the numbers and diversity seriously impact our services. Common sense tells me that teachers are struggling to teach if they struggle to communicate with their pupils, It also tells me that the children the teachers can communicate with are also missing out, No extra funding as far as I know has been provided to help with this problem;
Annette Street School in Govanhill has no native Scots on its roll of 222 pupils and has asked for help to ensure pupils "have an equal chance in society."
http://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgow-news/glasgows-most-multicultural-primary-reaches-11273151Schools are a good example of how people have been expected to deal with the problems caused by multiculturalism without Governmental planning or help. If policies cause problems those espousing the policies should help solve the resulting problems. Is it too much to ask that the problems should have been foreseen and planned for?
That, in my opinion, is one of the reasons why some people voted to leave the EU. Rather than planning for the arrival of immigrants successive governments have accused people of being racist when they complained about their local services being overstretched. One fact stood out in the campaign. Remaining meant more of the same. Leaving was the only way people could vote to stop the inward flow from Europe.
