Anthony Browne, writing the main feature article in this week's Spectator, says policymakers have underestimated, or quite possibly fibbed, about the scale of immigration into the United Kingdom from Eastern Europe. I do not want to get into all the cultural arguments that have been aired a lot here in recent months. Suffice to say that Browne makes some good, if slightly alarmist, points about the ability of a small crowded island like Britain to go on taking more and more people, never mind from often very different cultures.

He seems to make the mistake, however, when discussing the impact of immigration on wage rates, of what is known as the "lump of labour fallacy": the notion that there is a fixed amount of work to be performed in an economy. It seems a bit odd that Browne, who calls himself an economic liberal, should fall prey to this fallacy. After all, as surely the late economist Julian L. Simon pointed out, every additional person is not just another mouth to be fed, but another brain and pair of hands to create wealth.

My first posting on the Globalization Institute's blog is about the almost hidden but massive transfers of cash by migrants workers to their families in under-developed countries. The following quote comes from Time magazine:

Mass migration has produced a giant worldwide economy all its own, which has accelerated so fast during the past few years that the figures have astounded the experts. This year, remittances - the cash that migrants send home - is set to exceed $232 billion, nearly 60% higher than the number just four years ago, according to the World Bank, which tracks the figures. Of that, about $166.9 billion goes to poor countries, nearly double the amount in 2000. In many of those countries, the money from migrants has now overshot exports, and exceeds direct foreign aid from other governments. "The way these numbers have increased is mind-boggling," says Dilip Ratha, a senior economist for the World Bank and co-author of a new Bank report on remittances. Ratha says he was so struck by the figures that he rechecked his research several times, wondering if he might have miscalculated. Indeed, he believes the true figure for remittances this year is probably closer to $350 billion, since migrants are estimated to send one-third of their money using unofficial methods, including taking it home by hand.

There are two things I especially like about this growing trend. One is that unlike other forms of aid (including private giving by Westerners), the money tends to be better spent, because the donor is immediately related to the recipient. The second is I think unique to migrant workers. Normally there is a dependency trap: the money coming in is for a set term and will only be renewed if the recipient pleads continuing poverty. But migrant workers who leave their families behind have a strong incentive to watch out for improving economic conditions back home. As families achieve a tolerable standard of living they tend to reduce the amount of migration. The whole bureaucracy of aid is bypassed.

Thinking about it, perhaps giving a Christmas bonus of £100 to the office cleaner from Ghana or the Ukraine does more to make the world a better place than £200 given to an aid charity. We often hear about the benefits of cutting taxes, but here's a new one. For each pound in taxes saved by low-income migrant workers, up to 40p will be transferred to a family in the developing world. That's got to be a better return than the government makes of our money.

Joel Kotkin, in a fine article at the Wall Street Journal, draws out these telling facts on the European economy's lousy job-formation record in recent years:

Since the '70s, America has created 57 million new jobs, compared with just four million in Europe (with most of those jobs in government). In France and much of Western Europe, the economic system is weighted toward the already employed (the overwhelming majority native-born whites) and the growing mass of retirees. Those ensconced in state and corporate employment enjoy short weeks, early and well-funded retirement and first dibs on the public purse. So although the retirement of large numbers of workers should be opening up new job opportunities, unemployment among the young has been rising: In France, joblessness among workers in their 20s exceeds 20%, twice the overall national rate. In immigrant banlieues, where the population is much younger, average unemployment reaches 40%, and higher among the young.

Kotkin goes on to contrast the lack of entrepreneurial (good French word, ironically) vigour in countries like France with that in the United States. There are plenty of other statistics to back up his points, but you get the general idea.

As the French rioting has gone on, I remain to be completely convinced that we are seeing some sort of European "intifada", as a number of commenters on this blog and other blogs say. Islamist radicalism may not be the primary cause, though it is a contributing factor, no doubt. I do certainly see the frightening potential for radical Islamists to exploit the situation and turn it to their own ends. This may already be happening. But I think the primary problem has been a refusal of the EUropean political elites to realise that the Big Government, and a highly protected labour market is a recipe for disaster and alienation. Coupled with the slowing dynamic of a greying population, falling economic growth and so forth, you have a serious problem of a stagnant economy. For example, the article I cite goes on to point out that hundreds of thousands of young Europeans now work abroad, in the U.S. and in Britain, since the work opportunities are so much better. Left behind is an increasingly state-dominated workforce and a huge population of tax-eating bureaucrats and welfare recipients. Not a great foundation for social peace.

Magnus Linklater, meanwhile, points to a worrying trend in Britain of young thugs hurling stones, firing rockets and other projectiles at firefighters in the course of their work. There have been hundreds of these incidents, many of them hardly reported in the media. Only a few years ago, firefighters were heroes, widely praised by all. Now they are almost routinely attacked in the tougher parts of this country.

Mihir Bose has a very interesting and though provoking article in the Telegraph about why many of the lessons of the American 'melting pot' have little resonance or even relevance to Britain.

The difference is simple but profound: America can impose a coherent historical narrative on immigrants because the countries they come from had no previous involvement with America. Settlers are able and encouraged to discard their native histories and accept the American version.

But the vast majority of non-white immigrants to Britain have come from our former colonies, and bring not only their own cultures but also their own versions of our shared history. So, in trying to construct a single coherent narrative for this island, we are faced with trying to marry two historical streams: the "home" version and the "export" version.

I am not sure I agree with the entire thrust of the article but it certainly provides considerable food for thought. Certainly I have always found it curious how, at least in my experience, race relations in Britain have been (generally) far better compared to the USA (and I only speak from my personal observations) and with far less government intervention forcing that state of affairs to be the norm, at least until quite recently. Perhaps Mihir Bose's article contains some of the reasons underpinning that. That could be worth pondering.

Those of us who believe in an open immigration system acknowledge that this should not mean we let in those who support terrorism. So hurrah say I to this news:

"The Home Secretary has issued an order revoking Omar Bakri Mohamed's indefinite leave to remain and to exclude him from the UK on the grounds that his presence is not conducive to the public good," a Home Office spokesman said.

The wording "not conducive to the public good" comes from the Immigration Act 1971. The government says it needs new powers to deal with terrorism. The funny thing is that I cannot remember anyone talking about being able to exclude preachers of hate if they are "not conducive to the public good" before this last week. Could it be that the government does not actually know what powers it has?

Favouring open immigration into integrationist societies within the context of an eventual end to the welfare state and strengthening of civil society is a view widely shared in these parts. But I can also say will little fear of contradiction that not one of the regular writers for Samizdata would describe themselves as a multiculturalist.

The term did once have some appeal but in the end what it has come to mean is someone who thinks all (non-western) cultures are as desirable as each other. However I do not believe that all cultures are equally worthy and I doubt that in reality all too many other people really think that either is you dig deep enough. For all its many and varied flaws, the modern dynamic, secular and above all tolerant western civilisation of the early 21st Century is considerably superior to the alternatives. But of course even within the west, not all the societies that make up that great civilisation are as dynamic and successful as each other.

But what is a society? Definitions vary. In the crudest sence it is a group of people who interact with each other by simple virtue of their proximity (something the internet may change), and as a result follow broad (but often loose) cultural norms which have evolved to facilitate interaction and order. So by this very simple (prehaps even simplistic) definition is also pointless to pretend that having long term un-assimilated communities with certain key antithetical values within western societies is anything but a recipe for catastrophic strife.

The stunning and very under-reported race riot by Arabs and North Africans in France last month shows what happens when the state interferes for decades by subsidising parasitic behaviour based on identity politics and pretending that state fiats can either enforce or obviate the need for integration. When the French state bans chadors and all other religious symbols in French educational conscription centres (schools), it is not a case of France 'defending western culture' but rather admitting that civil society has so decayed under the weight of generations of politicization that natural social mechanisms no longer exist to integrate newcomers as effectively as once was the case. In the end nothing gets done in France without it being planned and implemented politically by the enarques in Paris and racial no-go areas are the result.

The solution in the end may be less government so that civil society can actually regenerate but in the short to medium term it is hard to see how the French political class, not a group known for frank introspection and honest analysis, can prevent France gradually sliding into ever more atavistic violence. Even Britain, which has far better race relations than France, learned in 2001 that playing identity politics and handing out other people's money based on ethnicity is a dangerous thing to do. But whereas in the USA the 1992 Los Angeles riots spurred some soul searching in the USA and the emergence of excellent bipartisan social organizations aiming at economic and social integration, in France a significent race riot barely makes it into the press and in Britain, far from looking to enhance integration and the adoption of western cultural norms, we find that we now risk prosecution for making critical remarks about Islamic culture.

Is it any wonder so many Americans react to the European political classes' pretensions of moral superiority with little more than a contemptuous and well deserved sneer?

For many Americans who see the state as being the central and most important institution there is, the axis around which civil society orbits, the whole idea of 'dual nationality' is deeply disturbing. A person born in a different land can assimilate into civil society, adopt the mores, trappings and affectations of the place in which they now live and even accept being marked as a political subject of the government (become a citizen) but if they do not in fact repudiate being a subject of their previous home, to a statist American the question often asked is "can that person really be an American?"

I have heard people in the US say that of the many Jewish Americans who also hold Israeli passports and now increasingly that question is asked of Mexican Americans who retain ties to Mexico. Cosmopolitanism is seen as somehow dangerous and almost wicked. That dual nationality is particularly disturbing to some Americans is not surprising seeing as how the USA claims a proprietary interest in Americans nationals even if they do not live within the lands within which the US state claims sovereignty over (to the extent that even foreign people with US green cards who are not US subjects and who no longer live within US territory are still supposed to make US tax returns and incur US tax liabilities!). In most of the rest of the world, the moment your cross a national border, the nation you lived in generally looses interest in most of your economic and political activities, making dual nationality rather less emotive an issue other than in times of war between the two nations in question. Being a US 'citizen' is like having a big brand on your arse which stays with you regardless of where you go, making claims that US citizenship is somehow superior because it is not 'ethnic based' somewhat odd... it is more analogous to creating a new ethnicity, at least politically speaking, called 'American'.

But for many, probably more who hold dual nationality, it is just a means of being able to live where they please and cross borders to places where they have friends and family without being harassed by the state's border guards and pettifogging officials. The truth is that for the great majority of people the state is not the axis around which their life revolves and the bit of coloured cloth that flaps over them is really not a big deal.

As a 'rootless cosmopolitan' myself, I make no secret that I see collecting as many citizenships as possible as useful way to dilute the influence that states have over people. That does not mean I am blind to the possibility of political leaders in one country making mischief in another country by appealing to notions of 'Volk' or 'La Patria'... yet political antics can be trumped by simply allowing the natural (yes, natural) process of assimilation to run its course, rather than distorting and delaying that process with crazy 'identity politics' which reward primitive tribalistic attitudes, and social welfare programmes that invert the traditional motivate for people to become immigrants in the first place.

Guy Herbert wrote in with this strangeness a while ago, but for some reason it was trapped by the overzealous Samizdata.net spam filters, only to be discovered today. Better late than never!

This is a very strange story, given the British authorities' current obsession with illegal immigration. Three Albanian men have been arrested for trying to leave Britain and others charged with trying to help them. What's really strange is that it is heavily implied by police that the men were illegally present in the country, but there's no suggestion yet that they are fugitives from the law for any other reason. So what on earth is the point of trying to keep them here? Is it that self-deportation shows up the Immigration Service's incompetence in that department?

Britons are now inured to (the entirely extra-legal) requirement to show a passport before being permitted to travel abroad on planes, trains, and ferries. That causes no outrage, and I confidently predict this arrest will not either. But it should.

If one may not leave nor enter the country without government permission - which is what these arrests imply - then we are already living in a (rather large) open prison, even before everyone is numbered and tagged.

Guy Herbert

So Britain will indeed remain more enlightened than the Continent, allowing people from the new EU member nations in Eastern Europe to live here: the proviso being that they will not be allowed to partake of state benefits for a few years.

So in other words, they are welcome (and they certainly are welcome by me) to come here and work just so long as they leave the theft of other people's money (via the state, of course), to native English people or resident French, Germans, Italians etc... or our very own local Arab terrorist supporters, come to think of it.

On a related note, it never ceases to amuse me to hear how politicos can make dissembling use of language. Following an attack by that paragon of liberal values and freedom, Tory leader Michael Howard, in which he asked "Will the government do what other countries are doing, and what the prime minister said he was looking at, will he impose transitional controls on immigration from the accession countries or not", Tony Blair replied:

"The position as I set it out is this. There is free movement of people after May 1, free movement of workers, however, is a concession we are prepared to grant – but not in circumstances where it can be abused," said the prime minister [...] The prime minister insisted there was no contradiction in government policy. The "free movement of people is distinct from the free movement of workers" he argued.

And this is presumably because workers are not... people? Anyway, I thought it was only a problem when the people in question turn out to not to be 'workers'. In reality, most of the 'Old' EU is not allowing free movement at all but rather highly regulated and restricted movement.

Although the EU is expanding eastwards, clutching more of the nations of Eastern Europe to its regulating breast on May 1st, only Britain and Ireland will actually be welcoming the people of those countries as residents.

Britain and Ireland may soon be the only two states willing to open their doors entirely to the 73 million people joining the European Union in May. Countries such as Sweden, Holland, and Denmark, which initially pledged to let migrants from the 10 new states work freely in their countries from day one have changed their minds. They fear an influx will drive down wages and overload their welfare systems. Per capita incomes in the ex-Communist countries are just 40 per cent of EU levels.

And yet even officials at the benighted EU admit...

Privately, EU diplomats say the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and others are ideal guest workers. Well-educated, they bring fresh blood and dynamism to an ageing Europe. If they stay, it is usually because they inter-marry. Their "migration profile" is starkly different from Muslim groups, who studies suggest are resistant to assimilation and who prohibit their children marrying into the host society.

On the purely non-scientific observational evidence of my own eyes, there do seem to be rather a lot of happy looking English blokes wandering around London with eye-widening tall blondes from east of the Oder-Neisse line, so that seems about right... which makes me wonder why the Netherlands is not welcoming the Eastern Europeans with open arms! Well if the rest of western Europe cannot see past the 'waves of gypsies' scare stories and see the huge benefits of well educated, easy to assimilate Slovaks, Czechs and Poles, then their loss will be Britain and Ireland's gain when the best and brightest (amongst other things) decamp from the east and move en-mass to London and Dublin. Excellent!

Vitajte v Londyne!

Telegraph has an article about an official parliamentary report that notes that Holland's 30-year experiment in trying to create a tolerant, multicultural society has failed and led to ethnic ghettos and sink schools.

Between 70 and 80 per cent of Dutch-born members of immigrant families import their spouse from their "home" country, mostly Turkey or Morocco, perpetuating a fast-growing Muslim subculture in large cities.

While the report praised most immigrants for assimilating and for doing well at school, it attacked successive governments for stoking ethnic separatism. The worst mistake was to encourage children to speak Turkish, Arabic or Berber in primary schools rather than Dutch. The report concluded that Holland's 850,000 Muslims must become Dutch if the country was to hold together. It proposes cheap housing in the leafy suburbs to help ethnic groups assimilate with the rest of the 16 million population.

The major parties in the centre-Right government dismissed such solutions as insufficient. Maxime Verhagen, the Christian Democrat leader in parliament, said one had to be "either naive or ignorant" not to understand that the policy had led the country into a cul-de-sac.

Immigrants in the Netherlands top the 'wrong' lists - disability benefit, unemployment assistance, domestic violence, criminality statistics and school and learning difficulties.

Holland used to be an example of multi-ethnic tolerance, spending large amounts of funding to welcome immigrants and running 'ethnic diversity projects' that included 700 Islamic clubs that are often run by hard-line clerics.

Two years ago, Pim Fortuyn voiced the resentment that had been building up behind the 'multi-culti' facade. The European Union's Racism and Xenophobia Monitoring Centre has catalogued a rash of anti-Muslim attacks, leaving girls too frightened to go out wearing head scarves. The violence has been on the increase since the September 11 attacks. The Dutch intelligence service, AIVD, has warned that the al-Qa'eda network is stealthily taking root in Dutch society by preying on disaffected Muslim youth with Jihad video cassettes circulating in mosques, cafes and prisons.

This is what happens when the state interferes with natural social processes, such assimilation. The example of the US shows that the melting pot approach works just. It is only when the state decides to promote one group or another the social sets in. As always, the state is not your friend.

Today is 'Asylum Day', at least on the BBC which is devoting a whole series of programmes to analysis and discussion of immigration.

From what I can gather, these programmes will include a discussion on the plight (or otherwise) or real-life immigration cases and members of the public will be invited to join in with their views (which, knowing the BBC, will be carefully edited).

I do not believe that the timing of these broadcasts is accidental. For several years now, the debate about immigration has been growing more intense and widespread, despite (but maybe because of) the entire issue being kept scrupulously off the mainstream political agenda. The last few years, in particular, have witnessed a cavalier and wholly dishonest wielding of the 'R' word whenever any public figure has tried to get the matter on the agenda.

Even this attempt by the BBC at public discussion is being frowned upon by the Home Office:

"Asylum raises many complex and emotive issues and we always welcome debate on them - it is important, however, that the debate is rational and measured," she said.

"The BBC has often covered these issues in considered manner, but we have some serious concerns about some of the content of the BBC's 'asylum day'."

I get the feeling that by claiming that 'we always welcome debate', Ms.Hughes is really saying that she doesn't want any debate at all. Just what is she so frightened of? I hardly think the BBC are going to turn this media event into a platform for extreme nationalism. Does she think that any public airing of these issues is going to open the floodgates to an atavistic army of potential 'ethnic cleansers'? If so, it betrays just how little confidence our public officials have in the public they preside over.

I take the view that slamming the lid on this issue does not help matters. It has resulted in the fomentation of surly resentment and widespread hostility without such things being countered by intelligent or rational argument. It is another example of why free speech is, in fact, so less harmful than paranoid attempts to prohibit so-called 'hate speech'.

However, it is because the existance of this resentment is no longer deniable that, I suspect, the BBC feels it is time to grasp some sort of nettle and open up the debate but I equally suspect that they will generate more heat than light. There is an immigration problem in Britain but it is a problem caused by the fact that the regulation is based on the entirely wrong-headed premise that we should only permit 'political refugees' to settle here but keep 'economic migrants' out (hence 'immigrants' are now referred to as 'asylum-seekers'). Critics of the current system claim that, despite alleged controls, economic migrants are still getting in and that we must 'tighten up' the system so that only 'genuine' political refugees are offered a home in Britain.

To my mind this is fluorescent absurdity. What we are really saying is that we must shut the door in the face of people like Charles Forte but extend a big, warm welcome to people like Abu Hamza. Surely this should work precisely the other way around?

Of course the idea of letting in only political refugees is intimately related to the welfarist principle which, in my view, is the root of the poison. It is almost an article of faith among the 'chattering classes' that native British opposition to immigrants is driven by 'xenophobia' and 'racism' and is, therefore, all bad. However I disagree with this. I think a lot (maybe most) of the animus towards immigrants is in fact motivated by a wholly justified resentment of foreigners benefitting from a welfare system to which they have never contributed.

The British are not, by nature, an insular or tribal people but they do possess a profound sense of fairness which is currently being sorely tested by an unfair arrangement; an arrangement which wrongly turns away bright, talented contributors and actively encourages dependent, tax-consuming burdens.

It is a high time that there was a more open public debate about immigration because the current system does not need 'reform' it needs to be turned on its head. I am not at all confident that the attempts by the BBC to manage this debate will go any way to achieving a desirable and workable outcome.

Given its intimate association with brutal and murderous 'ethnic cleansing' it is entirely understandable that the term 'population transfer' raises more than a few hackles.

But it need not necessarily be something to fear. Provided it is thought of in terms of free trade, then I can see a peaceful and voluntary process of population transfer as a beneficial thing.

Indeed, the process already appears to be underway:

A husband and wife in Minnesota, a college student in Georgia, a young executive in New York. Though each has distinct motives for packing up, they agree the United States is growing too conservative and believe Canada offers a more inclusive, less selfish society.

"For me, it's a no-brainer," said Mollie Ingebrand, a puppeteer from Minneapolis who plans to go to Vancouver with her lawyer husband and 2-year-old son.

Nor are these itchy feet to be found exclusively in the USA. There are people in Britain too, like this correspondent to the Guardian (concerning the death of Dr.David Kelly), who see Canada as the 'Golden Medina':

I think he HAD TO BE RUBBED OUT. He knew too much, where the bodies were buried, so his had to be buried as well. Maybe you're more honest than we are: the media and the government are co=conspirators here. So good luck. I"m moving to Canada, land of the free.

Some may see this as a tragedy but I see it as an indirect means of slashing public spending. Surely it is preferable for all these guardianistas and tax-consumers to converge upon one country where they can stew in each other's misery rather than staying where they are, demanding entitlements and whining interminably about the unfairness of it all. Together, they can truly build the kind of society they want to live in.

Of course this process need not, and should not, be a one-way street. Canada has no shortage of ambitious, hard-working people who might see their futures as somewhat sullen in the Land of the Puppeteers. The easiest solution is for them to pack their bags and head off to less stultifying climes where their talent and energy will be both appreciated and rewarded.

In fact, that is what loads of Canadians have been doing:

But every year since 1977, more Canadians have emigrated to the United States than vice versa — the 2001 figures were 5,894 Americans moving north, 30,203 Canadians moving south.

Quite what this means for Canada in the long run I dare not even imagine but for the rest of us it can only be good news. Carry on, I say.

[My thanks to the Brothers Judd for the link and to Peter Cuthbertson for the Guardian letter.]

In a comment on a posting in the small hours of this morning (how time does the opposite of fly (it's the blogging that flies) when you are blogging) about the fall of the Roman Empire, Terence Kealy, etc., Guessedworker said this:

If one is looking at parallels with the present day they exist a-plenty. The starkest and most fundamental is the destruction we allow of our own traditions and mores, by and large in the pursuit of self-gratification. Close behind that is the weakness of understanding, the blind altruism that permits a river of foreign humanity to flow into our midst.

These are great moral failings then and now, against which any failing in the promotion of science and technology is decidedly minor.

To which I replied thus:

Guessedworker

I couldn't agree with you less.

One of the very best things about the best bits of the West (USA and the UK definitely tagging along behind) is the way that rivers of humanity flood in and join in, and absolutely central to this is the radically progressive tradition of technological activity that is now thoroughly bedded down in our civilisation, unlike in Ancient Rome. There's nothing altruistic about the USA's immigration policies. They're one of the big reasons the USA is racing ahead of (e.g.) Japan now.

It's the stagnant social and economic systems which don't attract foreigners, like (again) late Imperial Rome, whose population fell, as Kealey explains.

And for from the pursuit of fun being an attack on our great traditions, that's one of them, for goodness sakes.

And nor do immigrants "flooding" into the USA challenge USA tradition. THEY ARE USA TRADITION!!!! And they damn well know it. They quickly become state of the art Americans, and raise state of the art American families.

I'm less optimistic about similar processes working their magic in the UK, and even less so about the same thing in continental Europe, but somewhat optimistic about that even so.

And the always quotable T. Hartin then offered this distinction:

Not to highjack this thread into an immigration flamewar (which, come to think of it, we haven't had for awhile), but this is primarily true with respect to legal immigration only, and even in that arena is less true as the ideal of assimilation into American culture is diluted by multi-culti diversity crackpottery.

Illegal immigration and unassimilated immigrants (illegals tend not to assimilate) are a potentially major problem for any nation, especially one built primarily on a shared culture rather than a shared ancestry.

At which point I did another comment saying, we'll have this argument around a new posting, please. (Although my exact words were not "please" but: Sieg Heil!)

Personally I am fairly optimistic that multi-culti diversity crackpottery is not nearly as strong as the cultural DNA of the USA, but the legal/illegal thing I am less sure about.

But one thought: it's surely true that the children of illegals, born in the USA, then become fully legal legals themselves, do they not? And won't they want to join the cultural mainstream, learn English, shave the corners off their religious complaints about the USA, etc. etc.?

Joanne Jacobs has some good stuff over at her blog about the desire of USA Hispanics to be educated in English, rather than bilingually. If that's so, that's the kind of thing that makes me an optimist about this stuff.

Pluls, at the risk of hijacking this posting, I wonder, is there a tendency for citizens of the USA not to quite see how strong and distinct their own culture is, because they live right inside it and can't see it from outside, and in particular they can't see the enormous contrast between it and other cultures, most especially non-Western ones?

And am I, being British and having hardly done any serious travelling, similarly blind to the distinctiveness and strength of British culture, and hence am I liable to miss just how much, e.g. Brit Muslims, are already rapidly becoming British? It's a thought.

This is just the kind of thing that Samizdata commenters, who never cease to impress me, could illuminate really well.

By now, quite a few Samizdata readers will have learned of the infuriating plight of my good friends and fellow bloggers Andrew Ian Dodge and his lovely fiance Sasha Castel. They were able to spend just a few days in the UK owing to officials carping about (alleged) glitches in Andrew's paperwork. Andrew and Sasha were forced to fly back to Maine earlier this week.

What is obviously incredible, considering that these are two citizens from Britain's No 1 ally, is that they were treated in this way while, of course, thousands of folk enter this country successfully on false papers, or with no papers at all. Often many such folk disappear. Such people may even pose a security risk. The contrast between the treatment of Andrew and Sasha on the one hand and that of folk possibly entering Britain with hostile intent hardly needs to be stressed.

I guess this shows that as far as rules about emigration and immigration are concerned, we need a thorough overhaul in ways that encourage enterprising and good folk to live here like Andrew and Sasha. On a more positive note, may I recommend readers to look at Jim Bennett's An Anglosphere Primer, which sets out ways in which these issues might be resolved.

In the meantime, my best wishes to two of the feistiest bloggers in the business. Britain has lost the chance to be host to two fine writers, not to mention two of the biggest heavy rock and opera nuts around!

Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner warned the British public today in a television interview that Islamic terrorists linked to al-Qa'eda remain at large in Britain and pose a continuing security threat. He believes that Osama bin Laden and his henchmen are seeking to make use of existing terror networks in plans for further attacks.

"We know that there are certain links with al-Qa'eda and, of course, the link with North Africa is proven."

Presumably, this has nothing to do with Britain's policy on asylum seekers that allows a Taliban soldier who fought British and American troops in Afghanistan to be granted asylum here because he fears persecution from the new Western-backed government in Kabul (as already mentioned by Perry in the post below).

Although this is the first known case of a Taliban soldier being granted asylum in this country, I have no doubt that many have entered Britain with false documents and identities. They may need not bother anymore. Unless the policy changes, the successful application may open the doors to hundreds of other similar requests.

I wonder whether in few months' time the police chief will insist that his officers are 'on top of' the situation. It seems that the left hand does not know what the right is doing.

Indeed, the state is not your friend.

I have long known that the world is essentially a madhouse with no locks on the doors, but when I read that a former Taliban soldier who fought against British and US forces in Afghanistan will be given asylum in Britain because the pro-western government in Kabul is 'persecuting' him, I start to really wonder at what the word 'asylum' really means. Did rational people object to former members of the National German Socialist Workers Party being 'persecuted' in the aftermath of World War Two?

A few days ago, American bloggers Andrew and Sasha arrived in Britain, neither of whom have ever fought against British soldiers, or called for the death of Christians and Jews, or joined any organisations like Al-Muhajirun which aims to make Britain a muslim caliphate...

...and yet they were nevertheless detained at the airport upon arrival in the UK on Thursday and grilled for nine hours before being provisionally allowed into the country. In fact Sasha's blog was examined by the Immigration agents and its content used as the excuse to initially deny her entry. It is strange that the content of Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad's website does not seem to get him kicked out of the country.

The state is not your friend.

As an anti-statist, free market capitalist libertarian, I am often 'accused' of being on the political right. Yet as so many libertarians will tell you, many of my ilk refuse to accept the statist left/right axis as having any relevance to us. One only has to listen to a pro-immigration libertarian such as myself and then listen to most Tories in the UK/Republicans in the USA to see an issue which shows the differences.

We often find that neo-conservatives agree with libertarian antipathy to Marxist and Keynesian state centred economics and the wealth & liberty destroying regulatory state. Yet to think that advocating laissez-faire makes us 'right wing' is to misunderstand just how large the cultural and philosophical gulf is between most true (i.e. capitalist) libertarians and most conservatives. Conservatives are about conserving, they are about continuity above all else... however libertarians are about liberty, conserving it where it can be found but also tearing down whatever impeeds it, regardless of whose sacred cows get gored in the process. We may wish to conserve what is objectively good but otherwise we are as Promethean as the Marxist left.

In the Daily Telegraph article Britain risks huge influx of east Europe migrants by Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor, we see loaded language even in the title: 'risk'. How about calling the article:

'Britain opens doors to those formerly oppressed by Communism'

or maybe:

'Britain steals a march on Continental Europe in grab for east European labour'

But no. The thrust of the article is that only the wonderful Tories want to 'protect us' from the Eastern Hordes.

Ministers said that allowing migrant workers from these countries into Britain at the earliest opportunity would help the economy. But Oliver Letwin, the shadow home secretary, challenged the Government to explain why it had not made use of the transitional arrangements. "We live in a small and crowded island," he said. "Why does the Government consider it appropriate not to have transitional controls when other EU countries have imposed them."

Well it just so happens that the Telegraph article I am quoting from actually links to an article here on Samizdata.net from the Telegraph external links sidebar (cheers, guys!) called Why do people think that Britain is overcrowded? It really is not overcrowded and the idea we are somehow not going to be able to assimilate other Europeans is laughable. Oliver Letwin does not really care about providing the British economy with high initiative eastern European workers and entrepreneurs, he is just concerned with playing politics and attacking anything the dismal Blair government does, even when it is entirely correct.

Perhaps this is my own personal jaundice and nothing else but I seem to have found myself in an 'issue-trough'. I think this is what journalists call a 'slow news day'. I can seem to find anything worthy of truly sinking my teeth into and grinding away. I do detect the onset of a series of 'Great World-Shaking Events' in the offing but they're teetering back-and-forth on the precipice so tantalisingly that they're starting to lull me into a hypnotic trance.

Well, something will come along pretty soon, I'll bet. But, in the meantime, I shall use this hiatus in the global narrative to indulge in a bit of mischief-making.

It's becoming quite clear that the EU is adopting an increasingly anti-American character. As illustrated in this post from Perry a while back, the EU elites are actively marketing their project as being the plausible rival to the American 'hyperpower', the antidote to US-style 'cowboy' diplomacy and vigourous (which they see as 'virulent') market ideology.

The grumbling and foot-dragging from various European governments over US plans for Saddam Hussein are a symptom of this background antipathy not the cause of it. It's already causing a rift in relations and that rift is only going to get worse. Having given up trying to forge an identity for their superstate, the EU elite are having to rely increasingly on an anti-identity and that anti-identity is Anti-American.

So, what could the US government do about this? Work round it? Fight against it? Try to mollify it? Options which are all expensive, difficult and far from guaranteed to succeed.

No, I can think of a better solution: open up the US to immigration from Europe.

It's a policy that would have nothing but nothing but benefits for the US:

1. It would attract vast numbers of bright, young, well-educated Europeans grown weary of the burden of their increasingly fossilised economies. They would sprout wings and fly in the more entrepreneurial environment of the USA.

2. European immigrants would be able to assimilate seamlessly in a heartbeat and, more importantly, they would want to.

3. It's a no-cost policy. Not a penny of US taxpayers money would have to be spent.

4. It's a politically winning policy. The American left could hardly object unless they want to stand on an anti-immigration platform; the isolationist right won't mind because, let's face it, the overwhelming majority of Europeans are white, and libertarians cannot possibly have any cause for complaint. Thus all potential political opposition within the US is neutralised.

5. America gets progressively richer and more dynamic while Europe's enarques are left lording it over a constituency consisting of pensioners, cretins and Al-Qaeda sleepers.

So, if the EUnuchs get too far up George Bush's nose, may I suggest that a heady revenge can be obtained by a mere stroke of the Presidential pen by which he could consign the aforesaid EUnuchs to a slow, lingering, humiliating death. It really is a win-win-win-win policy. In fact, from an American point of view, I cannot think of a downside.

Oh yes, sorry, I can think of a downside; some Americans living in the vicinity of any Ports of Entry risk being trampled to death in the rush.

So. Okay. Like right now, for example, the Haitians need to come to America. But some people are all: "What about the strain on our resources?" But it's like, when I had this garden party for my father's birthday, right, I said R.S.V.P. because it was a sit-down dinner. But people came that, like, did not R.S.V.P. So I was like totally buggin'. I had to haul ass to the kitchen, redistribute the food, squish in extra place settings, but by the end of the day it was like, the more the merrier. And so, if the government can just get to the kitchen, rearrange some things, we could certainly party with the Haitians. And in conclusion may I please remind you that it does not say R.S.V.P. on the Statue of Liberty. [Applause] Thank you very much.
-Cher (Alicia Silverstone) in the movie Clueless

I don't like "Yes you did" "No I didn't" conversations in newsgroups so I'm wary of doing so here. Brian refers to the horrors faced by mixed-married couples in Yugoslavia. I think we'll find that these are precisely the people who didn't start looking for an ethnic or religious war with their neighbours. Oscar Wilde would no doubt have suggested that matrimonial strife was amply sufficient. Alexander the Great tried to solve racial problems by ordering his officers to marry Persians. Napoleon suggested that if the French all married blacks then the issue would be ended once and for all. Both were poisoned for their pains. Next time someone compares these tyrants to Hitler I'll dig out the reference.

As for my awkward posts: suck eggs Brian! and let's look forward to Zinedine Zidane (a Moslem who's idea of terror is firing footballs into a goal full of terrified innocent defenders) versus Nicky Butt in the second round, assuming Cameroon don't cripple half the England team in the 'friendly'.

Brian Micklethwait should try applying an individualist approach to the problem of Islamic fundamentalism. Is Mohammed Al Fayed a viper in the nest of free-market(ish) Europe? Perhaps, but he's not a threat to Western Civilization because of his religious beliefs. The Turkish kebab shop in Tachbrook Street (now demolished by predatory developers ) with the Galatasaray and Arsenal football fan may be included on census forms as a "non-white European" to terrify drawing room society, but I was less frightened of his political opinions than I am by some of Sean Gabb's, and his cooking was a lot less threatening than Brian's.

Go to an Italian restaurant in central London. Many of the raven haired waitresses are no more Italian than I am, and no more Catholic than Osama bin Laden. They're wine drinking economic migrants from Kosovo whose parents had "Moslem" on their communist era identity cards. Sure, add them up and you get 40 per cent of the population of a grotty flat in Finchley or Norwood. The other 60 per cent are as likely to be Serbs, Croats or Slovaks all with their nominal ethnic or religious hatreds. How come they aren't slaughtering each other in Ballards Lane or West Norwood High Street? As individuals, Moslems are no worse than Glaswegians. It's when a mob looking for a fight at a football match run into you that they're a nuisance.

The problem isn't immigration... Its immigration and a welfare state. We have to choose one or the other. I make no bones in saying that the NHS, comprehensive education, state benefits, council housing, free abortions (no charge to the user) all have to go. All that immigration has done is accelarate the process of creating an underclass. If we'd had the welfare state in the seventeenth century the Jews and Dutch would have a reputation in Britain for being alcoholics, single mothers, violent etc. No doubt Jewish fundamentalist groups attacking the decadence of the West would be scaring Gabb and Micklethwait with demands for shop closures on Saturday, modest clothing for women and demands for apologies for anti-semitic persecutions. Instead some of them went into banking.

Launching an air strikes on Harrods and rounding up all Moslem males over the age of five for an unstated purpose is not the answer, it seems more likely to worsen matters and destroy the moral meaning of the West. Actually the libertarians got it right who said that the best way to prevent another Oklahoma bombing would be to get Clinton out of the White House, and a relatively non-interventionist government in her place.

The best way to improve race relations in the UK is for the state to get out of welfare and stop appearing to spend white taxpayers money on layabouts who happen to be black. The state should however either get out of policing, or vigourously enforce laws against violent crime and crimes against property. Islamic sentences for property crimes would seem to me preferable to the present lunacy in Western Europe.

Fundamentalist terrorism is not uniquely Islamic. The shopkeeping Moslems are as afraid of a nuke in London as anyone, they are also pretty worried that they might become scapegoats for Brian's fears. War on Moslems because of Bin Laden is like having a war on Californian hippies because of Charles Manson.

In the early hours of Sunday morning (the 19th - last night as I finish this) I watched BBC News 24, although following that link will probably only get you the operation as a whole, not the story I'm about to refer to. Which was: John Simpson talking, in Holland, with a Dutch journalist, who interestingly had just returned to Holland after spending a decade in South Africa. I didn't see the beginning of the interview and I therefore didn't catch the name of the Dutchman. Peter something, I think. It was on just before 3 am.

For the time being anyway, democracy is doing its job. There was mass unease in Holland, and the ballot boxes had registered it. In Pim Fortuyn, Holland – indeed I would go further and say Europe – found a major politician who knew how to talk about "multiculturalism" and all that, in a way that does justice to the fears that regular people (by which I mean non-Muslim people) have about it, without being blatantly racist in the manner of the BNP (British National Party), or, if I understand him and his followers correctly, Jean Marie Le Pen.

Simpson mentioned that interview he did with Fortuyn a few days before Fortuyn's death. He recalled that when he had said that something that Fortuyn had said to him "sounded very like racism", Fortuyn had got extremely angry, for this was a distinction Fortuyn (unlike Simpson, it would seem) well understood. Islam is not a race, and being hostile to it,