Why are so many people against immigration while so many of them desperately want to leave?

~ Andrew J Boyer ~

The breeze cooled the sweat on my face as I trudged up the hill on my way to Heptonstall. It didn’t last long, however, as stillness brought back the raging sting of the sun. If it weren’t for the lush views of cobblestone streets and winding, emerald-green hills, I would have sought refuge in a taxi and scurried back home. There was a calmness about Hebden Bridge. The village is renowned as the real life ‘Happy Valley’. Its tranquillity has been unmatched, even by comparison to my visits in the Cotswolds and the Lake District.

“It’s not as hilly down south, you see”, Claire interjected while her husband, Richard, proceeded to explain why they ventured up for the weekend. By this point I was gasping for air, drenched in sweat, trying to manage my wobbly knees. The pair seemed to me like a freshly retired couple. They were unphased by the climb and slightly humoured to be chatting with an American near a church graveyard overlooking the Yorkshire hills.

“London has become such a congested nightmare, and the services have all become overburdened”. Usually when I’m presented with a talking point such as this, I tread with caution. I’ve lived in Britain long enough to know that it could possibly be a valid concern about the inefficient way that public services are handled (which I agree with) or it could very quickly become a grievance against immigration (which I do not). In any case, I cut the conversation short and continued slogging onward up the hill before finding out further.

The irony wasn’t lost on me that in this scenario I was both an immigrant to the UK and a tourist to Hebden Bridge. The cross section between holiday-goers and immigration highlight several knots in English identity that sadly go unaddressed even in some of the most progressive leftist spaces. Borders are imaginary constructs, after all. Refugees, foreigners and immigrants all remain hot button ‘issues’ for Britons to debate, yet during my time as a customer service representative for a holiday company, I took calls from British citizens who seemed to be the most emotionally desperate out of all to leave the country for a bit of sun. Whilst this can be dismissed as a false dichotomy, it’s been widespread enough to cause Spanish anti-tourism protesters to spray water pistols at vacationers, while chanting “tourists, go home”.

As recently as 2015, the United Kingdom was in the top 10 of countries with the largest spread of emigration around the world and was number one out of all countries in Europe. So why then, I thought as I finally reached the top of Heptonstall Road, are so many people against immigration to a nation that so many simultaneously want to leave?

There are some who believe tourism boosts an economy while immigration drains it, but statistics show this is blatantly not true. The Office for National Statistics reports that migrants contribute approximately £83 billion to the UK’s economic output annually. Then, there’s always the inevitable ‘British way of life’ assertion that Britain’s culture is being lost due to some influx of migrants coming in and living differently. This tends to stem from believing that cultures are stagnant, solidified prescriptions of what places should be. In actuality, cultures are fluid and ever-changing, as most forms of human identity are.

As much as any given government would have us believe that cultures fit neatly into nationalistic boxes, the evidence to the contrary produces a magic that simply cannot be bottled up. Britain’s national dish for instance, Chicken Tikka Masala, was said to have been invented by Pakistani-Scottish chef Ali Ahmed Aslam in Glasgow who improvised after running short of ingredients thus creating the beloved curry. Though he’s been credited for the creation of the dish, it was most likely a result of several people’s culinary experimentation. The natural flow of cultural exchange among immigrants and native English citizens led to a dish that is now seen as quintessentially British. This isn’t to say that the colonisation of these countries are to be credited for creating culture — but rather that culture continues to evolve in spite of borders and nation-states.

I think back to the people I met during my short visit to Hebden Bridge, particularly to the sight of it from afar when I was on top of Heptonstall Rd. From its reputation as ‘the Lesbian capital of the UK’ to its popularity amongst writers, musicians, activists and photographers alike, Hebden Bridge reminds me that acceptance and openness drives a culture forward far more than fear mongering and gatekeeping ever could.

Image: Geograph.co.uk, CC BY-SA 2.0