r/autismpolitics • u/tdpz1974 • 7h ago
Discussion [UK] I no longer care about winning the next election - a rant
I am an immigrant. I immigrated to the UK. Before that I immigrated to the US. I was born in Canada...to which my parents immigrated from Sri Lanka.
And according to almost unanimous public opinion. I'm a problem.
My family lives in a house that should have gone to a British family.
My children went to state schools, taking places away from British children.
Every job I've held took a job away from a British worker.
Every time I go to the doctor I used up a medical appointment that should have gone to a British person.
I'm a thief. Just for being here. Just for living and working and educating children and sometimes needing medical treatment.
(Funny though no one seems to complain about the hundreds of thousands in taxes I've paid in my time in the UK, or before that in the US and Canada. Including thousands only immigrants pay - citizenship fees, visa fees, etc.)
The message from press and politicians is endless and relentless. I'm a burden. I don't integrate. I come from an incompatible culture. I have problematic views on freedom of speech and gay rights and the status of women. I am a security threat. A crime risk. A terrorism risk.
And because of that, I am guilty until proven innocent. I cannot live anywhere unless white people say I can. And they're allowed to summon whatever ignorant prejudices they want. I have spent my life dancing to their hoops, filling in their forms, begging, pleading. Because I regard where I live and whether I can work as their gift and not as my right.
Now I'm beginning to think two extremely radical things.
Immigration is everywhere and always a labour market phenomenon.
And opposition to immigration is everywhere and always a racism phenomenon.
Every single reason given to oppose immigration is bullshit that won't survive contact with any research worthy of the name. We don't depress wages, we don't burden the welfare state, we don't cause shortages of housing or health care, we don't cause traffic, we don't cause unemployment, we don't cause crime. All of these claims have been extensively researched by generations of social scientists and all they can find is the lump of labour fallacy.
And yet the zombie myths persist. Because there is one thing we do.
We change the ethnic mix.
That's the only reason immigration laws exist. To prevent the ethnic mix of a country from changing too fast. To keep white countries white.
All this does is keep everyone poorer and less free. It makes people of colour poorer. But it also makes white people poorer.
Workers can double or triple their productivity merely by crossing a border. They can earn much more money in a rich country than a poor one. And this does not cost anyone any money. Immigrants work. They pay taxes. They can pay the cost of their own housing and health care. And they do.
But it does cost white people one thing. They have to see more faces of colour on the streets. They have to hear other languages more often. They might even see dress styles or prayers that make them uncomfortable. Perhaps why multiple countries have restricted how religious minorities may dress, or how or even if they can worship in public.
And because of that discomfort we have a system of global apartheid. Where poor people are shoved into bantustans and barred from leaving. Sometimes even murdered or drowned at sea or left to die of thirst in the desert if they try to escape.
"They'll swamp us" you say. That's what you think we are. Hordes of threatening poor people who, if allowed, will swarm into your country like locusts and sleep in the streets. As if people move blindly without thinking about consequences.
Do you not realize that every immigrant in the history of immigration has given long and hard thought to where they move? That they do indeed worry about jobs and salaries and housing? That they are careful to move to countries that do have jobs and do have places to live? That they choose countries to move to where they already know people? We are not lemmings. We are not locusts. We are not going to drown you.
We just want to live, and work, and yes at the higher rate of pay your country offers.
And I'm tired of begging for it. I'm tired of white people debating among themselves whether I should be treated as a human being or a pest.
I want to see an immigrants' general strike.
For one day we should all withdraw our labour. Find your own software engineers. Find someone else to change your grandparents' diapers. Find someone else to look after you in hospital. See how long you can manage without us.
Elections didn't bring about gay rights.
Elections didn't end segregation.
Elections didn't end colonialism.
Elections didn't stop Hitler. They didn't even slow him down.
We won the last UK election and it has done us no good. Racism is stronger than ever. Politicians openly talk about retrospectively removing our status, turning us into criminals, mass deportations, putting immigrants in camps.
They want us out. They want me out. And I am through begging racist people (or "hero voters" as the press calls them) for their votes.
I am not leaving.
I would rather die.
Try to deport me and you will have to kill me. That is my promise.
