Time To Confront The Anti-Immigrants Hysteria In The West

We are now all familiar with the anti-immigrants hysteria sweeping the West, leading to some far-right parties gaining power in some countries in Europe and Trump’s return to the White House. Nothing new. Their hiistory is replete with it.

The arrogant, disrespectful and discriminatory treatment of foreign students and migrant workers by the Western powers are long established phenomena. They come and go. The supposedly left-leaning labour unions and parties have been the dominant forces in nurturing the anti-immigrant sentiments, only to be outdone by far-right racist parties, forgetting how Mussolini and Hitler skillfully exploited the concerns of workers to sweep to power in Germany and Italy after WWI.The Left is therefore equally to blame for the anti-immigrant hysteria sweeping the West. They should be told that we are only following our looted monies derived from unfair trade and the billions regularly looted from the South by the Collaborators they support or often imposed on us through regime changes. The few thousands living in squalid camps in France, Libya or Morocco and trying to cross the English channel or the Mediterranean in risky boats would have found jobs in Iraq, Syria and Libya had they not destroyed those countries.

The victims have themselves accepted it as the norm, and only few dare protest and do so. It took a long time before the abominable Windrush cases in the UK came to light. After all, almost all whites and their institutions were congenitally racist until recently. That the efforts made since the 1960s to curb racism are being dismantled and rolled back is a glaring fact, and cannot be denied. That this must be confronted can no longer be overlooked. Back to the barricades then, comrades and all sane people!

The whole pattern of abuse is based on the obtuse principle developed under slavery and colonialism that they were doing the enslaved or the colonized favour by either enslaving or colonizing them (the whiteman’s burden). The Governor of Florida even want to introduce a course on the advantages of being enslaved. A Republican African-American vying for office wrote years back that he wanted enslavement re-introduced, so if you see some black faces supporting the anti-immigrant whites, that is also not strange. Accordingly, students and migrants are seen as receiving a favour by admitting them into the West, just as they did favours to the slaves or colonized by enslaving or colonizing them. That is the mentality.

Truth to tell, some descendants of African slave raiders and traders have the same principle and mentality. They claimed their ancestors did favour to the captives by selling them, as they could have killed them, just as happened to the millions more they killed rather than sold. After abolition, with a glut of captives without buyers, some actually slaughtered them like Iowan cattle farmers reducing stock. And, aren't we all aware of the expulsions of and/or attacks on fellow Africans in various African countries? The xenophobia in S. Africa against fellow Africans is simply dizzying. It has been a while since GUTA led Ghanaian traders to barricade the shops of Nigerians, but I doubt if they have changed their mindset.

Coming from the Ewe ethnic compelled by nature (poor land or lack of land, sea erosion) and political and socio-economic neglect to be perpetual migrants (settlers) in Ghana and from the Congo to Senegal for over a century now, I know that being a migrant is not an easy life in even the country one comes from. You come poor, they despise you. You succeed, they hate you and concoct all kinds of nasty things about you. I had spent much time fighting the ethnocentric bigots on social media. My articles against them are there as evidence. Charity begins at home, so let us take the logs from our own eyes first and be nice to each other first.

Fellow Africans were the first enslavers and still collaborators with the whites who want to create what has been named Global Apartheid in the names, when their claims of forming a Global Village was rebuffed as just a rhetorical ethic. The defunct Copenhagen Accord, for instance, aimed at zero migration into the EU. The message was clear. Stay in you shithole countries until we need your services and give you “pass” to come and work in our country. You were stupid to believe in those slogans about free trade and free movement of capital and labour. Yes, we taught you that, but have you forgotten we also taught you that it is just an imaginary perfect market, which doesn’t exist?

The truth of the matter is that migrants are hardworking, most exploited category of workers, as various researches had shown. Migrants put in more in wealth creation than they take back. After Brexit, it was disclosed that Polish migrant workers esrned £20bn but remitted only £10bn, that being spent in the UK, thereby directly boosting the British economy and revitalising many declining rural towns. But with even that information, Britons were on Yahoo news complaining that the Poles had taken their £10bn away, completely oblivious to the fact that the Poles earned the money, not them; and that much of that would have been spent on British exports to Poland, and thus not leaving or returning to the UK anyway. Besides, it creates goodwill for the UK with grateful relations of Polish migrants who would have turned to buying British exports rather than say German exports to Poland. I was shocked by the ignorance and stupidity of the British public, and told them so.

By taking in migrant workers, countries get cheaply manpower they did not spend a cent in bringing up and educating. It now costs over £200,000 to bring up a child to the age of 16 in the UK! Just imagine the cost savings of pouching experienced nurses, doctors, engineers, ITC personnel, or even retaining foreign students who paid inflated tuition fees, which keep some second cycle and universities afloat in the UK. Some private secondary schools have taken up recruiting students from Ghana and Nigeria themselves by sending recruitment teams to those countries. Some of those schools will shut down in a jiffy without such foreign recruits. I personally think our wealthy people should be prevented from sending their kids to basic schools abroad and paying for their expenses through remittances.

We need a paradigm shift in thinking, in view of the demographic decline in the North countries and the increasing dependence on migrant workers from the South. With Trump even planning to give Green Card to foreign students, the stage is being set to rationalize the pouching of expensively educated human capital from the South in the Global Apartheid they want to create. That bogus principle of pretending that you are doing favour to those you are exploiting and benefitting yourself must be challenged. It is what's sweeping Europe, with far-right parties on the ascendancy, and Trump's anti-immigrants actions. Time to call their bluff.

First, the victims must liberate their own minds and change attitudes. They must learn that they are rather doing favours to the host nations, and are often not paid correctly for their skills. The NHS recruiting senior nurses with midwifery qualifications and over ten years ward experiences from Ghana and Nigeria and paying them as if they have just graduated from nursing school must be a thing of the past. Certain recent human rights abusing conditions such as spouses would not be allowed to accompany one are abhorrent.

The governments of countries where the migrants come from must also be re-educated and adopt the migrants as the expensive exports of human capital that they are, treat them well and protect them from arbitrary treatment by host authorities. They must demand compensation from the recipient countries for all the foreign workers. Yes, an agreed percentage of the taxes they pay must be remitted to those countries, for instance. After all, when footballers are recruited from teams in Africa, fees are paid, according to FIFA rules. It is true that African players complain of being cheated in these transfers too, but that is something which must be rectified too.

This is just to introduce the topic, so I shall end it here.

ANDY C.Y. KWAWUKUME