Years back when we looked around as our High Streets in London began to change from what we were used to seeing when growing up as kids, I used to say that immigrants should follow the age-old “when you’re in Rome, act like the Romans” but over the years we have seen immigrants who have tried to integrate face difficulties from both their communities as they get ostracised for deserting their roots as well as difficulties from locals as they are expected to act as second-class citizens and stick with their own (what some now refer to as the ‘Downton Abbey effect’)
What followed in the last 20 years is what some describe as a switch to the ‘Chinatown approach’ where immigrants huddle up in their groups, within their communities and try to maintain their culture and be less adventurous in terms of mixing
Poverty and manipulation for political gain has led to an increase in intolerance and various groups ending up at each other’s throat, with the hard-hit local communities, particularly in the rural areas seeing immigrants as unwanted extras even though those immigrants do all the menial jobs that locals deem beneath themselves.
Many now see multiculturalism as a failed experiment as the regular clash of cultures and failure to integrate have come to the boil. The 90s was a decade in which integration was on the verge of success. It was so, so close. People mingled and most of the bands were diverse and everyone got on with just living and enjoying life. By the end of the 90s, the new wave of immigration that was solely based on multiculturalism was kicking in and by the end of the 2008 recession, the societal divide and fragmentation had reached its peak and we are now facing those consequences across the board, including recent protests etc.
I will not sit as a judge of multiculturalism or integration, that is for politicians to answer to, but our conscience will continue to poke at us as a society.
The minute immigrants arrive, be it as legal, illegal or refugees seeking asylum, as a society, we have to be prepared to give them some preferential treatment and hand them more than the average locals as need that extra help to get started. Tough as that is, for locals who see themselves as being below the poverty line, to accept, in the long run, it is the only way to avoid problems. The better immigrants integrate, the more useful they will later be to society and the more useful their offsprings will be to that society. We do not have to love them, but for our own good, we should care for them and help them integrate, given they are here to stay
What we currently have is this melting pot of cultures that incessantly clash and neither side is prepared to compromise!
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