3c St Immigration Uk 1

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2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

All together now

1London can claim to be the most multiculturalplace in the world, its population drawn from every

race, nation and religionon earth. But what aboutthe rest of Britain? How many new immigrants

move here, who are they and where do they settle?

As a follow-up to last year's award-winning issue

charting immigrant communities in the capital, Leo

Benedictus set out on an even bigger task: to meet

these populations across the whole country. The

result, which ranges from the century-old population

of Cardiff Somalis to the much newer Portuguese in

Lincolnshire, is a snapshot of the extraordinary

cultural richnessof the UK today

2This is Britain's second great age of immigration. It seems to be passing with much less fanfarethan the first one.For the past decade, a wave ofnew comers have been sweeping across the country, scattering new cultures,languages and religions into almost every town and village. In 1997, a total of 63,000 work permitholders and their

dependants came to Britain. In 2003, it was 119,000. Altogether, between 1991 and 2001, the UK population

increased by 2.2 million, some 1.14 million of whom were born abroad. And all this was before EU enlargement in

May 2004, which pulled in 130,000 more people from the new member states in its first year alone. The last time

this country saw immigration on this scale, in the 1950s and 60s, there were white riots in the streets. Why are there

none today?

3Clearly Britain has mellowedsomewhat since then. The first immigration age was a painful process, particularlyfor the immigrants themselves, but it helped give the country more of a taste for its second helping. In public life, at

least, it is plainly no longer acceptable to dislike people simply for their foreignness. This is good and helpful, but it

has left those who dislike the idea of immigration with little room for manoeuvre. Which is why the figure of the

fraudulent asylumseeker spinning tales of woe so he can help himself to a piece of our economy - or even our

benefits - has become such a popular target for the instinctivexenophobe. In some parts of Britain, the word"Kosovan" is now more likely to be shouted in the street than the word " Paki", even when the accused is

Portuguese.

4Asylum seekers and refugees(people who have been granted asylum) may also have served as a distraction fromthe general immigration boom. They certainly need more support from the state than migrant workers, and their

numbers did indeed rise worldwide in the late 1990s. Nevertheless, they remain just a fraction of the immigration

picture in Britain. In 2003, when the asylum panic was at its height, there were 1.4 million overseas workers in the

UK and just 49,370 asylum seekers. Now, thanks to some extremely tough government love, the total seeking

asylum is closer to 10,000.

5But liberal attitudes and the asylum distraction are not the only things that make this second boom different from

the first one. For a start, immigration is no longer something that only happens in big cities. Most towns of any sizenow have at least one established community from overseas, and scarcely a corner of the country remains that has

not been touched by the process, painting a pattern too complex and changeable to depict in detail. Researching this

issue, we would often hear rumours of garden centres in Devon that were staffed entirely by Poles, or bands of

itinerantPortuguese working on farms in the Scottish borders, but a map of all these micro-communities would

simply be impossible to draw.

6The immigrants themselves are also far more diversenow than they were in the 1950s. All the significantimmigrant and immigrant descended communities in Britain, are still dominated by the traditional groups of

Caribbeans, Chinese, south Asians and Irish. But the new arrivals of the past decade are as likely to come from

Zimbabwe, eastern Europe, the Middle East or the Philippines.


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7The trends of the second immigration age may be clearest in London, but a separate story is also developingoutside the capital, where it is now common place for employers to find staff through agencies that recruit abroad,

often through the internet. This applies as much to large organisations such as the NHS, which has brought in many

thousands of health professionals from overseas in the past decade, as it does to farmers in Norfolk or hotels in the

Isles of Scilly.

8The arrival of immigrants in smaller groups than before, and from a greater variety of places, is probably anotherreason why they have caused fewer shockwaves, and substantial improvements in legislation and policing have

certainly helped. But the main root of our comparative harmony - the theme that emergedmost strongly from the

hundreds of interviews conducted for this issue - is that we have simply become more accepting of difference.

9The great neglected truth of British multiculturalism is that every day, millions of different people across thecountry are actually getting along very nicely, while the bad news gets all the attention. Last year's Home Office

figures show Cumbria to have the highest rate of racially aggravated incidents in England and Wales, with 6.2% of

the county's non-white population reporting some form of racial abusein 2004. Few people would be happy about

this, and yet the other side of the picture is worth considering: 93.8% of non-white people living in Britain's most

intolerant area were left in peace.

10 On many occasions, researching this issue, we asked people if they had had any problems with the locals.Sometimes they had, but far more frequently they hadn't, and said so with a look on their faces that seemed to ask,

"Is that all you journalists want to know about?" Immigration is a subject, like air travel or life in Africa, that we

only hear about when it is making someone miserable. This vastly inflates the extreme fringes of the immigrantexperience, while the fact that most immigrants and their families just lead normal lives gets forgotten.

11On the whole, Britain today is one of the most tolerant and multicultural society there has ever been - in fact it isthe country's multiculturalism that is making it more tolerant. The same Home Office figures show us that

immigration is not the cause of racism; it is its cure. Racist incidents are diminishing fastest where immigrants and

their families are most established, while it is the parts of Britain with least experience of immigration - the rural

areas, on the whole - that are the most hostile.

12The fact that reported incidents have risen substantiallyin Cumbria, Northumbria, Devon and Cornwall, most ofWales, Durham and Cleveland since 2001 reflects the fact that, because of this second immigration boom, many of

the people who live there are rubbing shoulders with foreigners for the first time. It is a new experience, which some

are not comfortable with. But they, or their children, will get used to it. When white Londoners found themselves

living next to Afro-Caribbeans in the 1950s, they rioted in their thousands, but by 2004, less than 1% of London's1.9m non-white people were reporting any racial abuse.

13In time, integrationand acceptance areinevitable. No matter how disadvantaged they were when they arrived,every community seems to settle andprosperin the end. The only variableis the speed at which this happens, and

it is happening far more quickly than it used to.

Discovering New Vocabulary

1. Use the dictionary or the internet to define the underlined bold words in the article. Then create your own sentences

using the words in a different context.


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2. Use the correct underlined bold words from the article to fill in the blanks in the following text not all words will be

used.

Our country has a____________environment. We have people from every______,___________and__________living in

our country. Yet, not everyone can accept___________________Most______________ have______________to live

and work here. Even though most people are very accepting for foreigners, we still have groups of________________people

and they are not very welcoming to them.

There are groups of_____________ foreigners who move from one country to the next and dont seem to want to settle for very

long. They come from many___________backgrounds, and often face________ _________. Sometime things get so bad

between cultures that it creates___________incidents. These incidents are usually started by groups who are___________to

other peoples views, beliefs, or lifestyles that differ from their own. This type of_____________environment can get so bad that

It______________ on the start of a riot.

________________amounts of people in our country are starting to accept__________________and these communities

will become stronger and friendlier for new comers and the nation will______________form this unity.

3.

Comprehension Questions

Give your own opinion and use your own words.

1.

In paragraph 2, explain what the author means by the great age of immigration?

2. Explain why there were riots regarding immigrants in the 1950s and 60sand whatsthe difference today?

3. What did the government do to decrease the amount of people seek asylum in the UK?

4. What groups of immigrants are rumored working in garden centres and farms along the Scottish boards?

5. What four immigrant groups dominate the British communities? And where are the new groups of immigrants arriving

from?

6. What truth is the British media neglecting to report about multiculturalism?

7. In paragraph 11, what did the Home Office figures show about racism in Britain?

8. Why have incidents risen since in areas such as Cumbria, Northumbria, Devon, Cornwall, most of Wales, Durham and

Cleveland ?

9. What was the authors final conclusion about immigration in the UK?

10. What is your personal opinion about immigration in Czech Republic?

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3c St Immigration Uk 1