It’s Not A Question of Keeping Out. It’s A Question of What Happens Once They’re In

 I’ve had a glance of the news story of Shamina Begum, the 21-year-old former ISIL child bride who has been denied entry into the UK. The story of Shamina Begum can be found at:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/26/uk-top-court-says-shemima-begum-cannot-return-to-britain

 

There are, as far as I can see, only two mitigating factors in Ms. Begum’s favour. One, is the fact that she was 15 and therefore a minor when she ran off to join ISIL (though, while I may sympathise with who wasn’t silly at 15 – joining a group that happily butchers people for the world’s press is beyond silly) and the other being that it’s quite clear that under the letter of international law that you cannot just strip people of their only citizenship just like that.

Other than that, it’s hard to feel sorry for Ms. Begum. She grew up in the UK with all the perks of British citizenship and yet she chose to run off to join a known enemy of her country of birth and for her to complain about losing the citizenship of a country she chose to fight against, now that things have turned south for her, does sound wrong.

I’m going to leave the wider legal and moral debate to the experts. However, I will make the point that when it comes to migration, most people only look at the most basic question – do you let them in or not. Donald Trump famously framed the argument with his talk about building a great big wall. Most of his supporters gobbled up his argument with glee, arguing that keeping out undesirable people would keep them secure.

The general rule of thumb when it comes to whether or not you let people into a country or not, it boils down to money and skills. Everyone wants the very rich and working professionals. When it comes to the poor and uneducated, nobody wants them. In the Singapore context, our immigration policy can be described as “those who smell” and “those whose money we’re trying to smell.”

While countries around the world compete to “smell the money” of a certain class of immigrants, they grudgingly admit the people from the “smelly” category because, well as countries prosper the citizens lose the desire to do the “dangerous” and “dirty” jobs. In USA it’s the Mexicans, in Germany it’s the Turks and here in Singapore we have our usual gang or Bangladeshi, Indian and Pilipino workers.

The migrants from the “smelly” group have an unfortunate fate in as much as when things go sour, they get blamed for all sorts of shit. Apparently, the Mexicans in the US steal jobs in the same way that the Pakistanis steal them in the UK and so on and so on. Donald Trump famously described Mexicans as being “rapist” (though I will never tire of repeating how a Mexican chap argued that Mexicans were only rapist because blonde white girls preferred “Latin Lovers” to the drunken slobs who couldn’t get it up).

The truth is a little more subtle. From what I’ve seen, first generation migrants are usually the best residents a country can get for the simple reason that whatever you hand to them is better than what they were getting back home. They will happily do all the “shit” jobs that no one else wants to do because it seems like a reward compared to what they left. I think of a Gujarat from Uganda, whom I met on a bus who talked about “MY QUEEN.” As far as he was concerned, India was a distant land of ancestors, Uganda was the place that took everything his family had and the UK was where he rebuilt his life.

Everyone focuses on the first generation and whether they should be let in or not. While there are “settling” in problems, as a rule of thumb, first generation immigrants don’t pose an obvious security threat to the host nation. None of the major terrorist incidents in the last decade or so were committed by first generation migrants who had slipped into the country through illegal means.

The problem lies in the second generation, or the group that are born and bred in the host country. For the likes of Shamina Begum, the UK is not a “saviour” nation. This generation does not remember the “hardship and horror” of the “motherland.” This is the group that is most prone to radicalization. Let’s not forget that the bombers who committed the 7 July 2005 bombings were born and bred British citizens. The guys who attacked Charlie Hebdo were French. I’m old enough to remember that there was a time when terrorist in the UK were mainly Irish, who were funded by Americans born in the 1950s and beyond who believed they were funding freedom fighters for injustices committed in the 1850s and beyond.

Nobody denies that borders need to be patrolled and that there needs to be some supervision of the people coming in and out of a country. However, the hysteria about letting people in is, from a security point, misdirected. Outsiders who come and don’t share your culture are an easy target.

The record of terrorist events would suggest that one would get a better return on security by focusing more on the second generation. People who may not look like everyone else in the host nation but are to all intents and purposes citizens of the host nation. It’s harder to police those who have become part of the landscape than obvious outsiders but it would be money better spent than that on hysterical fears of outsiders.