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| When the Tories talk about curbs on foreign workers, they don’t mean me. Or do they? When the Tories talk about curbs on foreign workers, they don’t mean me. Or do they? | |
| (about 7 hours later) | |
| About a thousand years ago, when I was a kid at summer camp in Maine, my fellow cabinmates announced a game in which everyone had to ignore someone whose name began with an H and ended with a Y. Naturally I was quite hurt by this, and a little confused. Hadn’t we all been friends yesterday? Two of them had already said they wanted to be my pen pals for life! I couldn’t understand it. It turned out they didn’t mean me, they meant a different 11-year-old girl, one called Holly. (I can’t remember why they didn’t like Holly.) I was still bruised, and never really felt the same way about my cabinmates again. The following week, I switched cabins. | About a thousand years ago, when I was a kid at summer camp in Maine, my fellow cabinmates announced a game in which everyone had to ignore someone whose name began with an H and ended with a Y. Naturally I was quite hurt by this, and a little confused. Hadn’t we all been friends yesterday? Two of them had already said they wanted to be my pen pals for life! I couldn’t understand it. It turned out they didn’t mean me, they meant a different 11-year-old girl, one called Holly. (I can’t remember why they didn’t like Holly.) I was still bruised, and never really felt the same way about my cabinmates again. The following week, I switched cabins. |
| Which brings me to what it’s like being a foreigner in Brexit Britain or, to put it more accurately, if less alliteratively, Brexit England. Now, when politicians bang on about immigrants stealing British jobs, and suggest all foreign workers should be on some kind of list – maybe not a “name and shame” list, but at least a private list (because this is somehow better) – I know they’re not thinking of me, exactly. I am a white Jewish American lady who speaks the language, pays her taxes, understands the cultural significance of Phillip Schofield, and manages to do all those other things foreigners allegedly don’t. | Which brings me to what it’s like being a foreigner in Brexit Britain or, to put it more accurately, if less alliteratively, Brexit England. Now, when politicians bang on about immigrants stealing British jobs, and suggest all foreign workers should be on some kind of list – maybe not a “name and shame” list, but at least a private list (because this is somehow better) – I know they’re not thinking of me, exactly. I am a white Jewish American lady who speaks the language, pays her taxes, understands the cultural significance of Phillip Schofield, and manages to do all those other things foreigners allegedly don’t. |
| But I also know they’re not not thinking of me, either. After all, I am a foreigner who works for a British company, so I am in the general neighbourhood. (But could a native Brit make as many jokes as I have done over the years about Karl Lagerfeld on this newspaper’s fashion pages? I don’t think so. Don’t forsake us skilled immigrants, Britain!) | But I also know they’re not not thinking of me, either. After all, I am a foreigner who works for a British company, so I am in the general neighbourhood. (But could a native Brit make as many jokes as I have done over the years about Karl Lagerfeld on this newspaper’s fashion pages? I don’t think so. Don’t forsake us skilled immigrants, Britain!) |
| At least we all now know for certain what “Brexit means Brexit” really means: it means blaming everything on immigration. I’d like to talk a little about this idea of putting foreigners on lists. Of late, I’ve been researching my father’s family, who were all in Paris during the war. Don’t worry, I’m not going to go full Nazi analogy on you: I don’t actually think Theresa May is Hitler. (Although whether Donald Trump might be is still very much TBD, in my opinion.) | At least we all now know for certain what “Brexit means Brexit” really means: it means blaming everything on immigration. I’d like to talk a little about this idea of putting foreigners on lists. Of late, I’ve been researching my father’s family, who were all in Paris during the war. Don’t worry, I’m not going to go full Nazi analogy on you: I don’t actually think Theresa May is Hitler. (Although whether Donald Trump might be is still very much TBD, in my opinion.) |
| But let me tell you a not especially heartwarming story. My grandmother lived in the Marais, the Jewish ghetto, with her three brothers, Henri, Alex and Jacques, having fled Poland during the pogroms. A few years after they arrived, my great-uncle Alex sensed the way the political wind was going, and convinced an American tourist he’d met at most twice to marry my grandmother, which might at least get her out of the country. This is how my grandmother met my grandfather. | But let me tell you a not especially heartwarming story. My grandmother lived in the Marais, the Jewish ghetto, with her three brothers, Henri, Alex and Jacques, having fled Poland during the pogroms. A few years after they arrived, my great-uncle Alex sensed the way the political wind was going, and convinced an American tourist he’d met at most twice to marry my grandmother, which might at least get her out of the country. This is how my grandmother met my grandfather. |
| Soon after, in September 1940, Jews in France’s occupied zone were ordered to register at their local police station. To go on a list, you see. Of the three brothers, only trusting Jacques obeyed. In May 1941, thousands of foreign male Jews, including Jacques, were arrested and shipped off to internment camps and eventually, concentration camps, where Jacques was killed. | Soon after, in September 1940, Jews in France’s occupied zone were ordered to register at their local police station. To go on a list, you see. Of the three brothers, only trusting Jacques obeyed. In May 1941, thousands of foreign male Jews, including Jacques, were arrested and shipped off to internment camps and eventually, concentration camps, where Jacques was killed. |
| Alex, by contrast, never trusted lists. He didn’t even keep his money in a bank. Instead, he joined the underground and spent part of the war in France and part of it in Britain, which he loved. He spoke fondly of BBC radio for the rest of his life, until he died in 1999, because he associated it with the one European country where he, a foreigner, had felt welcome. | Alex, by contrast, never trusted lists. He didn’t even keep his money in a bank. Instead, he joined the underground and spent part of the war in France and part of it in Britain, which he loved. He spoke fondly of BBC radio for the rest of his life, until he died in 1999, because he associated it with the one European country where he, a foreigner, had felt welcome. |
| As politicians love to say, we can talk about immigration without being racist (unfortunately, they usually say this right before saying something pretty racist). But using slogans (“British jobs for British people!”) the BNP was bandying about a decade ago is just not a good look for a government. Obviously Brexit England is not Vichy France (as if England would take orders from Germany, those EU bastards), and the grossed-out reaction to the stupid list idea, even among some Tories, reinforces this. But that it was even pitched in the first place certainly gives a flavour of how this government pictures post-referendum England. | As politicians love to say, we can talk about immigration without being racist (unfortunately, they usually say this right before saying something pretty racist). But using slogans (“British jobs for British people!”) the BNP was bandying about a decade ago is just not a good look for a government. Obviously Brexit England is not Vichy France (as if England would take orders from Germany, those EU bastards), and the grossed-out reaction to the stupid list idea, even among some Tories, reinforces this. But that it was even pitched in the first place certainly gives a flavour of how this government pictures post-referendum England. |
| So if Brexit means a Britain in which politicians vilify all the foreigners all the time, well, you can understand some of us might start looking towards other cabins, which I guess is their point anyway. No one wants to be somewhere they’re not wanted, and I never really believed that my cabinmates meant just Holly and not me, too. Unfortunately, the threat of a hard Brexit has so devalued sterling that none of us foreigners can actually afford to go back to where we came from. How about that for irony, Brexiteers? | So if Brexit means a Britain in which politicians vilify all the foreigners all the time, well, you can understand some of us might start looking towards other cabins, which I guess is their point anyway. No one wants to be somewhere they’re not wanted, and I never really believed that my cabinmates meant just Holly and not me, too. Unfortunately, the threat of a hard Brexit has so devalued sterling that none of us foreigners can actually afford to go back to where we came from. How about that for irony, Brexiteers? |