Europe’s narrow take on migration

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/25/europes-narrow-take-on-migration

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It’s instructive that someone of Simon Jenkins’s elite western background perceives current patterns of migration so narrowly (The human tide the west doesn’t want, 19 June). For him it’s primarily an immigration issue, a threat to his nation. National identity is fixed in history and geography, he says. But geography is transforming rapidly as a consequence of the west’s increasingly desperate efforts to maintain a fatally flawed ideology and way of life. After centuries of nation-building, expansion, colonialism, militarism, capitalism, exploitation, expropriation and extermination, the European international project of the last 500 years is collapsing. The writing on the wall couldn’t be bolder – climate change, destruction of habitats, the global economic crash, frenzied migration – but the elite continue to promulgate the old narratives and pretend to “carry on as normal” even as they bail out to become part of a global superclass. They exist in a new four-dimensional world created by the technology and transport necessary for the progressive shrinking of time and space required to maintain capitalist “growth”. The notion and importance of the European concept of “nation” have been transformed by them. They are operating in a world without borders.

Without conscious irony, Jenkins supports his case with references to Australia and America seeking to “deter and repatriate migrants with imprisonment and transhipment”. More accurately, he should have referred to this as the actions of the European diaspora. I suspect the descendants of the survivors of European invasions will have a clearer understanding of the current migration situation than Jenkins. Viewpoint is also influenced by history and geography.Ian McCormackLeicester

• The government’s plan to expel non-EU migrants whose earnings after six years fail to exceed £35,000 (Report, 22 June) could be the first step towards eliminating poverty in the UK. It only needs an extension of that rule to force anyone whose income is below that level to live elsewhere. It would get rid of a lot of troublesome pensioners before the infirmities of old age make them costly for the NHS. It could be a little problematic if it also meant that we lost most of our social workers, a lot of teachers, and many other leeches on the public purse. But it would boost the nation’s apparent wealth. I look forward to another of the prime minister’s Alice in Wonderland speeches.Trevor WatkinsNorth Queensferry, Fife