The benefits of a multiracial society are many and varied.
Multicultural society, not so much.
And that’s because when people come to your country in pursuit of a dream, they integrate. Because they want to. Immigrants used to go to America to pursue the American Dream – to become American, and drive a big car and own their own home and eat apple pie and play baseball and send their kids to college to be an astronaut.
And that’s great – if you have such a resonant cultural imperative that skilled people of all races come flocking to your country to pursue it, you have built something very special.
And as long as you don’t have a welfare state that might also cause unskilled freeloaders to turn up too, you don’t even need to worry about your immigration policies too much – the skilled migrants pursuing the dream will come in large numbers, and the unskilled freeloaders won’t. Because there is no way to freeload.
But if you have a welfare state, you’ll need some border controls so you can discern between the skilled and the unskilled.
So far, so good.
But what if you don’t have a resonant cultural imperative? What if skilled people won’t come to your country to pursue a dream, but merely to improve their lot? Well, now you have a bit of a cost/benefit analysis to do.
These people (who you need) will come to your country, work in your economy, and then send some of the money home.
It’s why they came.
They don’t plan to move their family here. They are merely skilled economic migrants.
So there’s some pain to take – your economy is losing lifeblood. And you have a churn problem – these people will go home once they have earned enough. They are benevolent parasites – they solve your problems in exchange for some economic pain.
But as long as you have a way to discern them from the unskilled migrants (or you don’t have a welfare state) then you’ll be fine – it’s a temporary measure while you train the people you need.
But now it gets quite dark.
What if you have inadequate borders, AND a welfare state.
Well, here come the freeloaders.
And if you don’t have a resonant cultural imperative, they will impose their own.
If Elbonians don’t come to Britain to be British, they will remain Elbonian.
With all the costs and benefits.
And if we want to know what they might be, we just need to look at how Elbonians behave in their own country.
Do they dump rubbish in the streets? Defecate in public? Live in the woods? Vandalise public buildings? Gangrape children? Stab tourists to death? Pour acid on people?
If you don’t tell them how to behave in YOUR country, they will behave as they do in theirs.
And they will resent like HELL being told to stop – no-one likes to be told their culture is backward.
So……….if you choose to have no resonant cultural imperative (as we have) AND you choose to have a welfare state (as we have) AND you choose to police your borders poorly (as we have) then you should expect large numbers of skilled AND unskilled migrants pouring into your country determined to make it a series of ghettoes that they will temporarily inhabit and deplete until the skilled ones go home and the unskilled ones get arrested.
Multiculturalism – it’s what Labour did to us last time around, and hope to do again.
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From a purely economic point of view, the ideal immigrant does not integrate. They arrive already educated (so we don't have all the healthcase costs of childhood, nor the cost of education, nor even the simple cost of keeing them alive until they are economically productive), work for a while, and then leave (saving the potentially very expensive costs of healthcare in old age, and the lower but certain cost of their pension).
Furthermore, the purpose of employing someone is to make a profit from it. What they do with their salary is irrelevant. So if someone comes here and earns lots of money, then (unless their employer is very silly and inclined to bankrupt themselves) they have created even more wealth here, which is unaffected by them sending even the entirety of their salary abroad (which is impossible anyway, since they must meet their living expenses while working). To give a concrete example, if an NHS doctor is an immigrant, then the patients that they have treated benefit just as much from the treatment regardless of what the doctor does with their salary.
A bloke from Egypt I met argued that we Aussies should use the Saudi system. Import them, use them and deport them when they're no longer useful. It certainly makes economic sense.
This sounds suspiciously like Buy British marketing material. If someone working and living in the UK spends their money in the UK on all-British goods and services, whoop de doo. If they buy a BMW, snort snort, they should have bought British. If they send some money to mom in Roumania to buy a BMW, snort snort snort. I would have thought that a reader of and contributor to this journal would understand the value of free trade.