On New Year’s Day, I was watching the news items on a foreign news channel and a particular sequence struck me as odd. One of the main items in the news was about the current British paranoia of being invaded by marauding Bulgarians and Romanians as their travel restrictions to the rest of the EU are lifted. Romania and Bulgaria had some travel restrictions imposed on them when they joined the EU a few years back. Now these restrictions have been lifted so that like the rest of other Europeans, they can enjoy the free movement of persons. This mass feeling of national insecurity, no doubt fanned by certain politicians with a particular agenda, had prompted British Prime Minister David Cameron to pass some laws preventing these imagined invaders, alias equal European citizens, from accessing social security programmes for the first three months after entry into the UK. Funnily enough, no vast influx of these Eastern Europeans into other European states seems to be anywhere near happening! This episode reminds me of the xenophobia that was whipped up here by the MLP when we were about to join the EU and the MLP leaders were imagining all kinds of foreign invasions by Sicilians and other Europeans. On the day we joined the EU, it turned out that the Sicilians had better things to do!
What strikes me is how easily politicians can whip up feelings of being taken over by immigrants to the detriment of the whole nation and how easily people pick up these ideas and blow them out of proportion as they start to imagine all sorts of threats to their job market, education and housing! Last summer, the current Maltese Prime Minister too decided to strum up some paranoid xenophobic rhetoric which ended up in leaving us more or less where we were before, except that people are now in a more excited mental state as they imagine all kinds of quixotian windmill monsters that are descending upon them. It has not dawned on many yet, that there is not much that can be done to stall the problem and that they will keep coming as long as their homelands are in turmoil or dirt poor. The only thing to do, like with any chronic physical condition, is to manage the problem in a way that one can learn to live with it.
The second news item on the particular station being viewed, was a heartfelt appeal by the same Cameron to the Scottish electorate, which this year is due to vote in a referendum on whether they would like to remain as part of the United Kingdom or formally secede from the union for good to become an independent state. It struck me as odd how Cameron highly lauded the advantages of union over those of going it alone and how much stronger the UK and Scotland would be, if Scotland remained within the Union and they faced the future together. There is indeed, strength in union. The whole is indeed greater than the sum of the parts! It is funny however how the British Prime Minister does not easily seem to trace the lines to follow that the same logic sits pretty in applying to the UK’s membership of the EU and the rights and privileges of all the peoples of Europe together. Cameron has recently been making very rude noises about the European treaties and it would be good to take his own advice at home. The same advice he is imparting to the Scots. The Romanian Prime Minister has gone down as hinting that these purposely set up smoke-screens by Cameron have just been set up to cover the failures of the UK’s home economy! The Conservatives sorely need to overhaul their European policies along Heathian lines. The Thatcher anti-EU stance is long dead and past its age and new adjournments are needed. Incidentally, I am in full agreement with Cameron about Scotland! National solidarity is the best way forward. It always has been!
The fact is that the EU, notwithstanding its deficiencies of which there are several, has successfully contributed to European peace and development as never before previous to its existence. It has strengthened weak nations and consolidated strong ones within a union that has given all of us the quality of life, good prospects and security that we all now enjoy. The whole is stronger than the sum of the parts. We must not look back! The way for all is ahead, as we now need to focus on strengthening the euro area and shoring up the European banking system so that what happened in the past does not happen again. This will make us stronger. It will make us more European. Incidentally, immigration can play a very important part in the building up of a stronger union. If properly managed, it could be a blessing in disguise, adequately addressing Europe’s ills such as its demographical deficits and pension issues. Immigration, whether European or otherwise, has in the final analysis, always helped to build stronger economies and stronger peoples!
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