Swamping cities! Well those in Spain

Nigel Farage, and now the Minister for Armed Forces Michael Fallon, and of course great swathes of the British population love to bang on about the UK being “swamped by immigrants.” Fallon in a recent outburst claimed that local residents are “under siege”.

Those who come under particular attention are often the Polish community. You’ve heard it: “They’re here taking our jobs and transforming our towns. Oh, and they drink a lot outside, with cans of beer. It’s just not right. ”

Imagine this then: There are about 600,000 Poles living in the UK. The vast majority don’t own their own homes so they rent properties fuelling a buy-to-let boom that is unprecedented and makes people millions of pounds to those letting, and also helps fill the coffers for the Chancellor in their paid taxes. They, like others, work hard and use our social services much less than the average Brit.  In sharp contrast, and perhaps surprising to many in Spain, there are over one million Brits, many living in the sunshine coasts of Andalucía and Costa Brava. Many don’t work and or pay taxes, and unlike the Poles they rarely speak the native language. Worse still their English enclaves are notoriously separate.

English-Spanish integration is not even on many Brits agenda much less practised. Furthermore, when their relatives and other tourists hit the English holiday-strips in Southern Spain they become a hell on earth for local people and the authorities charged with clearing up their mess. Last year alone Brits abroad accounted for about 6,000 arrests, 1600 in Spain. In drugs-related arrests the Spanish authorities have witnessed an increase of about 68%.

Many of those revellers that don’t get arrested nonetheless portray a nation abroad as an uncouth, drunken, and shameless generation that has zero respect for the host nation.

Fallon’s comments, which he later retracted, literally fuel racial hatred. His remarks were a nod and a wink to Ukip-‘We’re hearing you”. Imagine though what he and others would say to if the Poles, Bangladeshis, Africans and others lived and behaved like many Brits in Spain?

And to think we’ve got six more months this immigration bashing.

Ruth Hirsch and Simon Woolley