China is experiencing a huge wave of African migration into major industrial areas such as Guangzhou. There are around 300,000 undocumented Africans residing in the city, many of them in the trading business. About one in ten have Chinese wives or girlfriends. 90 percent of them are undocumented because they failed to obtain a visa. They are frequently seen in the police station detention cells, and hence the stereotype that Africans are associated with criminal activities is commonly shared among Chinese.
In September 2013, new visa and residence permit regulations for foreigners took effect, making it more difficult for individuals without corporate or institutional affiliations to work and do business in China. Once they overstay without a valid visa, they are subjected to a 500 yuan (approximately 80 US dollars) daily fine. According to a widely quoted media report in August 2014, the Guangzhou authorities have only issued about 30,000 resident permits to Africans.
The recent arrest of a “foreign” triad gang called “freedom fighters” provoked an outburst of Chinese xenophobia and overt racism towards African immigrants on the web. The majority of comments were nationalistic with a strong sense of territorial claim, while a few were virulently racist, claiming Africans were of an inferior race.
Considering that China is becoming the dominant outside economic force in Africa, this reaction is ironic. But it is also human. I remember when the Jamaicans arrived in London after the Second World War – the reaction to these by-and-large charming, cheerful and well- educated immigrants, invited to come to Britain to because of the manpower shortage, was similarly hostile, and in some cases simply racist.
Immigration, deemed to be excessive, is a huge problem worldwide. How should we regard it, and how should we deal with it?
The Pope’s recent encyclical was very open- minded and intelligent. But what he left out (and there is little expectation that he will change) is the attitude to population. There are too many people in the world, and increasingly, too few resources and jobs. I get very annoyed at people who, following the line of the organised religions, claim that there is no over-population problem, plenty of water and plenty of food and jobs. Clearly, this is wishful thinking. If, instead the foreign aid policies implemented in the ladt 50 years, the World Bank and other aid agencies, had concentrated on liberating women by encouraging family planning it would have done more to cure poverty than any of the milions spent on other ideas.
But the religionists wouldn’t have it. The World Bank at one time had a very active family planning program, but the Americans ( or rather the Catholic lobby) had it abolished. Now we have desperate people without food, jobs or hope, moving in huge numbers,trying to get into the US, Europe and now China.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/20/pope-francis-dogma-birth-control an excellent article by Nick Cohen saying exactly that.
In regard to the Chinese example, if the Africans are mostly illegal, then they really shouldn’t be there. I wouldn’t ever presume the right to live in another country uninvited- civilisation requires that people follow the rules. The Chinese are not acting unreasonably, especially when you consider that most of their major cities are hopelessly overcrowded.
As for immigration generally, I would say we need two different attitudes for two different types of immigration: economic migration and asylum seeking. In the case of economic migration, we need to decide how many migrants would be beneficial to the economy without being a drain on public services. We then need to decide how many low skilled and high skilled migrants we need (we need a few low skilled workers as well contrary to popular belief.) Then we need to enforce the rules, or else the economy suffers and people lose trust in the system.
But asylum is a different matter. In Europe, there are Africans coming in, often escaping wars, Islamist terrorism, or the worst kind of poverty imaginable. They will often be exploited along the way, becuase they are so desperate. However, these people couldn’t possibly be less suited to life in Europe. For the most part, they don’t speak the language, have very little education and few skills, and are culturally very far removed from European liberalism. My heart wants to let as many in as possible, but my head says that that would be an extremely costly disaster- as we see in inner city Sweden, where native Swedes are moving out becuase of the crime and anti social behaviour caused by the asylum seekers.
Good comment. I agree.