That may be true of London and certain other large citys, but go up North, even Luton, and there are whole towns that are no go areas if you are white, or not "from round here".

It works in places like New york becuase essentially everyone in the states is an immigrant (unless you like wearing feathers and howling at the full moon), you are by the very definition no more than a 5/6th generation imigrant, American history goes back, what about 300 years, or in other words starts from when the pale face decided they liked the climate.

I just don't think it's in the psyche of your average Briton to accept foriegn visitors as equals. We have spent thousands of years repelling invaders of one form or another from the Vikings to the Romans.

And I think that comes out in peoples attitudes towards foreigners in the less cosmopolitan arears of the UK.

And I can see why, your essentailly asking people to give ground and be accepting of others when for generations they've done exactly the opposite.

My perosnal stance is that there should be more emphasis on intergration rather than immigration.

Edited by dannyh (24 Feb 2016 11.43am)

Well many invaders came and stayed, Romans Vikings and Normans especially! These groups formed what Britain is today, laws, customs, language, monarchy etc. etc. And because many British cities were centres of trade, people from all over the world came and stayed as well. Even in Shakespeare's time London was a multi-cultural city

[Link]

and other outward-looking cities were multi-cultural as well, Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow etc.

The main places where the natives have a "you're not from round these parts" have tended to be in rural places and small towns, where they do things like hang monkeys for be Napoleon's spies.

London was multi-cultural before New York even existed as a city.

I think you'll find that the locals resisted these invasions very strongly and robustly and only 'accepted' these waves of newcomers after putting up one hell of a fight. Now, we seem to surrender without even a shot being fired.

Well many invaders came and stayed, Romans Vikings and Normans especially! These groups formed what Britain is today, laws, customs, language, monarchy etc. etc. And because many British cities were centres of trade, people from all over the world came and stayed as well. Even in Shakespeare's time London was a multi-cultural city

[Link]

and other outward-looking cities were multi-cultural as well, Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow etc.

The main places where the natives have a "you're not from round these parts" have tended to be in rural places and small towns, where they do things like hang monkeys for be Napoleon's spies.

London was multi-cultural before New York even existed as a city.

Well that's not entirely true, as each decade since WWII has been marked by periods of mass migration (After the War, Indian Migration, pakistani Migration and Afro-Caribbean Migration - all really driven by a need for employees - and all met with similar arguments about society and equally less savoury ones). The primary difference between EU migration and the previous migrations has been the tendency towards the previous migrations being permanent, rather than temporary additions to the population.

I agree that migration, and populations, need to be managed, but the question always remains how to regulate fairly, without resorting to a prejudicial basis, and that's where the EU migration has been problematic, the capacity to control and direct it has been driven more by market forces than the state.

For other countries in Europe its a more common experience I think, given the size of borders and entry points, where as the UK as an Island, always has had a potent capacity to regulate, control and police its borders with its neighbours (something that for most mainland European countries is a much bigger undertaking).

Not good examples.

Only the ruling classes of Normans came to Britain with a few soldiers to back them up. There was certainly no large scale occupation. Romans essentially came and went and the term Viking is rather quaint. Certainly Danes came here in reasonable numbers and the Normans were essentially Norseman but a much larger proportion of the population were Angles, Saxons and Jutes with remaining majority probably being here since the post ice age migration.

In short, the population of Britain has remained almost unchanged for hundreds of years if not thousands of years. Until the last 50 years, migration has had only a tiny impact on the gene pool.
The idea put around by some that Britain's population has always been in transition is just wildly inaccurate propaganda and the science proves that.