As I said in my last week’s podcast, human rights lobbies backed by institutions like the United Nations Refugee Convention and the European Court of Human Rights have enough influence, enough lawyers, and unfortunately enough general support, to wage delaying tactics (”lawfare”) indefinitely against governments trying to control their borders.
Well, here’s someone who’s as angry about this as I am: Suella Braverman, the British Home Secretary—that’s like our Attorney General, more or less. Earlier this week Mrs. Braverman gave a speech to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. This, let me remind you, is the lady who was reprimanded earlier this year by Britain’s Bar Association for referring to illegal aliens crossing the channel in small boats as ”invaders.”
She hasn’t lost any of that good immigration-restrictionist spirit. She told the AEI gathering on Tuesday that multiculturalism has been a failure and that uncontrolled immigration was a threat to Western Civ.
From the Daily Mail:
Ms Braverman called for an overhaul of the UN Refugee Convention to help end the Channel crisis—and took another swipe at the European Convention on Human Rights.
She branded the system ”unsustainable,” complaining that it creates ”huge incentives for illegal migration.”
The ’dream’ of multicultural Britain is dead: Suella Braverman warns West faces ’existential’ threat from uncontrolled immigration as she says UK is living with consequences of people failing to ’integrate’—in US speech demanding asylum rules overhaul, September 28, 2023
That stirred some commentators to point out that Mrs. Braverman, although born in Britain, was the child of parents from India; so who was she to speak ill of immigration? Some even more unkind people noted that her husband, Rael Braverman, is Jewish, so that presumably he is of immigrant stock too, perhaps a few generations back.
Well, yes; but Mrs. Braverman—and someone should tell the Daily Mail that she is indeed a Mrs. not a Ms.—Mrs. Braverman strikes me as totally assimilated to British norms. She still has somewhat of a ”sarf London” accent, I’ve never seen a picture of her in a sari, and there’s no dot on her forehead. She’s a Buddhist, but doesn’t make a public issue of it.
Another quote from the Mail:
She insisted migrants could no longer be allowed to come to the U.K. and ”live parallel lives” rather than integrating.
That’s a key point: the distinction between ”hard” and ”soft” multiculturalism.
Ed West had a very good column on all this—on Mrs. Braverman, the ”hard” versus ”soft” multiculti distinction, and so on—at his substack yesterday. I commend it to your attention.
This week's two-parter on multiculturalism: 1. on the difference of hard and soft multiculturalism https://t.co/BMaEyZ8rxy
— Ed West (@edwest) September 29, 2023
