Migration-sceptical ethnic minorities are the true integration success story

Cultural division and economic decline are in no one’s interest

Introducing the inaugural piece from Inaya Folarin Iman, founder and director of The Equiano Project, now available on her official Substack page.

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We need to talk about the unstoppable rise of Western ethnic minority people who are critics of mass immigration.

I can’t be the only one fascinated by Zia Yusuf, the 37-year-old Muslim technology entrepreneur who has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to Nigel Farage’s Right-wing Reform UK party. In a rousing speech, Yusuf explained his reasons for donating, declaring: “I did it because I love Britain, I love my country.” He emphasised the importance of “freedom of speech, love of family, and love of country,” calling these “British values” nothing short of a miracle and worth protecting.

He referenced the sacrifices made during the Second World War, expressed gratitude for the opportunities Britain provided him, and highlighted the service he and his parents (who both worked in the NHS) have given to the country. Most notably, he attributed many of the country’s problems to what he sees as the political elites’ betrayal of the British people through mass immigration, which he argued adversely affected everyone, regardless of race, religion or class background.

Yusuf is just one of a growing number of prominent ethnic minority people in Western countries, with origins reaching far and wide, from India to Nigeria, who are sounding the alarm about the dangers of mass immigration. They argue it is a threat to social cohesion, the welfare state and economic prosperity. 

The conventional (and deeply condescending) viewpoint amongst the hyper-liberal and Left-leaning commentariat is that these people are (crudely) turkeys voting for Christmas. In other words, they’re deludedly advocating for something that is against their own interests. But I reject this. On the contrary, I would argue that these ethnic minorities are one of the West’s most powerful integration success stories.

The list of who I’ve increasingly termed “based BAMEs” is getting longer and longer: Suella Braverman (Indian origin via Africa), Priti Patel (Indian origin via Africa), Ben Habib (mixed Pakistani origin), Rafe Heydel-Mankoo (mixed Indian origin via Africa). But they’re not just confined to the right: there’s Rakib Ehsan (Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin), Sohrab Ahmari (Iranian origin), and the Danish former immigration minister Mattias Tesfaye (mixed Ethiopian origin) who critique mass immigration for its economic effects on the working classes and poorest in society.  

These figures certainly complicate the cliche that wanting to reduce immigration is fundamentally motivated by racism and xenophobia.  Thus their critics often instead deploy other explanations. 

One common dismissal is the Hypocrisy Argument, which accuses ethnic minority critics of mass immigration of pulling up the ladder after climbing on the ship. The question often posed is, “How can you oppose immigration when you and your family benefited from it? Why wouldn’t you want the same for others?” Former first minister of Scotland Humza Yousaf accused former home secretary Suella Braverman of exactly that, asserting: “I think it’s the very definition or personification of somebody pulling up the ladder after they’ve made it to the top and actually my view’s always been that you should reach your hand out, try to bring others with you.” Build a longer table, not a higher wall, so the platitude goes.

Then there’s the Tap Dancing Argument. This claims that these minorities are self-hating and insecure, seeking approval from white people. This argument likens them to colonised collaborators who sought power and self-preservation by doing the bidding of colonialists. For example, talking head Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu described Braverman as a “Brown Racial-Gatekeeping Executioner of racism”. 

Next there’s the Ethnic Self-Interest Argument, which asserts that ethnic minorities want to restrict immigration from one part of the world to make it easier for people of their ethnic heritage to enter the country they have settled in. For instance, some say that British Indians only voted for Brexit to relax immigration rules for Indians because “the EU freedom of movement clause [was] unfair to Commonwealth migrants who face more difficulty in the visa application process.” Perhaps some ethnic minorities do subscribe to this, but given that Braverman, of Indian origin, nearly caused a diplomatic incident with India by expressing concerns about the levels of Indian immigration, this argument is limited. 

A less popular argument but one worth noting is the Fear of Future Backlash Argument, which claims that as white anger and resentment build against mass immigration, visible minorities, whether they are British or not, will be the first victims of a racist backlash. So better to halt immigration now, in case things get pretty ugly in the near future. As one X user put it: “[T]here are benefits to ethnic minorities in stopping the demographic revolution. If it is fulfilled then politics and society will become even more divided and sectarian.”

There’s even a view on the harder end of the Right that these people are merely “controlled opposition”, a ruse to appease white opponents of immigration whilst heading off a white racial awakening. Lotus Eaters commentator Connor Tomlinson has stated that he was “very wary” about the rapid rise of Zia Yusuf and that “his ascent signals a potential Leftward drift of Reform’s messaging: a need to shield against inevitable and unfounded accusations of racism”. He went on to say that “if Reform seeks to substantively represent the left-behind indigenous population of Britain, then Yusuf should not be the tip of the spear”.

All of these arguments fundamentally miss what is actually going on. The truth is much simpler: these ethnic minority people just like the country as it is. No country has ever remained perpetually unchanged and fixed. But that doesn’t mean that traditions, habits and people have no specific identity over time. 

To elaborate, these Brits, Americans, Danes and others are attached to the unique characteristics of their societies. They believe maintaining these familiar and distinctive aspects is crucial to their countries’ success, and that bringing in large swathes of people without a rigorous approach to integration jeopardises that.

Take Britain, for example. Many British Indians or British Pakistanis are just as dismayed by ethno-religious conflicts on British soil as their white counterparts.

I've spoken to many Iranians who feel that Western fears of being labelled Islamophobic have prevented more vocal opposition to the Iranian regime’s vicious anti-women behaviour. 

Similarly, I've met many Muslims frustrated by the handling of the Batley Grammar School affair and abhor blasphemy taboos. 

Recently, I met a devout young Muslim who was a free speech absolutist precisely because he believed that only under those conditions would he be able to truly practice his faith freely. He argued that when hard-line Muslims call for blasphemy laws, they unwittingly make it more difficult for Muslims to express their faith in a variety of ways.

It may seem surprising that concerns about restrictions on free speech and the eruption of ethno-religious violence should lead to support for a restrictive immigration policy. But it should be remembered that many ethnic minorities (or their parents or grandparents) left their countries of birth precisely to avoid such things. The last thing they want is to face them again here. So they believe a reduced, slower pace of immigration, coupled with civic nationalism, is the best way to fend off such phenomena and ensure that this country does not end up like the countries they came from.

If you value foundational aspects of Britain like freedom of speech, equality under the law, and its Judeo-Christian heritage, it makes perfect sense to be mindful of who enters the country to preserve these values. People easily forget that not everyone in the world subscribes to them. For many migration-sceptical ethnic minorities, it is about being a custodian of Britain’s heritage, values, and institutions, for which they feel a deep affinity. If that’s not being British, I don’t know what is. If only more white Brits felt like that, we’d be in a much better place! 

In some areas of life, we are quite happy to be honest about the ramifications of rapid demographic change. Take gentrification.  In an article for Black Ballad, a magazine for black British women, one writer lamented the rapid change undergone in southeast London because of the  “large and relatively sudden in-migration of wealthy middle-class residents into previously poor or working-class neighbourhoods.” 

The piece talks longingly and nostalgically about the loss of identity, place and meaning that occurred through gentrification, stating “new cafes and restaurants replacing the nail shops and hair salons — these were the hallmarks of the social cleansing that was slowly taking place”. Yet if you asked many of those who rail against gentrification about the potential problems associated with mass migration, many would dismiss them. Instead, they would rant about Britain’s colonial past and say it’s the country’s duty to take the descendants of its supposed victims in. 

But the truth is that those who oppose gentrification and those who oppose mass immigration are in many ways singing from the same hymn sheet. They both want to preserve shared matrices of meaning, identity, relationship and culture from the destructive effects of over-rapid change. Of course, cultures are never static, and both gentrification and immigration can have immensely positive consequences. But there are significant downsides to both.

Indeed, some of those downsides have been railed against by those on the Left.  Firebrand and former Democrat presidential contender Bernie Sanders once said: “Open borders? That’s a Koch Brothers proposal. That’s a Right-wing proposal which says that there is no United States, that you can bring people and pay them two or three dollars an hour. We need to raise wages in this country and you don’t address global poverty by making [the US] poorer”.

This argument is part of an important Left-wing tradition that understands the impact of mass immigration – particularly of low-wage, low-skilled labour – on working-class people in the recipient country, regardless of race. Given that ethnic minorities are more likely to be working class than the indigenes, this argument very much applies to them too.

Social cohesion expert Rakib Ehsan writes:

“The UK should not be reduced to a transactional international hub for large numbers of economic migrants and foreign students. And it is time to break away from the failed high-immigration, low-growth model of political economy.”

He recognises that mass immigration is part and parcel of a failed economic model that drives down wages, displaces domestic workers, and consigns millions of Brits to the economic scrap heap as companies hire abroad rather than at home. It disincentives training of the domestic workforce and slows down innovation.  

Sohrab Ahmari, in a debate about immigration for The Free Press, said: 

“Today progressives and pro-business libertarian donors and lobbyists frame opposition to mass, irregular migration as something that could only be motivated by reactionary racism, but until fairly recently, opposing the importation of low-wage migrants was the consensus position of the Democratic party and the Labour movement… Progressives once understood that this type of migration undercuts the wages of working-class people, strains the social services relied upon by the poorer amongst us and hinders productivity growth and thus our prosperity as a nation.” 

This goes some way in explaining why record numbers of black and Latino voters are now flocking to Trump, who has always talked tough on immigration. 

A striking irony is worth pointing out. Denmark, a country often lauded by liberals and the centre-left as a model of equality and economic justice, enforces some of the toughest immigration and asylum policies in the Western world. Far from this being the preserve of the Right-wing racists, it is the Left-wing Social Democrats that have been implementing these policies. A key figure in this is Mattias Tesfaye, the education minister and a former immigration minister, who himself was once a bricklayer.  The son of an Ethiopian refugee father and a Danish mother, played a decisive role in shaping Denmark’s the policies. Tesfaye says that not controlling immigration would “undermine solidarity in society and pose an economic and cultural danger.”

If mass immigration and a robust welfare state are in conflict, as some social science literature suggests, then many supporters of mass immigration might still find the trade-off too significant. They may prioritise the welfare state, accepting that politics is about compromises. A key issue in today’s debate is that many advocates for mass immigration seem to deny that any such trade-offs exist, thereby engaging in the very behaviour they accuse populists of: cake-ism. 

Also, for many ethnic minorities, their ethnic origin just isn’t the defining feature of their politics. Political beliefs and affiliations are influenced by a multitude of factors beyond ethnicity and it is strange that so many, especially on the Left, struggle to appreciate this. Tesfaye stated: “Of course, I’m the child of a refugee… but it’s more important for me that I’ve been a bricklayer. If you ask me what my identity is, it’s more close to that.”

Ultimately, I would argue that it is a centrist position to want immigration to be reduced to the tens of thousands, whilst investing much more in our domestic workforce and public service provision. Polls across political lines, regions, and age groups consistently show that the majority want immigration reduced. The political class’ dismissal of these concerns as merely an outgrowth of racism is at best anti-democratic and at worst fundamentally immoral.

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