Chinese Crackers

So the Chinese government has done it, as we knew they would, and the British government has responded by offering 2.9 million Hong Kong residents (plus dependants) the right to live in Britain, as we knew they would. The offer is available to those Hong Kong citizens who hold a British National Overseas (BNO) passport – about 350,000 people – plus anyone entitled to such a passport on application, a further 2.6 million.

A BNO passport entitles the holder to all the usual protections of British citizenship except the right to live in the UK; they have only the right to live in the territory in which they are usually domiciled. Or at least that was the case; after Hong Kong was ceded (or retroceded) to China in ’97 the inhabitants of our remaining colonies all had their BNO status upgraded to full British citizenship, but as all these places are tiny – Gibraltar, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Falklands and half a dozen others – they presented no risk of mass immigration. Hong Kong is the last remaining place where people hold BNO passports, and that restriction on their place of residence is now to be removed. 

It usually happened when a colony became independent that its inhabitants ceased to be British subjects and became citizens of their new country, and when Hong Kong became part of China its people duly became Chinese citizens. Why they also retained BNO status I do not know; presumably it was something to do with the “one country, two systems” arrangement that we hear so much about, or it may just have been that our government thought, in its usual fatuous way, that it would be “nice”. One good thing about the arrangement is that only people who were British subjects at the moment of the handover to China are entitled to BNO status, persons born subsequently are not entitled, so every day the number of potential BNO passport holders diminishes a little (but not perhaps quite enough to save us from a flood). 

When trouble flared up in Hong Kong last year, there was a flurry of articles in the press suggesting that the government should do what it has now done. When trouble blew up again in May this year, the pro-liberalisation propaganda machine went completely over the top – I counted six (six!) articles in favour of allowing Hong Kong people to settle in this country in just three
days in the Daily Telegraph alone. Dominic Lawson and Daniel Hannan were among the enthusiasts but it was a piece by someone called Ben Kelly which set the overheated tone:-

“… we would be welcoming a highly educated, dynamic and industrious people … a major boon to our society and economy. This new diaspora will become  another  great British immigration success story. Their children will move into high skilled jobs and academia in droves. In a few years, we’ll be marvelling at the  contribution that they have made in our society … this is a no-brainer … bring us Hong Kong’s huddled masses yearning to be free.”

Dear oh dear. Mr. Kelly’s effusions about the Chinese of Hong Kong, overwrought though they are, may well have an element of truth. But he is characteristic of a certain type of Tory, unfortunately the dominant type, which sees our country in globalist terms as a unit of production, as an economy, as “UK PLC”. He does not understand that Britain is the homeland of a particular people, the ancestral British, who would rather like it to remain recognisably British, and that remaining recognisably British is even more important than maximising GDP.

If it was not already clear where this was heading, Priti Patel confirmed it in an interview with (I think) Andrew Marr, reported in the Daily Mail on the 13th June:- 

“…. if you think what the British government did for Ugandan Asians, it’s phenomenal which is why, in particular sitting here, I feel so strongly about our moral commitment and responsibility to the people of Hong Kong. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and I are committed to creating a bespoke way for them to come here. It speaks again for the values of our country and the open tolerant country we are.”

“More than two million of them?” She nods. But she would say that wouldn’t she? She is an immigrant in a cabinet dominated by people of immigrant or refugee descent – Patel, Raab and Johnson are all descendants of refugees. I do not doubt that they love Britain in their own way, as being about “values” (as indeed Ms. Patel makes clear) but they cannot be expected to love her as we do, as our ethnic homeland. And so it goes on; someone called Nusrat Ghani, Tory MP for Wealden, says we should welcome the Hong Kongers as “our kith and kin” – well, with a name like yours, Nusrat, I doubt if they are any more your kith and kin than you are mine!

There have been one or two counter blasts. The journalist Leo McKinstrey has rightly written that the proposal will “drive a coach and horses through the government’s pledge to reduce immigration” while Andrew Green of that excellent organisation, Migration Watch UK, describes the government’s intention as “an extraordinarily ill-conceived policy that could cost it the next election” Indeed. Migration Watch has already forecast that immigration from outside the EU will be increased, even beyond its already unsustainable level, by the new “points-based” immigration policy coming into effect from the 1st January next year. Add to that the mass unemployment coming out of COVID-19, and top that off with an open door to Hong Kong, and it’s not hard to see just how “extraordinarily ill-conceived” it truly is. 

But will they come? And if so, how many? That some will come is certain; no-one knows how many or how quickly, but there are one or two pointers. The number of those who hold BNO passports has trebled to 350,000 in the past three years, presumably because they expect that they are going to need them. Expect the number to now treble, and re-treble, again and again. An immigration enthusiast called Bobby Friedman (another good old English name) has forecast in the Telegraph that “the number of people taking up the offer may well be extremely substantial”.

So what of our position? An “extremely substantial” immigration from Hong Kong will benefit right wing parties, but at what a cost to our country? And what should be our view as racialists? As the former colonial power with old and deep links with Hong Kong, Britain does owe a duty to the people of the territory, but at the same time, as racialists, we believe in separate countries for separate ethnicities; we believe that people of Chinese ethnicity should live in Chinese countries and not in ours. So how to square the circle? If the people of Hong Kong have nowhere else willing to accept them we should certainly take in as refugees those who are clearly in danger of persecution – but we should not offer an open door to any BNO passport holder who wishes to come. But there IS somewhere else very willing to accept them – Taiwan, a Chinese country and therefore the perfect solution. That our government throws open the door to all those who wish to come, rather than helping them to use their BNO status to obtain resettlement in Taiwan, is a clear and profound statement of just how little our government cares for us, the real British.

By Frederick Dixon © 2020

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