Election byline from Sherief Hassan, Green Party Parliamentary candidate for Hemel Hempstead
Immigration is a divisive subject that is being used as a major flag waved by different parties. It raises some questions:
Why do people migrate?
The first one is easy. Escaping conflict. Loss of security from an invading force or local tyranny. I would hope that most people would see this as something we would help with and give sanctuary.
Second, persecution due to ethnicity, faith or sexuality. Again, I would hope that compassion would trump anything else.
Thirdly, economic. There is great poverty across the world - some of it caused by climate change, which we are all responsible for. Many try to find security and a better life by migrating. Why should anyone be allowed into another nation just for money? It isn’t new. During the height of the British Empire, many British people followed their dreams to raise themselves out of poverty by migrating to occupied nations across the world. We don’t think of the spread of empire migrants as similar to today’s economic migrants but they are very similar. Many Brits still emigrate for a better life in other countries. Do we owe something to the people of other countries whose ancestors were ruled by our ancestors?
Why do they go to specific countries?
Despite the misinformation, not every migrant heads to the UK. Most go to other countries like France and Germany. Why? Again, the elephant in the room is language. Many ex-empire/colonial nations retain the occupier’s language – sometimes as their first.
English is the standard second language across the globe - Maybe due to the massive influence of the Empire. The French and Belgian empires left the French language as a reason for many to migrate to those countries.
Migrants, refugees and those that have been granted asylum only give more to their new home. Statistically, they use social services less, and often serve their communities in sectors that we need like the NHS. The economic cases of more general migrants but may be granted leave to remain because they fulfil one of the necessary criteria on economic grounds. Whilst the number of undocumented migrants – who aren’t eligible for benefits, despite what the stories say, only number 52,530 in 2023 against 1.2 million people legally migrating into the UK. 532,000 people emigrated from the UK – including a significant proportion of Brits, leaving a net migration figure of 685,000.
You think it’s bad now?
Being aware of the environmental issues, it is clear that Climate Migration is something we aren’t prepared for. The global south will experience changes so extreme that areas won’t be suitable for human life. They won’t be able to grow the out-of-season fruit and veg that we expect from them. They will do what humans have done throughout our history.
They will migrate. Where to? The global north. Where we live.
What do we do about this? We can prepare for unbelievable conflict, or we can do what we can to reduce climate change and invest in a stable world.
Birthright?
As a person with a diverse ethnicity, I have a view and possible insight into the reasons for migration. My grandfather was born in Lahore, and a British citizen of the Empire. He never held any other nationality. As a doctor, he volunteered in WW2 to tend British Soldiers in North Africa and ran arms to the Libyans during the Italian Occupation. My father, Mamoun Hassan, was born a British citizen in Jeddah. After attending a progressive secondary school in North London, surrounded and nurtured by the children of Jewish refugees from the Nazis, he became interested in the liberal arts. I am proud to say, he rose to hold senior, prominent positions in the British Film Industry, where he championed filmmakers who wanted to tell stories about British life, in all its diversity.
Where did they belong? When the family settled in England, which was never meant to be permanent, they changed their name to avoid attention during the worrying rise in fascism in the ’50s by Oswald Mosely and his Blackshirts. My family's name was ‘Israeli’. An old name that had a direct line that showed where we came from. My ancient name reveals that we were ‘originally’ a Jewish family from the Holy Land. Is that my homeland? Some would violently disagree!
My grandmother was from Syria. The family were traders throughout the Middle East, through southern Spain, around to Turkey (thanks to a little thing called the Inquisition) and back to Syria. Are any of those places my homeland?
My mother’s father was born in Antrim - a red-haired, blue-eyed son of Ireland who came to England as a boy when the family moved to follow my great-grandfather's work as a toolmaker in the Royal Docks in Greenwich – Starmer isn’t the only one with family toolmakers. Is Ireland my homeland? Except they were Scots-Irish. Is Scotland my homeland?
My maternal grandmother, whose father served in the Royal Artillery in WW1, was from a true British heritage – with a few Danes added for good measure! Surely not Denmark?
I was born in London. An Englishman, yet I have lived with the certain knowledge, that in many people’s eyes, I did ‘not belong’. Anywhere. How often have I heard “Go back to where you come from”? Where would that be? My homeland is England – Britain. London and in the heart of the Cotswolds, and now nearly 30 years in Hemel Hempstead. I grew up singing English folk songs and was a junior Morris man! My family's football team is Arsenal. My father watched the cricket every summer – cheering for England in the Ashes. How English can you get? It could have been different but, by fortune or fate, this is my home.
There are many ways to be part of a nation. I believe part of it is how you treat others and accept the responsibility of what we owe, not just to ourselves but, to the world.
Thank you for your support and for taking the time to read this article.
Sherief Hassan
Green Party Parliamentary Candidate for Hemel Hempstead
(Previously stood as Green Party Candidate for Hemel Hempstead in 2017 and 2019)
10th June 2024
hemel.hempstead@votegreen.uk
Promoted by Rose Sheridan on behalf of Dacorum Green Party, at PO Box 78066, London. SE16 9GQ
The Green Party policy on migration can be read here.