Showing posts with label asylum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label asylum. Show all posts

Asylum seekers holding political office isn't good

Someone being a political refugee from abroad gives them excellent qualifications to be welcomed into a new society, and equally good qualifications to have no influence over foreign policy.

A community of Cuban exiles who reside in the United States are essentially anti-communist hard line politicians who are not averse to demanding Americans be sent to war against a regime they dislike, as a result of their own family grievances. Many of those people fleeing Ukraine for Europe are likely to demand an aggressive line or even an open conflict with Russia by European countries.

If political or war refugees are allowed to hold political office, they will use it to make war speeches and basically pursue a vendetta at the expense of their adoptive country, and even their children are likely to also grow up to attempt the same.

Conflict of interest

One could argue that Cuban exiles and their descendants in the US, like Commonwealth residents present in the  UK, are from territory formerly administered by the host country, and therefore we have some responsibility to listen to and act on their grievances. This argument, however, does not hold when those who were adopted are clearly putting their family interests over the interests of the adoptive country.

If someone is still loyal to the imperial power and re-joined its rule, e.g. if a Commonwealth resident is loyal to British rule, they should accept that the British know best and keep their heads down until we ask their opinion as part of an initiative launched by us, rather than claiming to know better and trying to pursue some form of authority over the British.

Let us consider another response. One could argue that indeed asylum seekers have taken their new nationality, and that it is therefore unfair of the country adopting them to point to them as different or less deserving of authority. However, the adoptees are the ones labelling themselves as different. If someone begins using their identity as a Cuban or a Jamaican to make their arguments regarding those lands, we can take it that they are giving up their new identity as American or British. They are forsaking our interests in favour of their own. They are therefore expressing conflicting loyalties, and if they have fewer rights as a result, they should have only themselves to blame.

Lobbying for revenge

It is important for a country to not be held hostage by another country or group from another country. It should be fine if the values and culture of the country change because of migration, and that some foreign sympathies arise because of it, but known individuals trying to manipulate our policy to support foreign interests should be distrusted. For this reason, foreign lobbies are inherently problematic because they call into question whether we are really allied to the other country or our representatives are merely being pressured by a hostile actor into supporting that other country.

Those who flee because they have no other homeland, and to whom we have historic or cultural obligations, should be welcome. If we have reason to think someone came to our country to advocate or lobby for a war or change to our policy regarding another country, though, then some thought should should be given to deporting them, and certainly they should not be given any kind of authority.

For those who want a moral liberal solution, rather than banning from office or deportation, a better course may simply be to examine these individuals who may advocate a foreign conflict. We should examine their loyalties with greater suspicion than we might examine others, in order to rule out a conflict of interest that causes them to secretly manipulate our country to achieve revenge against another country.

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The bad choice of national adoptee

A curious specimen of belief is that of the person who has converted not to a new religion, but a new nationality. Often, the results are similar.

The person who converts to another nationality will often adopt for himself the most idealised, rosy picture of their new identity. They take everything about their new identity a little bit too seriously, and won't relax.

They don't really understand what they have joined, but they are suddenly a big zealot about it and want to fight for it.

Mr Freedom

Those types of people I am referring to will often go to ridiculous extremes to label themselves as part of their new identity, possibly even having a flag or symbol tattooed on their bodies. Some of them might alter their names to something ridiculous, that they think fits their new nationality.

This may be the case with some Indian converts to Britishness, although I can't be sure and don't want to unfairly caricature a group of people. They may idolise the British monarch and wear jewellery featuring Union Jacks and state symbols - something few normal British people would do.

Worst of all, these new adoptees of the nation will often defend any policy of the government, even if they do not understand it, and will be quick to call others traitors. They become the worst caricature of chauvinism.

Immigrants against immigration

Although they are immigrants, the types of individuals I am talking about will often seek out right-wing groups and denigrate other immigrants. In fact, these immigrants often want to stop immigration, slamming the door on others just like them who would have followed them.

Joining a different community, a different culture, is a bit more complicated than getting a passport or being confirmed in a church. In fact, when people like this adopt the new identity and become militants in its name, they accidentally denigrate and mock their new community.

They turn themselves into a parody of the identity they hoped to join, they mistakenly insult the flags they hoped to wave. They doom themselves to be the butt of jokes, rather than truly accepted into the nation.

Infiltrators

Sometimes, people join a new nation or religion in hope of inciting it to war against those they do not like.

It may also be the case with asylum seekers. Asylum seekers, as opposed to economic migrants, are prone to be critics of the regime in their former country, and therefore may advocate a war against their former country, as Cuban refugees in Miami do. These are not model citizens. Their grudges have turned them into snakes, who imperil their new adoptive country with a conflict not in its interest.

People who remain part of their community of birth seem more likely to be mature, balanced individuals. The best immigrants will still carry their original national identity and pride with them somewhere.

There is a reason why countries are careful about who they accept as new citizens, and why the process often takes long. It is meant to filter out obvious evildoers, but also the unbalanced people and those with false expectations or understandings.

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