Dickson C. Igwe

Whole communities appear to have transplanted from Afghanistan and Pakistan on to the British Street. This is causing a great deal of animosity. There is even talk of civil strife. Why this conundrum? The failure to adopt a thoughtful approach to migration.

Paradoxically, the idea of establishing parallel communities is a very old British idea that evolved from colonialism when the British Aristocrat existed in a type of splendid isolation in the colonies.

OK. When a Virgin Islander, child or adult migrates to a hostile and racist country such as the USA to find opportunity, there is misery.

In the meantime, in the Virgin Islands, a child’s safe paradise of an island and home. An alien takes up the cosy existence he or she should have held.

The Virgin Islander will probably never return, and when he or she does, he is so Americanized he will never settle back into the native culture. This is demographic and cultural change in action.

Then there are migrant practices where some are forming enclaves- communities within this community. It has happened in the UK with whole neighbourhoods and towns taken over by migrants from Muslim Asia.

In the Virgin Islands, they fish the waters illegally and adopt practices such as only shopping within their own community and using lax planning laws to crowd into apartments. Others go back to their countries to marry their cousins to create a new tribe of their own people in the Virgin Islands.

When they open a business, they frequently employ their own people and adopt a colourism and racism that is rife in their home countries.

These migrants view the native population as an inconvenience. They go away to bring in brides, and are from clearly incompatible cultures with that of the host culture.

This is what has happened in the UK.

Paradoxically, for the UK, it has driven this very same expat culture in the former colonies.

Today in the UK, that cycle has returned to its original position with aliens from mostly West Asian countries adopting a parallel existence; the result is political upheaval, and even talk of civil war. The world is a cycle.