The word immigrant conjures up images of kebab shop workers, corner shop owners, asylum seekers and the array of people fleeing their home countries seeking better economic opportunities (mostly) and escaping political persecution.

I watched a show on channel 4 tonight; Immigrants: an inconvinient truth. This show seeked to layer the immigrants in the UK by their various nationality. Some of the more controversial questions asked are why are immigrants from India more sucessful then those from the neighbouring Pakistan and Bangaladesh. It also question the sanity of a nanny state that resulted in 48% of refugee Somalians not actively seeking for work. An excellent (and annoying) example was a woman from Somali who had been in the UK for 15 years, but had never worked. She is also indigant at the £33k a year in benefits that she receives; believing that she deserves more. A person who has never worked nor paid taxes in the UK.

Another illustrates a single Zimbabwean woman with two children who are assigned a council home within 2 months of applying, versus an english family of 4 who throughout the 7 year that they have been waiting on the council housing list had seen their position on the list get lower and lower (??!!) whilst the immigrants around them are given priority because they do not already have their own homes nor hold a job.

Then another immigrant group – the Zimbabweans. Almost half of them are in employment in the health services either as nurses, technicans and doctors. The Polish, who had replaced the Portugese in warehouses, factories and farms around the UK, working longer hours than the average UK citizen. Due to the rural locations of these jobs, indigenious English are a little more than peeved to see population of their village swell with these hard working workers, rarely considering that these are minimum wage jobs that the average UK citizen refuses, as being on benefits and all that nanny state shit brings in more dough than slaving 10 hours in the field picking cabbages.

Watching the show made me realize that me, even though I am not Polish nor Pakistani, am an immigrant. Not for any of the usual reasons, my relocation and seemingly immigration here seemed to be more by force than anything else. True, my standard of shopping had increased whilst my work week had been cut from a 45 hours week to a 35 hour week. I still dream of moving to Perhentian and making Mars bar milkshakes for a living, screw Aldo and Topshop.

But an unlikely immigrant I am. Unlikely because the impression of immigrants here are that they do not speak english , do not contribute to the British society and are mostly doing menial jobs. Due to the fact that I am earning a little higher than the UK average salary, I actually pay a much larger amount of income taxes and national insurance. As I am ‘on my journey to immigration’, I am not entittled to any benefits whatsoever, even though I had paid more than my fair share of taxes compared to those comming from a refugee state.

I know I might just sound extremely cruel, but I am not. I believe in granting asylum status to people are in dire need. However, granting asylum comes with a price. The government needs to ensure that the refugees are properly trained and are in work, however menial. Help should not be given to lazy people – help should only be given to those that genuinely needs it. The papers over the weekend tells of about 90% of people who are in benefits are actually lying about the state fo their condition.

I know of at least one person like that. The government is under the impression that she is extremely sick with backache and is unable to work. She is therefore on benefits, a nice 2 bedroom house for her and her cat. She spends her days just lazing at home and going to the pub and drinking. And yes, she can walk, run, sit, squat. My tax money; into her pockets; into the pub. This disgust me.

Anyway, this has kinda turned into more like a rant, which was not what I wanted it to be to start of with. I wanted to emphatize with my great grandparents, who travelled from China to Malaysia and set up a tiny fishing outlet. I wanted to compare their journey and the political and social changes that they encountered in order to make a better life for their family. With no nanny state to feed them, they had made a life for themselves, a house (ableit on stilts) and children who grew up to buy houses made out of bricks and mortar. Three, four generation down the line, I am making the same move further west. But am I? I have the freedom of movement, I earn sufficient money to enable me to go home to visit, enable me to buy all sort of delish food and dress in an ever changing wardrobe.

But for me, even though I seem to be the unlikely immigrant to this apparently Great Britain, I have not yet decided to stay for good. With the amount of immigrants flooding this great country, I had also realised that I am one of the lucky ones. Maybe its because of the kiasu (scared to die) chinese work ethic that always have to be bigger, better and faster. Chinese restaurant car parks always looks like a Mercedes Benz car dealer – which I am also guilty of, but thats because the A series was a great compromise between me and bacon!

I am thankful of my parents forcing education on me. I am thankful of leading the alternate cushy road to immigration. Most of all, I am thankful that I am luckier than shitloads of other people desperately seeking a better life abroad.

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