- Value judgement part one - 22nd September 2026
- Brought to book… - 21st September 2026
- Money go round - 21st September 2026
Recent right wing unrest around the world against immigrants, has focused attention on how FEW people from overseas actually live in Wales, as well as the economic and cultural benefits they bring to the country, amid concern that the demonstrations might spread.
In Portsmouth several hundred anti-migrant protesters marched through the city centre, while anti-racism groups opposed them, with both sets of groups kept apart by police.
The march followed earlier disorder on September 6 when hundreds of demonstrators blocked roads when coaches carrying 120 migrants, who had crossed The Channel in a dinghy were trying to leave the city, and there is a widely-held perception that those who come to the UK from abroad will not assimilate, because they do not share British values.
Others, though, are exasperated by what we have seen.
Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Donna Jones said: “…The people of Portsmouth deserve to go about their business without fear and disruption…”.
It hasn’t simply been Portsmouth either.
There have been disturbances around the globe, and right wing groups have made advances electorally too.
Recently voters backed the anti-immigrant party AfD (Alternatve for Germany) in the eastern State of Saxony-Anhalt. In Sweden as well, the moderate left wing party was run very close by a far right group called the Sweden Democrats (SD) led by the charismatic Jimmie Akesson.
Mr Akesson had run a lively race, and his campaign videos harped on nostalgia, with a promise to ‘Make Sweden Sweden Again’ (which was surely a nod to Donald Trump supporters’ Make America Great Again [MAGA]),.
Then there is France, with the huge anti-incomers party National Rally (RN) led by Marine le Pen.
Ms le Pen, on her fourth presidential bid, has a commanding lead.
Five new polls give her 32-36 per cent in the first round – at least 13 points ahead of her nearest rival, Edouard Philippe, one of Emanuel Macron’s former Prime Ministers.
In each of three run-off scenarios Ms Le Pen wins, and in one she beats Mr Philippe by 55 percentage points to 45.
However statistics at the heart of this difficult issue paint a rather different picture from the one these people depict.
Overseas immigration is actually very small, and the facts seem to show that those that do come bring enormous economic and cultural benefits – with this revealed by looking at just one religion of migrants (Islam), as many are concerned about ‘Islamification’.
Even after record migration from majority-Muslim countries, Muslims now make up just six per cent of Europe’s population of well over 500 million.
Although new arrivals typically have more children than the native-born do, fertility rates tend to converge within two generations, which is a long way from civilisational erasure, or ‘Islamification’.
In fact, most Muslim immigrants want to get on in their new home of the UK, not impose on it a version of the societies they have just left.
Their children tend to do better than their parents at school – for example in the UK 67 per cent of Bangladeshis who sat standard tests in 2021 were enrolled in university by age 19, compared with 38 per cent of white Britons.
Many Muslims are involved in mainstream politics: witness the UK’s Home Secretary (Shabana Mahmoud) and London’s mayor (Sadiq Khan).
From examining the figures, it is clear that overseas migrants are disproportionately represented in setting up businesses, and creating jobs, with a rich cuisine introduced into the UK.
In Wales the issue of overseas migration is even less pertinent.
The research department of the Welsh Parliament/Senedd Cymru (WP/SC) declares: “In Wales, the most recent data shows that in the year to mid-2024, international migration to Wales fell by almost a quarter compared with the year to mid 2023, to 22,680…Of all the nations and regions of the UK, only one (the North East of England at 6.8%) had a lower proportion of its population born abroad than Wales (6.9%)”.
It therefore seems obvious that the facts do not support those who oppose immigration, while fears are growing that the unrest we have seen in England might spread to Wales.
But when has that ever stopped them..?!
Truths like these by our Editor, Welshman Phi Parry, who was gripped by the rare neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
‘Value judgement part two’ comes soon where we look at how immigrants are being persecuted in other parts of the world.
