Pics

Matthew Parris said immigrants should show courtesy to their ‘host country’ – 9 shocked reactions

Author and Times writer Sathnam Sanghera has highlighted a piece by his fellow Times columnist Matthew Parris and it’s gone viral on Twitter because, well, have a read for yourself.

I’m not sure that, in his offensive comments about the four Congresswomen of colour whom Donald Trump has been insulting in his tweets, the President was dabbling in racist politics.

I don’t like his attacks but I think they will strike a chord among millions who should not be called racists. It’s just futile to suppose that arrivals from another country and their children, immediately and automatically assume an identity as citizens that is indistinguishable from that of the population already there. They have all the same rights but will be seen, for a generation or two, as neither better nor worse but different.

We do still speak of ‘second generation immigrants’ and the expression has meaning. And, yes, there is such a thing as courtesy to a host country, even if it’s now theirs too. If in earlier centuries the many Irish and Italian (white) immigrants to the US had seemed to attack too fiercely and too early the beliefs and values of the country that has taken them or their parents in, they would have attracted irritation.

‘Why did they come there, then?’ Is a question that, like it or not, would be asked. I think I’d ask it too: or at least think it. It will be interesting to see opinion poling on this, in America and elsewhere.

It prompted a huge response on Twitter, as you might imagine, and we reckon these 9 pretty much sum it up.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Source