Does foreign aid encourage immigration to the UK?
It's a good question which arose as part of an online discussion I was involved in a few days back, and my opinion is in the affirmative, it does.
If we begin at our most simple, nameless village in nameless country, life there is pretty poor in fairness, most people are occupied with the day to day business of securing enough resources - food, money, water, medicine, clothes etc - to make it through to the next day.
They may look out for their immediate neighbours, it would be in their interest to do so if this were reciprocal, or they may give a damn about only their immediate family. Fact is, they have little, who can blame them either way.
Mostly, they know their government does little for them, they know that luxury is confined to a handful at the top, they'll be last in the line for their nations money.
Then, along comes Joey English from the West with his entourage. He's in his nice car, nice clothes, toting all kinds of high tech gizmos, and he's going to spend - figure out of the air - £10million on improving your local community.
£10 million! That's a baffling figure to most of us in the West, we can't really comprehend it, we're never going to have it, how much more so if you're in a country where your weekly income might be £10.
You see a foreigner - an outsider - willing to shower an unimaginable sum of money on you and your town/village, someone who will take care of you and improve your life.
Now, you're from a poor and impoverished region, your concern is - as said earlier - keeping your immediate family alive, and perhaps immediate neighbours, you have nothing left over to do otherwise. You - and who wouldn't - care about improving the lot of your nearest and dearest.
But this Joey English, wow, he doesn't have to worry about things like that. He has such a huge surplus of resources that he can afford to take care of you, thousands of miles away and nothing to do with him whatsoever.
What's the obvious message you could read into that?
It's simple, and that is that Joey English is from a land of plenty. Joey English has huge amounts of resources to spare, he's a nice guy, he wants to take care of us and devote those extra resources to us.
It's obvious Joey English has ample spare resources and money - how else could he afford to spend it on us?
Now, one could wait on Joey English to improve local life, which may take decades, or one could - and who could blame anyone for doing it - seek out the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the land of plenty from which Joey English hails.
Stands to reason it is a land of plenty, it has to be if they can afford to spend all this money on us, their people must live in luxury. And, they care about us, else why would they spend this money on us.
It's a simple logic, if we could get there our lives would improve no end. If Joey English has money to spare in, for sake of argument, our homeland of Africa, how much more must there be to spare in England? The streets must truly be paved with gold.
England has wealth to spare, people who will fund improving our lives - whether it's a selfish decision based on the idea that something such as this should be exploited, or a perfectly understandable decision of wanting better, it's certainly a logical decision.
Get to the UK. Any nation which can spend unimaginable sums on improving our lives here must truly be a bounteous nation, they have wealth aplenty to spare.
So, yes, I'd argue that foreign aid would act as a billboard advertising the UK as an excellent destination for immigration, and I'd not blame the immigrants either.
They're just chasing the pot of gold which our own actions tell them is to be found here, and, once they make it to the UK, who is to blame them for thinking that Britain is the place that will always give?
