Giorgia Meloni is right – migrants must integrate

Piddington’s recent declaration of independence may not have stopped the UK government’s plan to turn a nearby army base into a migrant camp. But the Oxfordshire village has nevertheless been hugely successful in drawing attention to the problem of where to house illegal migrants.

All around Britain, communities are saying ‘no’ to housing asylum seekers, whether in hotels, whole streets, houses in multiple occupation or old army barracks. The struggle civil servants face in finding anywhere at all to accommodate so many recent arrivals makes clear that mass migration has occurred without the British public’s consent. Voters have backed parties promising to limit immigration in successive elections, and no one has ever gone to the polls seeking a mandate for such vast social change.

But the widespread opposition to housing illegal migrants reveals something else, too: the complete absence of any government plan for integration. Simply dumping large numbers of migrants on local communities does not make integration happen. No one expects recent arrivals to contribute to the life of the community they find themselves in – indeed, the hope seems to be that they will keep to themselves. Leaflets hastily drawn up by the Home Office politely asking asylum seekers not to rape British women do not constitute a plan for integration, but they do expose the absence of shared values. Young male migrants are left to hang about in groups outside local schools and shopping centres, and some go on to commit horrific crimes.

Granting asylum seekers and illegal migrants ‘leave to remain’ does not change this situation, either. Different ethnic groups now live entirely separate lives in cities like London, Bradford and Birmingham. The large influx of new arrivals has put this problem in the spotlight, but it is decades-old policies aimed at promoting multiculturalism rather than assimilation that have allowed parallel communities to develop unchecked. We not only urgently need to stop all illegal migration and slash the numbers of legal migrants – we also need a plan to integrate people who are already here.

It is not acceptable that people who may be, on paper, British citizens, or who may have even been born in Britain, can live without any obligation to speak English or adopt British values and customs. But who is to blame for this situation? While a small number of migrants may be overtly hostile to their adopted nation, the failure to integrate different ethnic groups lies at the feet of the British political class. A naive cultural relativism, combined with a fear of appearing to be racist, means that integration is rarely even discussed. Now that problems with housing migrants mean the problem can no longer be ignored, policymakers have no clue where to start.

Not so in Italy. This week, prime minister Giorgia Meloni announced plans to ban girls from wearing the burqa or niqab in the classroom and to cap the number of foreign students in each class to encourage children to integrate as Italian citizens. Parents of pupils who find it difficult to integrate will be required to learn Italian so they can help their children at home. ‘It is unthinkable that, in an Italian classroom, it is the Italian children who feel they have become a minority’, Meloni said. ‘In our view, anyone who comes to Italy to build a future here must learn our language, understand our culture and respect our rules.’

It is impossible to imagine any recent UK prime minister making a similar argument. Yet Meloni’s insistence on integration is not racist but compassionate. Allowing people to enter a country while failing to teach them its language and not expecting them to respect its culture or traditions drives the creation of separate communities. This, along with rapid demographic change, fuels anxiety and a sense of injustice among residents asked to accommodate large numbers of newcomers.

In Britain, schools take a very different approach to that advocated by Meloni. It has recently come to light that a primary school in London, which is about to become state-funded, has a uniform policy that requires girls as young as seven to wear a hijab. This Islamic school does not seek to integrate its Muslim pupils, but to force them to live according to a different set of cultural rules. Elsewhere, some non-faith schools now provide only halal food or have uniform policies that forbid skirts. Rather than ensuring children adapt to a British way of life, these schools change their own policies to conform to the customs of a minority group.

It is shameful that, for many decades now, Britain has permitted mass migration without any plan to integrate new residents. We should learn from Giorgia Meloni. All children have a right to learn the language, culture and values of the society to which they belong.