Sammy Wilson is the Environment Minister for Northern Ireland as well as a Member of Parliament for the DUP. He reckons that it’s better to have foreigners in Northern Ireland unemployed rather than locals.
The DUP minister, speaking on The Politics Show, continued: “I think you’ve got to be very careful when you talk in those terms because people always accuse you of being racist and xenophobic.
“However, when it comes to a downturn, I think if jobs are becoming vacant and you’ve got people with equal skills, and can do the job, etc., then I think preference should be given to people from Northern Ireland.”
I don’t think there’s any doubt that the statement is espousing a xenophobic attitude.
End of the day, any taxpayer is a good employee and as long as they’re paying tax I’d rather have them working. If this means they have to employ immigrants to Northern Ireland then so be it. We’ve no shortage of people who’d rather sit at home and play computer games or watch television rather than actually get a job or, god forbid, start their own business. And that has nothing to do with immigrants.
Suggesting employers select for jobs based on nationality rather than capability means starting to slide down a slipperly slope. How much pain and anguish did we go through because previously employers were not restricted to equal opportunities and instead employed on the basis of religious background? Does Mr Wilson think that just because we’ve gotten over the ‘religion thing’ that we have to find another scapegoat?
Here’s a quote from a relevant movie: American History X
Don’t laugh! They’re nothing funny going on here this is about your life and mine. It’s about decent hard-working Americans falling into the cracks and getting the shaft because their government cares more about the constitutional rights of a bunch of people who aren’t even citizens in this country.
On the Statue of Liberty it says: “Give me your tired, your hungry, your poor.” Well, it’s Americans who are tired and hungry and poor. And I say, until you take care of that, close the fucking book. ‘Cause we’re losing. We’re losing our rights to pursue our destiny. We’re losing our freedom. So that a bunch of fucking foreigners can come in here and exploit our country. And this isn’t something that’s going on far away. This isn’t something that’s happening places we can’t do anything about it. It’s happening right here, right in our neighborhood, right in that building behind you..
Here, Sammy, you should watch this. (Hint: Prejudice is bad)
More “politics of fear”, but this time not from Bush or Blair.
Fantastic comments to be made not a month after publicly claiming that global warming was ‘all a big scam’. Of any public official, the last I’d hope to be a climate change denialist would be the minister for environment.
He’s losing his marbles, that is if he had any to begin with.