Qwiss! wrote:
Think this sort of thing has been primed for years, its beyond an extremist issue, its very much in the mainstream now.
Yeah, but it's been happening for years due to reckless and substantially racist politicians. David Cameron hired Lynton Crosby to run his election campaign. UK Labour had its handwaving about strong immigration controls.
If you look at the Brexit referendum, the "In" campaign is saying "vote to stay in Europe or the border checks will move from Calais to Dover" and the "Out" campaign is saying "the EU's border control experiment has failed, we need to get out". Both appealing to border paranoia in other words.
This is one of the reasons why the rhetoric of "extremism" is pointless in migration debates (and a sign of woolly thinking)—the centre is extreme in its own way, and as long as the current mood persists, the race-inflected policy repertoire—visas, work rights, citizenship, movement, detention—that is the border is almost exactly coextensive with that of sovereignty.
