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This test is just not British
• GORDON Brown’s plan for a Britishness test for immigrants wanting to become British citizens is, I think, not very British.
Britain prided itself in the past on welcoming and benefiting from large immigration. That was so even with Jewish immigration from eastern Europe which caused difficulties at first. But difficulties were overcome without any “Britishness” test.
Like many present day immigrants, I come from a cricket-playing British Commonwealth country.
The service my countrymen and members of my family gave to British armies is remembered on the Commonwealth Arch at Hyde Park Corner.
I am now a school governor, and I have done charity and community work especially for the Surma Centre and Bengali Workers’ Association and for the Euston Mosque.
Whether I would pass an English exam I do not know. Gaelic speakers from Gordon Brown’s Scotland would have failed it in the past.
I do know that in many areas children of immigrants with English as an added language now outperform children for whom English is their first language.
I hope my children will not only do well in this country but also do well for this country.
I am disappointed that the Labour Party should now be introducing a Britishness test.
They are even denying visas to Bengali chefs and waiters needed by Bengali restaurateurs in this country who have created a tax-paying trade worth £3 billion a year in the British economy.
Happily, the Teignbridge Liberal Democrat MP Richard Younger-Ross has tabled an early day motion in the House of Commons drawing attention to this injustice. I hope our local Camden MPs will
support it.
Mobashir Ali
Castle Road, NW1
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