Believe it or not, my parents were not the sole inspiration for the collection of essays compiled by Nikesh Shukla in ‘the Good Immigrant’. But when I came across this term and this idea that there is a certain kind of immigrant that people are comfortable being around and can tolerate; a person who is held to standards that those born in this country are not, it reminded me of my parents.
Now my parents are actually immigrants by the definition of the word: they grew up in a different country and moved here in their 20s (although if they were white and emigrated from the UK rather than to the UK, I guess they’d be called expats). I am technically not an immigrant – although my citizenship hasn’t always been British, I was born in the UK and have always lived here. However, I do consider the immigrant experience to be part of my identity because I think all of us that are pigmentally blessed are treated as being an immigrant, or a foreigner, to a certain extent – and the more melanin you have, the higher the amount of scrutiny that is applied to you.
As a child I never really thought about my parents as people with their own experiences and thoughts and feelings – I just thought of them as the people who cared for me, fed me delicious food every day, lectured me semi-regularly (it kind of worked as I now floss religiously – thanks amma) and overall just did the world a massive favour by bringing me into it.
My parents both grew up in Chennai in India and I often forget just how different their upbringing was to mine. I find it difficult to get my head round how much their lives must have changed going from growing up in India to moving here in the 90s to now having lived in the UK for almost half their lives. Like most children of immigrants, it is only now that I have grown up a bit (a very little bit) and started viewing them as fellow humans that I realise how incredibly brave and resilient they must have been to have made the move to the UK and settled down here.
My parents fit the stereotype of the archetypal ‘Good immigrant’. They came to the UK as an educated and qualified doctor and dentist and have both worked tirelessly for the NHS for over 20 years. Being a good immigrant means that you do a job that supports the people of the country and put up with the racism you experience at work. It means you don’t make a fuss if you are faced with discrimination and micro-aggressions, you instead treat these experiences as a tax that you pay for having the privilege of working in this country (and literally keeping the healthcare system propped up, in the case of my parents). It means assimilating enough to be considered non-threatening, speaking perfect English and toning down your brownness.
In a country where the vast majority of political parties base many of their campaigns on vilifying immigrants, being a ‘good immigrant’ (or being the child of one) can bring you a lot of privilege – you are seen as the exception to the rule, the rationale for having a ‘system like Australia’ when it comes to immigration policies, the face of a brand of multiculturalism that is acceptable and non-threatening.
Now I am a loud, brown woman – I do complain about the micro-aggressions I experience in the workplace, I do ‘make a fuss’ and speak openly about systemic racism and I do believe that I should be treated exactly equally to my white counterparts. But I am still ‘British’ enough and assimilated enough to get away with this, and I am sure this is at least partly because of the roles my parents played being ‘good immigrants’.
What happens to all of the people who do not tick all these boxes that are required to be perceived as a ‘good immigrant’? What happens to the people who came to the UK having had less education than my parents, with poorer English and less cultural capital and knowledge of Britain?
What happens to the people who have had to flee terrible and unsafe conditions in their home countries (often because of UK interference in these countries), who are likely to have faced incredible amounts of trauma and stress to get to this country which they have been told is a safe haven?
We only have to read a newspaper or watch a speech by someone like Priti Patel to see how these people are viewed (brown women, you know how it is dealing with Priti Patel being our only government representation right now…sigh). These people who need the support of this country more than anyone, who we need to share our resources with and integrate into our society are the ones who get vilified and denied rights the most. These are the people who get held in immigration detention facilities, most of which are privately run for profit in the UK. These are the people who are most often denied the right to work and the right to bank accounts if they do manage to stay here – let alone access to the mental health services they need to deal with the levels of PTSD they may have.
If you judge a society by the way it treats its most vulnerable then the way we, as a country, treat people who do not fit into the ‘good immigrant’ label should be one of our deepest sources of shame.
While I am grateful for the privileges I have had being born into the ‘good immigrant’ category – I am deeply concerned about the level of hostility and discrimination that the rest of our immigrants face, both on an interpersonal level and on a societal and systemic scale when it comes to their access to housing, education, healthcare and even just basic safety. Here is a call to compassion and celebration of all immigrants – no matter how ‘good’ they are.