The Telegraph has published a supportive report of a speech by Vince Cable at the launch of the National Asian Business Association yesterday. He referred to the 50,000 British Asian businesses in the UK which together generate more than £60bn nationwide, which in turn help to create thousands of jobs. He claimed that British Asians are probably “the most entrepreneurial section of the British public”
He said:
The stereotype of Asian businesses is changing rapidly; while that stereotype is still there – 30pc are in the retail sector – it’s rapidly diversifying. Their growth is essential to job creation and national economic recovery, as is the emergence of a new generation of Asian entrepreneurs.
You can understand, particularly after the Eastleigh [by-election], why people are anxious about uncontrolled immigration but that’s no justification to put up barriers to the people we need here and the capital, entrepreneurial skills and the other skills we need to make the country grow. The visa system has got to be flexible and pragmatic.
You can read the full article here.
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
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3 Comments
I expect Vince didn’t mean it, but this speech is perhaps just what UKIP need. To claim that the rest of the British public is less entrepreneurial is not good at all for relations between Asian and non-Asian British people. It’s a colonial divide-and-rule approach in which one section of the community is used as a way of criticising another. Disgraceful. It’s also a highly dubious statement. There are plenty of non-Asian entrepreneurs, some are even TV personalities.
I wonder if it is a recent immigrant effect rather than a specifically Asian effect. An immigrant whose qualifications are not recognised in the host country has a stronger incentive to become an entrepreneur. Lack of many of the material possessions that established residents take for granted is also a spur. Another qualification is proven by overcoming, the often unreasonable and unfair impediments we put in the way of immigrants. Belonging to a supportive family, to a culture that values work, and having a culture that disapproves of alcohol are good too. Asian immigrants and people of Asian descent are also much more visible than other ethnic groups.
I wonder if twenty years done the line, one of Vince’s successors will be making the same speech about Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants, or about East European Roma.
“The visa system has got to be flexible and pragmatic.”
From last year’s consultation on immigration, I though the visa system was flexible and pragmatic particularly with respect to those who either had capital or skills the nation wanted. The problem is the uncontrolled immigration of people who have neither.