Suella Braverman has a serious problem

 

Suella Braverman is an English/British politician full stop.

 

 

1.      Will there always be a Goa in infinity OR will there be few or no Goan Roman Catholics, so much so that the Indian Government will return the country to its pre-Portuguese name? Some will this at some point, but it was the Roman Catholic Goans who made Goa what it became: A tourists’ paradise for all.

2.      Oldies like me, nearing their 80s and others who are past that, may cling on to their “Goanness” but our children and their children and subsequent new members of the clan will surely be thoroughbred Brits, Aussies, Canadians, Yanks, etc if they are not that already? It matters very little or not at all in mixed marriages, which is common as ice and snow and sun and rain. A good thing too, by all accounts!

3.      If you are a member of the parliament (in any country) you can forget about your ethnic origins, which must not and should not be part of any decision-making.

4.      I suspect that “Goaness” will be celebrated by those Goans who have migrated recently from Goa, other parts of India and the Gulf States. In 10, 20 or 30 years there won’t be many Goans who migrated to parts unknown 40, 50 or 60 years ago.

5.      As Home Secretary, Suella Braverman is an English/British politician whose allegiance is only to the King and the Parliament. The fact that she is the daughter of migrants does not matter a hoot. Her decision-making is purely for the greater good of the English and Welsh people.

6.      The fact that she is of Tamil/Goan mix is of no consequence. She is British, love it or hate it, she cannot be anything but that. She cannot be criticised for deciding against Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Goan or any other migrant. She cannot and must not be biased on any grounds, ethnic or otherwise.

She answers to Parliament and her Conservative Party in all things, through these instruments the English and Welsh people will hold her accountable

Suella Braverman has a problem to solve:

Let in refugees or Indian migrants?

Or none of the above?

AS A young journalist in Kenya, after having made my name as a tough young sports journalist who went beyond match reports and investigated the under-belly of corrupt sports administration, I moved into General News reporting and later into investigative reporting both at home and abroad. I was lauded as a political reporter by the Jomo Kenyatta regime as long as I kept my nose clean and did not write about what I should not have seen. Still, I did some pretty hard-hitting stuff. However, as soon as my investigations were uncomfortable for some high-ranking politicians, the faceless ones got a message to my wife that “she should get me out of Kenya because there was a bullet waiting for Mr. Fernandes”.

Right from the very first day, I started work as a sports journalist at the newly launched Aga Khan newspaper the Daily Nation, I knew one day my family and I would have to leave Kenya. I had spent a considerable amount of time with budding politicians in the late 1950s and they often discussed how they would get rid of non-Africans once the country gained its freedom from Britain.

On one of my many forays into the UK as a guest of the Foreign Office, I managed to get a passport that would allow me automatic entry into Britain. The new passport was a replacement for my then-current passport which had run out of pages. The death threats became louder, and my wife wanted us to leave there and then. When we flew into London, the Immigration Officer welcomed me: “Welcome home Mr. Fernandes.” However, my wife had to stay behind because she had a “B” passport and would have to be examined by an English doctor (even though we had all the clearances from our doctor in Kenya). The doctor in question was out playing golf and we were stuck there for four hours. When the doctor did turn up, he merely glanced at my wife, asked her a couple of questions, and told her she was fine. Bar that minor hiccup, entry into Britain was like starting a holiday.

Other Asians were not so lucky, and they had to spend hours in airports, mothers clinging on to children, some of them very young babies. A lot of the Asian immigrants were traumatised, temporarily or for much longer periods in a country they knew little or nothing about. If they came in late autumn or winter the cold tortured them even more. Most of them had lived in the welcoming genteel temperate climes of Africa or the heat of the Subcontinent.

A few of the Asian immigrants returned to the countries of their birth, thinking that they would not be allowed into the UK. If they were allowed in, British MP Enoch Powell had promised them “rivers of blood” and those that waited in Kenya to join the queues for the UK, received letters from friends and relatives about how so many of them were being beaten and attacked by right-wing bovver boys. They would enter Britain at a later date when their children or family members or friends had settled in the UK. My family and I migrated in 1974 and bar a few hiccups we continue to enjoy our lives there until a certain senior journalist from the Sydney Morning Herald invited us to come and replenish our tans in Australia.

I have never allowed myself to think what kind of a nightmare it might have been if the British Government had blocked the Asian exodus from entering the UK having first declared British passports issued in Africa as illegal. There was another option. On one of my travels to Canada, I was interviewed by the Editor of the Toronto Globe and Mail and I had a job waiting. However, ice and snow melted that idea away.

I wonder what would have happened if Priti Patel and Suella Braverman were in charge then. Would they have blocked their parents and siblings from entering the UK? Would they have considered their families’ attempts to enter Britain “an invasion?”

As Britain’s multi-cultural experiment is under fire from so many quarters, is a Goan woman who should know better be allowed to continue considering the use of the word “invasion” to describe desperate asylum seekers (most of them genuine, I think?) What this woman is doing is fuelling extreme right-wingers in the UK and there were always loads of them around, silent until now. Could all hell break loose, however unthinkable that is?

The question is: How can we be racists when the not "white" minister in charge of home affairs is talking about an invasion?  They will say: “We are the real patriots fighting for the soul and survival of the British people and Braverman is our champion.” Others might say “Enoch Powell has come back from the dead as a woman.”

The sad thing about it all is that I think that both Priti Patel and Suella Braverman have their hearts in the right place, they both mean well. Mrs Braverman needs to consult a communications specialist she is probably living a nightmare. She can see many more thousands of refugees from all around the world attempting to get into Britain, do or die along the way. How does one stop the human stampede, if at all? What’s more how does one  compound the nightmare by allowing Indian immigration at the same time? Is it a case of she is damned if she does and damned if she does not?

However, the nightmare is: “Some say there are too many foreigners in the UK. True or false? And what should Britain do about that?"

 

There are 48,000 (one newspaper said 28,000-plus) asylum seekers waiting to be processed in Kent with very few professionally trained people to handle the overload. Should the UK adopt the Australian “stop the boat people” naval plan?

 

Asians were brought to East Africa by the British. First to build the Kenya-Uganda Railway. They set up some of the first shops and went on to dominate that aspect of life. Sikhs were mainly builders. Others were shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, cooks, stewards, and waiters. The Colonial Civil Service was the realm of Goan clerks. They have been credited by people like Winston Churchill for keeping the wheels of the whites administered colonial government in ship shape.

Racist, they scream!

Let us look at ourselves first. The African Goans I mean.  Are those of us who migrated to various parts of the world still Goan? I suspect everyone would scream “Yes”. Really? Those who have ancestral homes, living family connections or money in India, Persons of Indian Origin, etc may have a case to make. Others whose only connection to Goa is that of the annual tourists may be just that. If the current state of Goa was at war, how many Goans would rush to its aid? Most of us are too old, and most of our children, grandchildren and daughters-in-law and sons-in-law have little or no connection with the land of our mothers and fathers. I think there is a general disgust that the Goa of parents is now overrun by filthy rich Indians. That is racist in itself. I might suggest with the majority of Roman Catholic Goans having left Goa for other shores, Indians prop up the local economy.

Where do your loyalties lie? The country of your ancestors’ (and your parents’) or the country of your adoption. I wonder if Dual Citizenship is a curse rather than a blessing. A foot each in two countries is neither here nor there. Perhaps, single citizenship is the answer. I wonder where the Australian Government stands on this and would I even get a response should I ask?

How much are we, the migrant Goans, truly Goan? Does singing and dancing to Konkani songs, listening to the unforgettable Lorna, eating traditional Goan cuisine or the sub-standard, poor imitation that is often served in the countries of our adoption, make us truly Goan? Does Catholicism make us truly Goan? Our belief in the sanctity of St Francis Xavier? I have often said we African Goans are a vanishing tribe, death does that to tribes. So, what does that make our children? Aussie full-bloods, Kiwis, Europeans, Americans, or this and that?

I have written before that I am a man of many parts: Goa, Kenya, UK, Australia … Goa, UK, Kenya are all fading with my short-term memory loss. I guess I will be buried in Australia, or my ashes whisked away by a Sydney wind. An Aussie, who left his children no links with Goa which they have never visited.

I do not think that is the same for Indians who call various parts of the world a temporary home. For them, and other sub-continentals their real home will always be that which was founded by generations of their kin going back many, many hundreds of years. For example, if there was another war between India and Pakistan, the nationals of the two countries strewn all over the globe will drop everything and race to their country of origin. If they can’t do it in person, then they will send billions in aid.

Unlike a Goan, an Indian, a Pakistani, a Sri Lankan will never be a true Aussie, a Brit, a Yank, or a European … true many have lived decades and have died in foreign lands, but they always remained the sons and daughters of the land of their birth (except those born in Africa, Africa was never their land).

However, I have no idea how the Goans who have migrated directly to Britain (and Europe) or via Portuguese Passports, thanks to their “Portuguese ancestry”, would react. From the negative view, friends tell me some of their behaviours force other Goans to make chuuk, chuuk sounds at their Konkani expletives and their general bad behaviour but then again, these are reactions of the Goan Brits from Africa.

England has a refugee problem. How many should they let in? How many and who should they turn back? Should they sacrifice Indian immigration to facilitate asylum seekers and other refugees? Suella Braverman has a serious problem to solve.

A friend wrote: This is precisely because the Home Office never got their act together.  Border control was almost non-existent. They were conveniently blaming the French while not tightening their borders.

 Can you believe it is costing us, the taxpayers £7million a day to house these asylum seekers in hotels because their (the Home Office’s) vetting process is so slow and inefficient.

By the way, Thank God, for Canada, US, Australia, NZ, where they are more considerate to some migrants.