The problem with muslims...

[Anymouse]

What about the British turning Spain into a mini UK?

When I was stationed in Spain with the US Navy, I noted that myself.

As my (ex-)wife and I lived off base in Rota (Cadiz province - Costa del Sol), although we weren't permanent residents (stationed there for three years), we set about learning Spanish (unlike most Americans there) and used it exclusively with the locals (aided a bit by the Portuguese I already knew from being an exchange student to Brazil and excepting when a local wanted to practise English), shopped in the local markets, bought our petrol from the local station though it was higher than the Navy Exchange, made friends with our neighbours (useful since one of them was an officer in the Guardia Civil), attended civic events, opened a local bank account in pesetas for doing business, obtained Spanish drivers' licences instead of driving on our International ones, I obtained a Spanish amateur radio licence rather than using the reciprocal rules for ham, and went to the annual municipal fair.

The only exception was in religion; as mine was illegal in Spain, I did not publicly practise it.

But on our driving tours to Gibraltar and the Costa del Sol, it was readily apparent that the British tourists and pensioners living there were having none of that. They segregated themselves almost completely from the Andalucista population. Where they had more money than the local Spaniards, they drove them out and made effective British enclaves. The Spaniards of my acquaintance continually griped about the English pushing them out of their own country.

It seems to be like that everywhere. Immigrants often tend to stick together for the same reason any other group of people that have something in common do: they have something in common. Language is particularly tricky, as is religion.

Note here in the USA we currently have a representative in the House that wants a moratorium on mosques (we have enough he says), and had a president that thought atheists should not be citizens and Wiccans should not be allowed in the military, or indeed Wicca should be outlawed.

"Integrating" into the culture for an atheist here would mean becoming a Christian. Atheism is not really considered part of the culture of the USA (though many of its founders could be argued to have atheistic leanings). "Integrating into the culture" is what the majority of a culture use as a bully-boy to suppress other views (largely those of immigrants), and every wave of immigration into the USA has seen its discrimination because they were immigrants, not because they "failed to integrate." Though I am the third generation of Polish immigrants, I still get the Polish humour every time someone sees my surname; they think its funny to make humour at the expense of my family that fled the Nazi invasion of Poland.

The locals never want to integrate with immigrants; integration is a two-way street. "You can live here but you gotta be like me" is not freedom. It is a different sort of slavery: a slavery to a culture that says "you must be like us."