Far-Right Extremist ‘Confused and Upset’ After Realising He’s a Foreigner

A far-right extremist has spoken publicly today of his shock and dismay at discovering that he too is a foreigner. John Smith, 29, from Luton in England, revealed the agony and confusion he has been experiencing since making the traumatic discovery. Mr Smith is a fierce critique of immigration and ‘everything foreign’ as he once put it, and has been active in far-right circles for a number of years.

A Secret Guide to Immigrants: How to Abuse the UK Benefit System

So you made it to the UK, welcome to your new life. There’s been a lot of discussion lately about abusing the benefit system here, but there have been hardly any useful articles on how to actually do it. To that end we have prepared this handy guide which will make it easy for you to abuse the system and enjoy a decent lifestyle, while contributing little to society. Remember to think big and be ambitious.

Lebanon’s Multicultural System: No Vacancy!

National myths can often mean little in practice. However, they represent a good way to interrogate the ideals that a nation holds and how consistently they inform its politics and policy. How can we for example reconcile Lebanon’s self-image as a shelter for persecuted minorities with the antagonism towards newcomers? How could we tolerate the rhetorical celebration of Lebanon’s diversity while the army and security forces wage a brutal campaign against migrant workers in Beirut?

Migrants' Rights in Lebanon

In response to the recent wave of arbitrary detentions and forced evictions of migrant workers in the Bourj Hammoud, Nabaa and Dawra areas in Beirut, representatives of the migrant communities in Lebanon today held a press conference and issued a robust statement against the  campaign of harassment launched by the Lebanese security forces and army. This campaign followed a nasty report by MurrTV that blamed migrant workers for crimes and ‘moral degeneration’ in these areas and that may have provided the incentive for the security forces to compensate for their incompetence and failure to police these areas by unleashing this brutal and unjustified crackdown on immigrant workers.

TEDxEastEnd Talk: Re-imagining cities in a world without borders

This is the talk that I gave two weeks ago as part of TedX East End 'Society Beyond Borders'

The Crackdown on Student Visas: Knee-Jerk Illiberalism

The home secretary Alan Johnson announced a crackdown on student visas aiming to cut the number of people coming to study in the UK by tens of thousands. It's quite hard to know what the intended aim of the policy is as the justification ranges from that student visas are being exploited by people coming to the UK to work to the truly surreal accusation that student visas are allowing terrorist suspects to come to the UK. The real aim, I think, is to project a sense of being in control of immigration and acting tough on border control. But like any of the hundreds of half-baked schemes that New Labour has come up with since it came to power, the result of this move will reinforce the illiberal attitude towards the free movement of people and is likely to damage the economy.