Learning The Lingo

There are many reasons why immigrants should learn English - mainly because it keeps me in a job - although the British aren't best placed to lecture others on linguistic ineptitude: I lived for six months in Japan without getting past sheepish grins, hello and thank you very much, which at least had the benefit of making me seem polite as well as idiotic.

It's not racist to worry about immigration and its affect on society if your anxieties are based on facts and apply to all people equally - Does unquestioning belief in religion foster extremism? If the only way to make house prices affordable is to keep building more and more homes, how many people can this country hold? - rather than hearsay and prejudice concerned with race or skin colour - All Muslims are terrorists; Asylum seekers get free council houses. It's a pity that so much of the debate falls into the second category: ignorance gone mad.

That's why I almost choked on my breakfast cereal hearing a BBC correspondent say that migrants might have to pay for classes "like everybody else". Sloppy reporting like this lends credence to the kind of bigots who forget - or wilfully ignore - the free classes available to millions of British people with learning difficulties, poor basic skills and employability problems, or the fact that many of the immigrants on 'free' courses have already paid for them through various forms of taxation.

Evidently, it's not only the migrants who need more education.