Write a 6 pages paper on what extent has immigration affected british national identity. British citizens under British Nationality Act 1981 and those Commonwealth citizens who had the right of abode before 1 Jan 1983[when the 1981 Act came into force] have the right of abode and are not subject to immigration control. Those who do not have this right require permission to enter and remain in the United Kingdom which is given in accordance with the Rules.

Since 1988, the United Kingdom has accepted about 50,000 immigrants per year for settlement under the terms of the Immigration Acts. About 25 percent of these came from India or Pakistan, and about 50 percent were wives and children of people already established in the United Kingdom.

It is now considered widely without any doubt that the English national identity is under considerable stress at the present time in political as well as cultural degradation of Englishness. Lots of changes have been taking place in the United Kingdom because of the other nations people have started to define their identity and determine their destiny in separation from the United Kingdom English people have not been accorded the same privilege. and moreover most of the immigration started settling mainly on English shores rather than those of Scotland or Wales.

Edmund Burke in his book,” The English National Character” says, “Over the Last- twenty- four years, journalists, intellectuals and politicians have continued to chart- and decry- the remorseless decay of British ‘National Identity’. They have also continued, if anything with mounting purposefulness, to try to reverse it. It seems, sometimes as if the only point on which the “Chattering Classes’ of all political and ideological stripes agree is that British national identity has diminished, is diminishing and ought to be increased.”[229]

It is believed that internationally increasing global capitalism is one of the reasons for mass immigration into the country. The England is known for its rule of empire, parliament and monarch, Protestantism, the welfare state social democracy are becoming less relevant in today’s world’s intellectual and free economy. The Scots and the Welsh are least bothered about the destiny of English. It is also can be said that English character like global ambitions and duties prevent them to be more stringent about the mixing with other nationalities.

Can a nation lose its identity due to its immigration from other nationality According to David Powell in his “Nationhood and Identity”, says “The experience of Britain in the modern world the rise and fall of the British Empire, the impact of two world wars, the changing relationship with ‘Europe’ [especially after 1945] further interacted with the domestic picture in a multiplicity of ways, some of which encouraged a transcending ‘British’ loyalty but which nevertheless added to the complexities of overlapping, even contradictory, identities and self image”. (10)

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