I am worried about Nicolas Sarkozy's call for a European "immigration pact" because it is reminiscent of calls for a fortress Europe.
I know Britain has an opt-out of EU immigration policy; I am just concerned that the tough immigration policies that this government has tried to introduce lately – and that Eastern Eye has fought – smack of the kind of thoughtless treatment of immigrants that I read about on the continent.
Let's not allow our immigration policies to be influenced by continental Europe. The British government's tough immigration stance is in crisis after it was told by high court not to make its points-based immigration system retrospective and to abandon its attempt to limit the number of doctors from the subcontinent who already live in Britain from applying for NHS jobs. It then had to scrap entry English tests for non-EU immigrants because it risked infringing people's human rights, not least the right to marry whoever you want.
It has led to a growing problem over the status of overseas medics, visitor refusal rates for Commonwealth citizens and students, high visa and administration costs and higher education fees, Home Office delays and now the inflexibility of the points-based immigration system, which will lead to the closure of many restaurants, for example.
My view is that British attitudes to foreigners are being influenced by the immigration and integration thinking on the continent. On the one hand the modern EU has been built on the labour of post-war non-EU immigrants – it could not have progressed as much without their contribution. Yet the message Europe – and Britain – now gives out fails to show mutual respect.
I am against Britain going down this path. After all, positive discrimination has enabled indigenous Brits to see the benefits of multiculturalism to an extent that the French never will, because they do not believe in it.
While the EU has had a race equality directive since 2000, in France unemployment among ethnic minorities and Muslims in particular can run at four times the rate for white French people, which shows that there are deep underlying problems.
Ethnic minority media such as New Nation and The Voice would be unsustainable enterprises in France because they are supported by positive discrimination, in the form of recruitment advertising from a public and private sector that values The Voice's loyal readership and expert knowledge of the black community. Thus, France rarely hears the voice and perspectives of people from immigrant backgrounds, nor does it learn of the contribution of its immigrant community in the way we do through various black power lists and ethnic minority award ceremonies.
Back in 2004, French MPs voted by 494 votes to 36 to ban all overt religious symbols from state schools. I think the decision was a mistake because it avoided a true debate on the diversity of today's French and European society. It also perverted the very concept of secularism, which is based on the separation of church and state and supports through the neutrality of the state the balance between the freedom to believe and the freedom not to believe.
Only this month, while in Paris, I read a story in the Herald Tribune about France's highest administrative body, the council of state, ruling that a woman who wore a niqab to a meeting with immigration officials should be denied citizenship because she failed to adhere to France's "principle of equality of the sexes". Surely what religion people choose to follow and what they choose to wear is their own business?
Contrast France's ban on the turban in school to the Sarika Singh bangle case, in which Justice Stephen Silber said:
In this case there is very clear evidence it was not a piece of jewellery but to Sarika was, and remains, one of the defining focal symbols of being a Sikh.
Rather than see it as a defeat for integration – as the French would – I expected the British public judged the verdict as a victory for common sense and view the whole episode a waste of money. But it was hard to find any quotes from politicians or lobby groups, other than Liberty, which thought it a victory for British values.
Britain has always been more tolerant of immigrants, which is why so many young Indians and Pakistanis choose to work in Britain for at least some of their life; that is why my readers and the people who appear in my publication are happy to be called British Asian.
After the judgment, 14-year-old Singh said:
Before I come to an end I just want to say, I am proud to be a Welsh, Punjabi, Sikh girl. Thanks.
From my experience of building contacts with Sikhs in Paris, I suspect that few of them would be as positive about their country as Singh was.