Mauritius is one of the few countries in the world that is made up exclusively of immigrants and their descendants. Yet, discussions on immigration today carry with them a dark xenophobic undercurrent that’s been unchallenged for far too long. This week, an article in a prominent newspaper called for controlling immigration that reflects this attitude and shameless double standard.

Fuming at the arrogance of expatriate executives and rich foreigners our purist charges that foreigners are taking over the island. It’s a strange charge to make given the mammoth numbers of Mauritians emigrating to places like Britain, Australia and Canada. If a similar sentiment concerning Mauritians appeared in papers there, our purist would undoubtedly climb the walls with indignation against ‘racism’ and ‘neo-colonialism’. What he fails to mention is that those rich foreigners are here because the Mauritian government and private sector actively canvassed them to be here. But why criticize official policy when we can pillory immigrants in general? The real pearls begin dripping in his treatment of poor Bangladeshi workers.  Indebted, poor and looking for a better life, these workers come to slog long hours in our textile factories run by rapacious capitalists before returning to cramped, overcrowded dormitories. And that’s official policy. In 2008, the National Economic and Social Council crowed that Mauritius should become like Europe with Mauritians “moving up the skills ladder…leaving unskilled jobs to be performed mainly by migrant workers”. In other words, the Bangladeshis and poor foreigners are brought here by the Mauritian government and capitalists to serve as an economic underclass in the wider Mauritian economy. But our purist prefers to ignore the Mauritian government and capitalists and blame the victim – specifically the Bangladeshi. The alleged crimes and prescriptions on offer are a veritable carnival of the absurd indeed.

Our purist alleges that Bangladeshi workers – obviously with ill intentions at heart – are marrying Mauritian girls, something that he thinks is illegal.

It’s not. Then contradicting himself, he argues that the law should be changed and the couple forced to settle in Bangladesh! In other words, should a Mauritian woman marry a Bangladeshi man – as is their right – the purist offers two choices: either the woman loses her citizenship and country or she must leave the Bangladeshi man. Imagine the reaction if, say, Britain passed a similarly racist law and started splitting up Anglo- Mauritian families or started booting them out. “Racism! Perfidious Albion!” our purist would, without hesitation, declare. In Mauritius though, apparently it’s okay. The fact that such sentiments echo European far-right propaganda – “the brown people are taking our women!” – of this our purist remains unaware. Scarcely an incident involving foreigners happens, without our purist looking to pillory them and turn it into an ‘us versus them’ issue or a debate on immigration and its odious effects. The victim of his pen always, without fail, is not the government or the capitalists but the poor Bangladeshi who can’t fight back. The thin line between commentary and xenophobic prejudice has been crossed yet again and the point missed by a mile.