There's a nonsense argument that "British nationalists" (white supremacists) make: "the Native Americans are an example of what happens when invaders come and take your land, which is why we can't let it happen here."

This comparison is bullshit, and I'll tell you why.

Firstly: accepting the definition of "invasion" as "military landing by a hostile foreign military force," not only is Britain not being invaded, no serious attempt has been made since 1797, during the Battle of Fishguard.

Look that up, incidentally. It's truly bizarre.

Legal immigrants of any nationality are the precise opposite of an invasion: they are civilians the government has, through an official, formal process, EXPRESSLY INVITED into the country.

If there were anything more diametrically opposite to an invasion, I cannot think of it.

Even immigrants who have not gone through this process, and are thus classified as "illegal," are not an "invasion." They are not an organised military force, and they are not forcibly landing on the British Isles with hostile intent.

Secondly, even if we accept a wider definition of "invasion," legal or even illegal immigration wouldn't qualify. England hasn't lost its sovereignty or its ability to self-govern. The UK has only ever once had a non-British prime minister, Andrew Bonar Law, and he was Canadian.

We have had two women prime ministers, both English, both white, both (allegedly) Christian and both right-wing. We have never had a BAME prime minister of any birth nationality. The overwhelming majority of both chambers of Parliament has always remained white and English.

The fact that people like Sadiq Khan - who, incidentally, was born and raised in Tooting and studied law at the University of North London - are occasionally voted into reasonably high offices does not change the fact that white English people still hold political hegemony.

Despite petulant whining about the West Lothian Question, the English-majority UK Parliament passes laws that the entire UK must abide by, even if the majority of Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish MPs disapproves of them (see: Brexit).

Thirdly: none of this remotely compares to the Native Americans - or, indeed, a literal quarter of the Earth's landmass that we decided belonged to us.

We actually DID seize these with military force, more than once by purposeful biological warfare against indigenous peoples.

English people have never been subjected to an enforced campaign by people purposefully aiming to, and I quote, "try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execreble Race"

But WE did that to the tribes of Ohio, after breaking a treaty promise to leave their land.

English people never laboured under a foreign power that seized ownership of most of their land, gave it to their own people and then forced the native people into renting very small subdivisions where they could only grow one crop to feed themselves.

But WE did that to Ireland.

English people have never had their entire governmental system corrupted and suborned to a literal foreign megacorporation with its own private army that was allowed functionally limitless authority as long as it kept making money (... YET.)

But WE did that to India.

(And then when the whole megacorporation thing stopped working out, we just straight up actually invaded India with our real military and directly declared them subjects of our Crown)

England still retains the ability to define and promote its culture (often at others' expense), to determine its own laws, and despite declining birth rates, there are more English people alive today than at any other time in history.

So no, it's not like the invasions we did.

Fourthly, to pretend that immigration to the United Kingdom is anything like the conquest, seizure and settlement of America fundamentally misunderstands why the respective groups of people were in foreign places to begin with.

Settlers and immigrants are very different.

Settlers are in a place to extract its resources for their own benefit, and are there because the native peoples cannot stop them.

Immigrants are in a place largely because that place benefits somehow from their presence, and are there explicitly because they're allowed to be.

And yes, "allowed to be there" extends even to undocumented immigrants.

The British ruling class benefits greatly from undocumented immigrants, largely because they're both a tremendous source of cheap labour and a very useful scapegoat for the problems the ruling class causes.

If you blame undocumented immigrants for working at less than minimum wage, there's a good chance people won't notice that you're literally the government, and could easily pass laws that make it harder for companies to underpay people even if they're undocumented.

This benefits England's politicians (because they can keep getting elected on promises to Do Something About Those Migrants) and England's ownership class (because they don't need to pay people decent wages)

And other countries have people that benefit us. We brought a bunch of people from the Caribbean across on the Empire Windrush to fill staff shortages in the National Health Service and British Rail. We AGGRESSIVELY canvased for workers in Jamaica and Barbados.