The Hidden World of London's Immigrants
WARD: Welcome back to the program. As Donald Trump's visit to Mexico puts the spotlight on immigration, the issue is being debated just as fiercely in Europe. In France, Marine Le Pen popularity continues while in Austria, far-right presidential candidate Norbert Hofer is currently favored to win the October election. Here in Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May today promised there would be no second referendum on membership of the EU. And whatever form Brexit eventually takes it is certain to impact migrants in this country both legal and illegal. Ben Judah is a journalist who has chronicled the hidden side of London and its migrant communities in his book, "This is London." He joins me now. Really an extraordinary book. Thank you so much for being...</s>BEN JUDAH, AUTHOR, THIS IS LONDON: Thank you.</s>WARD: ...on the show with us. Why is this side of the city so hidden? And what did it take to penetrate it?</s>JUDAH: I think that in London, especially, we live on a lot of old myths. We see London as the city of Dickens. The city -- we half see an</s>WARD: And what did you find? Because I have to say, you know, it's incredibly moving in parts. It's almost hard to read because there is something of a tragedy in some of these stories that you present. But what's the overall theme that you would say you found?</s>JUDAH: One of the most important things happening in the world right now is that TV, these images are beaming everywhere. In Eastern Europe and in Africa, or in Asia, people see them. People see them in industrial towns in Poland, or in poor villages in Bangladesh, and starts that dream. People know, as they are watching T.V. that they are living in poverty and they're not living in a way that's satisfied with. And this draws people to these humming, glowing cities like London, Paris or New York. And with all those images in mind, a lot of what I found is that immigration in the 21st century is more than we expect a story of disappointment. These huge dreams of prosperity and plenty crushing against the menial jobs, the persecution, the concluding difference of these modern cities that these migrants would experience.</s>WARD: And also, we've seen today, a terrible story of the killing of a Polish man, apparently because his alleged attackers heard him speak Polish. We've seen the rise of the far-right across Europe. From your position, do you view this as a sort of -- you know, something that's an unavoidable consequence of this massive immigration? Do you see it getting worse?</s>JUDAH: Obviously, it's repellent and disgusting when a man is being murdered on the streets of Britain. But if we look at historians of what's happening to the UK and what's happening to London, when my grandfather who was a Jewish migrant to the U.K. came here in the 1930s, the foreign population of London was 2.7 percent. London wasn't historically this migrant mega city. Today, the official foreign born figure is 37 percent. 37 percent of the population were born abroad.</s>WARD: And mostly in London, specifically, right? As opposed to the rest of the country.</s>JUDAH: The population in London who are immigrants' children or grandchildren, immigrant families is 55 percent. You look at the UK in 1931, the percentage who were born abroad is 1.5 percent. Today, 20 percent of the population of Great Britain are immigrants and their children. If we look ahead towards 2050, we already know what this will look like because we know what the 5-year-olds look like. By 2050, 30 percent of the population of Great Britain will be non-white and 40 percent will be non-white British. So that's a huge transformation. It's a big jump.</s>WARD: And I want to read, because you wrote -- you know, of the lines that really stood out, "I was born in London, but I no longer recognize the city. I don't know if I love the new London or if it frightens me." And then you go on to cite some of those statistics. At the end of this kind of year that you spent, did you have a better sense of whether it frightens you, whether you love it, whether it's exciting?</s>JUDAH: What frightens me about it isn't the fact there's ethnic change. I'm Jewish. I'm not sort of this sort of ancient white British, sort of folks race. But what frightens me about London is the extraordinary lawlessness both of the superrich and the fact that British law is often not implemented from below. What frightens me is that the properties of Central London are used as bit coins by the super rich who laundered their money there, completely contravening what British law is supposed to be. And that these sort of Stockholm mansions they use to house aristocrats are now used as effectively as safety deposits by criminals and narco lords and corrupt police chiefs all over the world. What frightens me below is when I went undercover, pretending to be an Eastern European laborer, I found that minimum wage. People are not paid it. If you drive around the A406, that scruffy ring road separates, you know, London -- heritage London from outer London, which hardly ever filmed. At any of these hardware stores, you'll have 50 to 100 guys just travelling for work from Eastern Europe. What's their wage? Their wage is whatever they can have it for. And it's not in minimum.</s>WARD: A tale of two cities. Ben Judah, thank you so much for being with us. When we come back, we turn to Africa, where a major new study has revealed the truth about the African elephant's plummeting numbers. That's next.