Lionel Shriver

It's a theft from the taxpayer.

They have not contributed anything to the system.

There is no reason that Britain has responsibility for these people.

So if you're one of those people, don't you feel that you're surrounded by fools?

I mean, why are these people rewarding your having broken the law?

and you just arrive and they're taking care of you indefinitely, why would you not hold these people in contempt?

What is wrong with them?

It would never happen where you're from.

You know, if the British show up in Afghanistan or Albania or so, do you think that they're going to be taken care of and put in hotels?

No.

So why wouldn't that engender contempt rather than kind of gormless gratitude?

Yeah, there's an element of that.

And I think that's pretty clear in the novel, that the people who are taking action for the most part in the book are the immigrants.

They're going out and getting what they want.

And the locals are passive.

Nobody's.

Our our countries are being overrun by strangers because nobody is stopping them.

So one of the things we don't want enough is to stop them.

Yeah, well, that's where the European Convention on Human Rights comes from.

That's why we have the whole asylum system.