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Right, of course context matters, but in the realm of politics two decades is almost never recent. You usually mean something within the last few months to a year, and sometimes 5 years at most, 10 if you really stretch. This holds true virtually 90% of the time, probably even higher, 99% wouldn't even surprise me. A simple search of literally any news article will demonstrate my point quite succinctly. Or even books.
If you use "recent" to mean 20 years ago it's almost explicitly dishonest.
For example, if I tell you that I "recently" moved -- even if I am catching up with an old friend I hadn't seen in like, 40 years, you'd still probably assume recent = last 5 to 10 years at most. I struggle to even come up with any sort of comparable example outside of literal world history where recent would acceptably mean almost two decades ago.
And in terms of ethnogenesis, centuries pass in the blink of an eye.
There's an unfortunate saying that goes something like this: 'a dog born in the stables is not a horse'. I am Chinese in origin, and I can confidently say that if outsiders moved in and learned and spoke Chinese and did so for a thousand years, they would still be foreigners. (No one thinks that Mongols are Chinese.) That is the problem when creedal New World colonial nations cross-pollinate their civic nationalism into the old. They simply do not understand that a nation is more than a mere economic zone of free association.
For the British, they still haven't gotten over William the Conquerer (the difference between the posh and chav class distinctions in England is largely how much francophonian loanwords each uses). Anyone else is an outsider to this culture-struggle. Their cosmopolitan rootlessness precludes them from partaking of a nation's blood and soil, of which nearly all Old World states are in their essence.
I'm pretty sure nobody can tell Manchus apart from Han anymore without looking at the ethnicity listed on their ID, and they were assimilated less than 300 years ago.
I've heard (anecdotally) that the Manchus are still something of an upper class in China, sort of like the Normans in England.
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I remember an incident from a Chinese culture class in college, where the professor was Han, and talking about how Han are the majority... then asked a Chinese student, assuming he was also Han. Surprise: he was actually Manchu. Unless there was some subtle unstated communication going on that I missed, I'd call that at least one thorough assimilation.
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Yes but no one thinks the Mongols immigrated "recently".
The point here is that it's not people saying "we don't like foreigners" but rather criticizing policies that are not 20 years old.
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You say context matters and then proceed to ignore the context that this is a discussion of immigration to Britain and that "recent' in this context is a lot longer than you seem to assume.
Recent for a tiny sliver of Anglo ethnats, perhaps. 99% of the British public certainly don’t consider the Normans or Saxons ‘recent immigrants’. They don’t even consider the royal family recent immigrants lol.
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