It was explicitly racist, at least in the UK. The cabinet meetings discuss explicitly racist motivations, particularly from Churchill who campaigned for this in the face of the economic need for an influx of labour. Justifications were sought that could be made to appear objective. If you can watch it somewhere, this documentary was depressingly eye opening https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00068sk, but you can probably read the salient points in related articles: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jun/24/the-unw...
> Churchill who campaigned for this in the face of the economic need for an influx of labour
It's always racism vs. economic reasons - not conservative enough for your voters, you lose votes; not economically sensible, you bring ruin upon your country. We have already saw this with Brexit.
You say this as if racism and economics aren't directly linked. Think about it for a moment. Racism has always served economic purposes in slavery, cololization, resource extraction and poverty. It's quite obviously in the self-interest of the dominating party.
Most (if not all) motivations for slavery, colonization and resource extraction have been economically related, but that's not to say that all economic decisions are based in racism.
Generally the answer to every problem in every other Country isn't to just ship them to your Country, that's an unsustainable model. Typically the people who migrate are either young, well educated or wealthy - which in the grand scheme of things does nothing to fix the problems in their originating Countries.
I hope you see the irony in downplaying economic motivations as merely related and then making an economic argument against immigration that most racists agree with.
If I choose to fire somebody of a different race because they got naked and ran around the office - it isn't racist just because racists agree with the action I took.
>> Probably more of an economic decision than one based in racism.
Yeah like denying service to "high risk" individuals(black people[0], muslims or women). It's all an economic decision which may be backed by some statistics and further keep the individuals in these statistics. Better, when you see high risk individuals (such black people) just run and gun them down because the economy tells us they may be dangerous. It's all about economy...right? Slavery was an economic decision as well.
The comment really applies to the US empire, or indeed any empire in general.
I hear why you’re saying, but the economic argument just doesn’t make any sense to me; having more citizens should benefit a national economy. Besides, there are many things we do without economic rationale; maybe slavery would boost GDP, but we’ve decided that this is irrelevant because it’s morally reprehensible.
> having more citizens should benefit a national economy
Generally that trend holds true - as long as migration is well handled. There are immediate infrastructure costs that need to be paid that the Country won't immediately see a return on.
Also governments aren't particularly profitable at the best of times, most of them are running at a deficit regardless of the number of people in their Country.
Your comment is particularly ridiculous if your intent was to apply it to “the US empire” (where everyone in the territories has the right to move anywhere in the country).
Probably more of an economic decision than one based in racism.
> You're either a full and free citizen of the empire or not
The British empire was disbanded, so there's nobody really to take your quarrel up with.
> special classes of citizenship based on race and geography
> are an abomination to all lovers of freedom and justice.
Again, you're assuming it's based in race and geography. It seems more like the motivation was based in economics.