Should immigration always be perceived as ‘a problem’?

First topic message reminder :

Writing for ‘Compass’ in July this year, Lisa Nandy MP said: “For most of my lifetime, politics has been based on a belief that the only way to win elections is to seek out the centre ground, but it is surely an essential plank of a democracy that politicians should provide leadership and not just follow; as Robin Archer of the LSE says, to seek to define and not just seek the centre ground”. She continued by saying that people on the left in politics have to tackle the issues which make us feel uncomfortable – welfare reform, law and order and immigration.
http://www.compassonline.org.uk/news/item.asp?n=13151&offset=50

Let’s tackle the issue of immigration. The right-wing press has been indoctrinating us for years with claims that most immigrants are living on benefits, while at the same time saying that they’ve taken many of our jobs, and of course both scenarios can’t possibly be true. We’re told that the country is already overcrowded; it’s not, only S.E. England is, although we are now the most densely populated country in Europe. We’re told that immigration increases crime (our prisons do indeed hold a disproportionate number of people who weren’t born here) and increases the threat to our security. By increasing the labour force, does immigration suppress wage levels?

In the 1970s, the National Front used to peddle the spurious argument that as there were a million people unemployed in the UK at the time, all we had to do was repatriate a million immigrants and there would be no unemployment. Anyone with half a brain can work out that by reducing the population by a million, you would have a million fewer consumers to buy goods and services, thereby reducing demand and creating unemployment. There would also be a million fewer taxpayers (even those not working pay VAT).

So why have successive UK governments over the last fifty years allowed and even encouraged immigration?
Not out of charity but out of necessity. Firstly, to do jobs which the indigenous population didn’t want to do, or didn’t have the skills to do. The NHS would have collapsed years ago without immigrant doctors and nurses. Secondly, Europe has a declining birth rate, which is threatening to make it difficult to pay for pensions for future generations. Most immigrants are of working age, which means they consume less of the services provided by the state, such as health care and education, and pay more in taxes. Home Office research in 2002 suggested that immigrants paid £2.5bn more in taxes than they took in benefits.

Perhaps if more of us showed a positive attitude to immigrants, welcoming and celebrating diversity instead of perceiving it as ‘a problem’, immigrants might feel less of a need to retreat into ghettos, where some of them succumb to religious fanaticism and terrorism.

Curious how a discussion on immigration always finishes as a commentary on money.

The unholy Roman Empire will come crashing down at some point soon. the whole festering boil is a failure of British strategy which was to prevent Germany becoming the dominant force in Europe. Still at least they are making rather good cars than rather good tanks

astra wrote:Stox, please consider the fact that BECAUSE of EU regulation, we cannot get rid of undesirables once they are here. To ADD insult to injury, we cannot stop these people coming here iffin they want to - coz it's against their human rights to stop them! + the border control is so unfit for purpose, we could not stop Hugo Chavez coming in even if we wanted to!

What about the human rights OF OUR GRANDCHILDREN, DO THEY NOT COUNT IN ALL OF THIS?

astra
have have considered the fact of EU regulation. We would not have to get rid of undesirables or even stop them coming in, nor is it against anyones human rights to ask anyone coming into the UK to have two things. 1 that they have a employer on entry to the UK... who has to pay the some costs for employing someone from in the UK. in other words they have to pay redundancy, Sick pay, to name just three thing. There is nothing within EU law that states we can ask anyone coming into the UK to met UK employment laws first. we are not saying they cannot come in or that we are braking any EU treaty. In fact you try and get a job in Holland or Germany? I think you will fined a Germany company has to agree to met full employment costs under Germany employment law and cover there heath costs.

2 there is a requirement to act within the law of the host country. such as driving laws and employment laws to name just two laws. in fact if someone turns up with a German arrest warrant for a crime committed within Germany we have to return them to that Country. in many EU countries you have to show you have full time employment and can support yourself. However, the main reason we have far more than many other EU countries is we have companies that have used these people as cheap labour with little or no employment rights under UK law. if they was having to pay the same costs of employing a UK person there would be no financial again with most of these people only to happy to leave over night by themselves. as what would the economic benefit be to employing a eastern European over a UK person if you had to pay them just the same? its this employment loop hole that is the main reason that these people are employed in the first place.

The bottom line astra is that we are do not even in-force our own UK employment laws and our laws of sub-contracted agency employment has left us with some of the worst employment practices within Europe. I even saw a UK company in Poland less than 18 months ago recruiting 300 employees at one time. I even met up with the guy recruiting them in the bar of the hotel. who point out that they are great to hire as they almost cost free to his company. Its what he said that my posts are based on. many he was wrong but i think he was spot on myself. as it does not take a great deal to do the math on this or read the employment loop holes they are using to see how it works. nor how to stop it.

I seems that the Lawers and Barristers in THIS country want to see laws applied that would not happen in other countries.

For whatever reason, foreigners seem willing to work harder and longer than Brits for the same reward. Maybe they see that as the best way to hold down a job.

I don't think that's actually true. The funny thing is that if you look at the facts British workers work HARDER than other Europeans.

It's true that in general first-generation immigrants tend to work a bit harder than the average (though that's far less true than it used to be) but any employer with a grain of common sense is going to pick the best worker irrespective of other factors.

Now there's no doubt that there is positive discrimination AGAINST British (and particularly English) people in many ways.

They don't get the 'benefit' of so-called positive discrimination programmes; universities are deliberately taking overseas students with worse grades and a Neanderthal command of English AHEAD of British students with BETTER grades; and so on.

Whether or not we can ever have a sensible consensus on race is a hard questioin to answer.

I am very much afraid that the disaffected white working class (who have plenty of GOOD reasons to be disaffected) are increasingly being attracted to extremists like the EDL and the BNP.

I find that sad and disheartening.

Equally I find the glib media kneejerk reaction that any doubts or criticisms of the behaviour of immigrants or the failure to control the levels of immigration is in some weird way making you a racist.

And the politicians will do what it takes to buy a vote.

That's how they always are.

Clearly it's not helpful to generalise. There are lazy workers and industrious ones in any given grouping. There are immigrants prepared to establish themselves by hard work, and there are others who come here with the sole intention of claiming benefits.

One constant is the existence of essential jobs which are unattractive. Cleaning, night work, care for the elderly, lifting vegetables from the fields or working for G4S etc., etcetera. If unemployed Brits consistently refuse to do such jobs, the only alternative is to import labour.

I touched on this somewhere else.

Working on the fields, be it Strawberry, raspberry picking or asparagus and leek picking was traditionally cash in hand. Then the tax man invaded the fields and folks started loosing benefits - the picking season is only a couple of months for crivvens sakes, so no one is going to get rich. They payed for the kids uniforms, and other bills! The Irish used to come over to help out, why do they not come now???? It is the fault of successive governments that this situation has arrived. I happen to think it was engineered this way, from 1972, so that the present situation exists!

I wonder if the fact that there is constant criticisms of today's British youth, from they can not read, write or do math to Exams are now easier than they were in the past, is not just an excuse used by employers and others to not employ them...

I know that my sons studied hard for their GCSE's and still found it hard to get full time jobs.

This government has tried to make much of it's new apprenticeships schemes but my nephew who managed to get on one for carpentry recently had it pulled, the reason given by the company providing it was 1. Not enough work and 2. his need for more experience!

Well I thought that apprenticeships were about providing training and experience, but from his case it would seem more like cheap labour as they were only having to pay him £2.30 per hour and it would seem from what he has told me he was left to do jobs unsupervised at times.

Of course if employers can get trained workers from overseas they will but in doing so they have consigned British young to a life on benefits.......

and the thing there is, Astradt, that some time in the not so distant future, those countries are going to need their experianced workers back. Inducements will be applied, and this country is left high and dry again with no artizans or journeymen to teach the apprentices who are going to be so needed.
This may well include all of the Phillipino Nurses (bless them) who man our wards.


EDIT, makes me think that the turmoil in the Phillipines is edged on by our own NHS managers!!!

Bloody disgusting guys!!!!! £230 per hour or foreign cheap labour, all for the benefit of rich employers. The small employers are kept from expanding and taking on any labour cheap or otherwise thanks to the Tories and their lack of effort to get the banks to lend again. I'm sure the buggers do it on purpose to keep the working man down and his offspring, preparing them for a slave type of future employment.

Excuse me for interjecting a purely personal opinion, but anyone waiting for a Bank to actively assist them will probably die first.

oftenwrong wrote:Clearly it's not helpful to generalise. There are lazy workers and industrious ones in any given grouping. There are immigrants prepared to establish themselves by hard work, and there are others who come here with the sole intention of claiming benefits.

One constant is the existence of essential jobs which are unattractive. Cleaning, night work, care for the elderly, lifting vegetables from the fields or working for G4S etc., etcetera. If unemployed Brits consistently refuse to do such jobs, the only alternative is to import labour.

That's where I disagree with you. I believe that we should have a form of direction of labour in Britain which involved EVERYONE - including the super-rich and the aristocracy - having to get 'down and dirty' and do the crap jobs that people, quite understandably, don't want to do at all or not for any longer than they have to.

I've worked night shifts; I've worked as a cleaner (and as a mum and wife I'm a cleaner in my home too); I've cared for the elderly; I've worked as a farm labourer; I've cleaned toilets; I've worked in heavy lifting; and so on.

I'm a working class woman and I've never had a penny in welfare off of the state. I worked my arse off doing jobs I hated just to make a few bob.

When I was working as a barmaid I met my husband so it wasn't all bad!

Direction of labour for ALL Brits is the only way.

Make the lazy bastards get off of their arses and work!

Make the lazy bastards get off of their arses and work!.

If only that could happen!!!!!!

Too lazy to work but not too lazy too take the benefits.

Ian Duncan Smith will no doubt be delighted to know of your views, biglinand blue.

Biglin posted

(and as a mum and wife I'm a cleaner in my home too)

I'm a working class woman and I've never had a penny in welfare off of the state.

So you and your husband never collected family allowance or child benefit for your children?

"Too lazy to work but not too lazy too take the benefits. "

You are insinuating that ALL benefit claimants are as stated above.

I presume that if you lost your business/job and was unable to find work
in a climate such as now, which is extremely difficult, especially in many northern and deprived areas of the UK, you would live on air then, instead of claiming for what you had paid in for and entitled to?

Good luck and hope it never happens to you.

Wish I knew what it felt like to be morally superior!

" but 99% of politicians have no shame"

Not to mention the similarly high percentage of posters....

I think we can assume that, even if Miliband were to give his entire wealth to charity, dedicate his life to feeding the poor in Africa and learning to play the bagpipes with his bottom and entertaining the homeless in London, he wouldn't get a glimmer of appreciation from the Tory Hordes.

The only 'qualities' they appear to recognise are those possessed by money-makers who profit by the misery of others, and by the media Barons who are only too willing to perpetuate the propaganda which sustains their tenuous grip on power.

Being a Conservative is easy : others are always to blame and those others must bear the brunt of the sacrifices to ensure the 'Tory Faithful' remain insulated from the harsh realities of financial inconvenience. Persih the thought they should bear any burden themselves...

You are insinuating that ALL benefit claimants are as stated above.

No Mel, you know I'm not. You know exactly what I mean and a good majority of people in the UK feel the same way

QUOTE: "You know exactly what I mean and a good majority of people in the UK feel the same way."

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Know wot I mean? I say know what I mean? Say no more! Say no more, Guv. A nod's as good as a wink to a blind man, eh? Say no more.

What DO you mean that you don't want to say, blue?

Cost of benefits fraud in the UK £1.9 billion

Cost of tax avoidance in the UK £69.9 billion

Now we have a government minister wanting to go after house cleaners and plumbers who will work cash in hand.

I didn't realise plumbing and house cleaning was so lucrative or is most of the £69 Billion from the super rich pulling a fast one?

Notice how when this government saying it's going after some one it's always those with the least first who could not be able to afford fancy lawyers?

If the crusading government Minister wants to stop payment in hand, he can begin by forcing large companies to pay their suppliers on time, instead of casually adding three months on to the terms of settlement.

Clue for Tory minister David Gauke:

It's called "cash-flow", tackle your friends in big business.

oftenwrong wrote:Ian Duncan Smith will no doubt be delighted to know of your views, biglinand blue.

I doubt if IDS would find me any more congenial than Eddie the Eagle, Nasty Nick or Dodgy Dave.

One of the biggest problems with politics in this country is that it's become so tribalised and so much governed by cheap media shots and kneejerk responses that it's become a branch of the entertainment industry.

The simple reality is that as long as we belong to the fascist EU we are not able to take a lot of necessary but hard poltiical decisions.

For what it's worth I'm a mixed-race person (what in my parent's time they would have called a half-caste).

I'm just about the LAST person to be ANY kind of supporter of racism.

On another board I belong to which is overwhelmingly dominated by the far right I've been called a Communist, a liberal, a socialist and politically correct because I fight AGAINST the EDL, BNP and similar noe-Nazi groups,

That doesn't mean I'm some kind of Aunt Tom and IMO only a racist would assume that it DID.

I've only once voted Conservative and I had to hold my nose when I did it.

I voted for Labour in 2010 and was devastated when they lost.

That doesn't mean I'm blind to the faults of the left any more than I am to those of the right.

Both are full of propaganda, lies, prejudices and a tendency to patronise, name call and generally diss folk who dare to have an independent opinion on anything that disagrees with what their controllers have told them to think.

On right-wing forums I'm generally considered a socialist or even a communist; on left-wing ones I'm generally considered a right-wing Tory or even a fascist.

I'm NONE of those things.

I'm an independent, broadly centre-left person who refuses to buy into the bullshit and the preconceived ideas of the twittering classes whether it's left or right wing robots trying to sell the party soap.

We are a small island that is already totally overcrowded.

Immigration has brought many benefits to Britain but also many bad things.

If we don't have the honesty to face up to the fact that immigration has now become MORE of a problem than it has a benefit you hand over the discourse on the subject to the far right.

It wouldn't surprise me if that happened because at the end of the day politicians do what they think will get them elected into Parliament.

They don't care about what happens to the ordinary people of Britain because they never have to mix with them (except maybe at election times when they're after our votes!)

Refusing to face up to the problem is only going to make it worse.

If there's a problem it needs fixing.

not just burying your head in the sand and mumbling platitudes over your Guardian or New Statesman or whatever

Immigration works both ways. A uk citizen can seek to work, live, and settle in another country if they so desire. We live in on a globe with a global economy - nations and jingoistic nationalism will become irrelevant in time....we should see ourselves as being earthlings - not english, italian, african, chinese, etc.

By any definition, Germany is the wealthiest Country in the European Community, so why does Britain appear to have a greater problem with immigrants?

In the first place we featherbed them with our benefits system which rewards the slackers and penalises hard workers.

Secondly Germany I think has a higher rate of tax.

Thirdly I don't think they let freeloaders use their health service like we do.

It is NOT racist to be a supporter of a nation state rather than a fascist superstate as the Europhiles and one-worlders want.

It IS racist to impose rule upon our country by non-elected bureaucrats from Brussels and so on.

Jedenfalls, wenn du gehts nach Deutschland da finden sie vielen Leute das glauben das Hitler hatte recht!

(Translation - anyway, if you go to Germany you find lots of people who think Hitler was right!)

ach so!

biglin Quote--"On right-wing forums I'm generally considered a socialist or even a communist; on left-wing ones I'm generally considered a right-wing Tory or even a fascist.

I'm NONE of those things.

I'm an independent, broadly centre-left person"

My question is biglin, does that register you as a UKIP?

People who choose the middle of the road may get run over.

Mel wrote:biglin Quote--"On right-wing forums I'm generally considered a socialist or even a communist; on left-wing ones I'm generally considered a right-wing Tory or even a fascist.

I'm NONE of those things.

I'm an independent, broadly centre-left person"

My question is biglin, does that register you as a UKIP?

I'm not a member of ANY political party.

I wonder how many UKIP people have been on G20 demos; I've been on three so far.

oftenwrong wrote:People who choose the middle of the road may get run over.

No, they just kill the extremists trying to run them over and oppress the rest of us!

I've got no time for left or right wing authoritarian extremists.

Both of them want to oppress and exploit the human race and have to be fought with every breath in our body.

biglin, am I to assume that you simply sit by and allow other to make the voting decisions at election time?

We all have to vote for the best of a perhaps a suspect bunch. Voting in hope that a Tory party will change it's spots is foolhardy, voting for LD's simply lets Tories in by back door. Abstention is one's perogative I suppose, as long as the person abstaining keeps their noses out of politics altogether. Political fence sitters who refuse to accept any political party and engage in complaining in a political disscussion, are a pretty useless bunch of creatures IMO. Surely you do not fit this discription biglin?

"People who choose the middle of the road may get run over."

Indeed OW, those that did at the last election were hit by a 20 ton Tory truck.

" Political fence sitters who refuse to accept any political party and engage in complaining in a political disscussion, are a pretty useless bunch of creatures ..."

No need to get up - I'll find my own way out...

Medical opinion suggests that sitting on the fence may aggravate hemmorrhoids.

"No need to get up - I'll find my own way out... "

Doors are locked Phil, just can't let a special fence sitter go just like that.
After all there are fence sitters and there are fence sitters.

Take the warning from our learned friend and watch out for those piles.

There is not too much chance of me sitting anywhere for long. Mrs Hornby left a comprehensive list of jobs to be done before she returns, she having - selfishly I thought -gone out into the sun this morning ,without a care in the world.

It is such a shame that the old knee injury of mine has unaccountably flared up today....

Oh, I do sympathise. When I get my twinges I'm absolutely useless until Opening Time.

Mel wrote:biglin, am I to assume that you simply sit by and allow other to make the voting decisions at election time?

We all have to vote for the best of a perhaps a suspect bunch. Voting in hope that a Tory party will change it's spots is foolhardy, voting for LD's simply lets Tories in by back door. Abstention is one's perogative I suppose, as long as the person abstaining keeps their noses out of politics altogether. Political fence sitters who refuse to accept any political party and engage in complaining in a political disscussion, are a pretty useless bunch of creatures IMO. Surely you do not fit this discription biglin?

Look, I made it quite clear that I'm a floating voter. When it comes to election time I vote for the one that I think will be the LEAST bad if they get elected.

For what it's worth at general elections I've voted four different ways in the four elections I've been able to vote.

I literally don't make up my mind till the last minute because it's difficult to get much POSITIVE enthusiasm about ANY of the 'choices' on offer.

Your comment about the Lib Dems is just stupid; before 2010 Tories used to say that voting Lib Dem was the same as voting Labour!

Like I said, I've only voted Tory once and I didn't like doing it but at the time I felt it was the lesser of two evils.

I don't abstain and I've been an active campaigner on many issues.

So far I've been on three G20 demos.

If you're suffering from the delusion that just because I don't believe in either left or right wing scaremongering or propaganda that means I must either be Mrs Apathy or else some kind of wimp who can't make up my mind on anything you couldn't be more wrong.

Like I say, on the right wing boards I belong to they think I'm some sort of Marxist!

oftenwrong wrote:Medical opinion suggests that sitting on the fence may aggravate hemmorrhoids.

Cobblers!

If you can't tell the difference between refusing to buy the soap on offer and sitting on the fence I suggest you get out into the real world a bit more.

And it's always better in life to THINK before you act or you wind up falling over a cliff!

And of course your brain ceases to function and you become a robot!