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.

Immigration and wages: getting the numbers right

More lies from Brexit leaders Iain Duncan Smith, Boris Johnson and Gisela Stuart are exposed.  

Jonathan Portes writes: “The idea that immigration is the main or even a moderately important driver of low pay is simply not supported by the available evidence. Politicians who claim the contrary are either so obsessed with immigration that they are blind to more important issues - or they are merely trying to divert attention from their failure to propose policy measures that would actually make a meaningful difference to the low paid.”

Full details here:-
http://www.niesr.ac.uk/blog/immigration-and-wages-getting-numbers-right

Regulated immigration can be both sensible and profitable. It is necessary to prepare the infrastructure for an influx. Mass immigration will always produce ill feeling from the general public who see our fragile housing and NHS being overwhelmed.

For the first time in my life, I feel ashamed to be British

From an article by former Tory MP Matthew Parris:-

Something in my relationship with my country has gone. I have often disagreed, sometimes profoundly, with things that my country or countrymen have done; often been horrified at democratic decisions we’ve taken at elections. But these (to me) mistakes have never undermined a basic pride in our country, with all its faults and false turns. I’ve sometimes regretted what we do but never hated what we are. Foibles, yes; miscalculations, yes; selfishness and silliness — well, which of us is immune? But these last few months I’ve seen a Britain, specifically an England, that I simply do not like.

The reliance of the leaders of the Leave campaign upon resentment of foreigners, dislike of immigration and — in many cases — hatred of immigrants, has been absolutely disgraceful. It should be a stain upon our conscience. Anti-immigrant feeling won it for Leave, and they know it. They used it, rode it and are complicit in it. I’ve been dismayed to see people I’ve respected descend to this. I never thought either that the reserves of xenophobia in England were so strong, nor that people who should know better would play upon them with such careless cynicism. I was doubly naive.

I haven’t spoken to a single colleague or voter here in Derbyshire who lives among immigrants. My fellow constituents are 99% white and most are not poor. Yet the instinct to hate or blame immigrants is stronger than in multi-ethnic London. It has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with xenophobia and the urge to blame other people.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/for-the-first-time-in-my-life-i-feel-ashamed-to-be-british/

I’ve been dismayed to see people I’ve respected descend to this.


I suspect he's been respecting the wrong people

I wonder who the bigots will blame for the nation's ills when we are out of the EU and nothing much changes on the immigration front...?

Corbyn of course

There appears to be some confusion over the concept of a 'points-based' system to control immigration......


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CrmV16kWIAADX4t.jpg

Which EU nations' migrants pay the most tax? Tories slip out full figures amid Brexit crackdown

Figures slipped out without fanfare show the billions in tax paid by each nation's migrants, just as Theresa May vows a border blitz. Poland and France are the two highest gross payers in the new HMRC figures.

Immigration helped drive Brexit - and Theresa May slapped it back on the table at her Chequers 'brainstorm'. But what about the contribution EU migrants make to Britain? We already knew UK-dwelling EU migrants pay six times more tax and national insurance than they claim in 'HMRC benefits' (child benefit and tax credits). The figures do not include DWP benefits, like jobseeker's allowance or disability payments. Nor do they include the wide range of 'indirect taxes' migrants pay, from VAT to duty on petrol, beer or cigarettes, or corporation tax or business rates.

Income tax and national insurance paid to UK by EEA migrants in 2013/14 was £14.7bn. Total UK child benefit and tax credits claimed by EEA migrants in 2013/14 was £2.6bn. The net contribution made by EEA migrants was £12.1bn in a year – much more than the UK’s net contribution of around £8.5bn to the EU.

More details:-
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/eu-nations-migrants-pay-most-8743456

It's hardly surprising if 'Daily Express' readers are anti-immigrant and voted for Brexit. This is a representative sample of the filth with which they were brainwashed between January 2014 and June 2016:-


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1Fkv9EW8AAza6I.jpg

Who says immigration's a bad thing? Not someone whose life has been saved by the NHS.


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C2SI9ZiWIAATlr2.jpg

Yeah - what have those awful foreigners ever done for us...

It really is quite breath-taking that anyone from our mongrel "British" race can feel in any way superior to a more recent arrival.

DNA records ultimately trace all of us back to a native woman who lived 50,000 years ago in Africa.

When the Calais "camp" was cleared, the British government reluctantly agreed to accept up to 600 child immigrants. Only a handful made it to England's green and pleasant land.

Trump's policies foreshadowed, and now endorsed, by our Tory government. The British Flag now constitutes a flag of surrender to the bigots and Little Englanders.

http://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AAmKrFD.img?h=373&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=567&y=137

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3829954/Child-refugees-finally-coming-UK-Home-Secretary-says-100-unaccompanied-youngsters-arrive-weeks.html

"Empathy" is the word to describe the feelings we have when confronted with pictures of an abandoned kitten/puppy/baby animal of almost all species, and find ourselves wanting to comfort it.  It applied to the pathetic image of that drowned three-year-old Syrian child last year.  
But not for many of us to thousands of desperate people fleeing certain death in their own country.  We can't apparently feel immediate sympathy for an entire mass of people.

The Ebola crisis produced two completely contrasting responses to similar circumstances:  In the USA a pet dog belonging to a Nurse infected by Ebola was taken into the hearts of the local community and looked after extremely well in isolation, until his mistress recovered.  The pet dog belonging to a Spanish nurse who went down with Ebola was destroyed by the Health authorities in Spain.

Which of those actions appears reasonable?