Those who are in the position to not have their wages threatened by mass immigration policies are free to reap the rewards of cheap labor, but for those who are in the position of being outcompeted by incoming labor, immigration is a drawback not an asset.
Naturally, policymakers are in the former category, and as such, happen to quite like mass immigration.
Didn't farmers complain that British (working class?)citizens[1] weren't up for picking fruits after East Europeans hit the Brexit? The same working & middle class rely on cheap fruits, so it's not a simple equation where fewer immigrants = better jobs.
Actually, that's sort of the point. British working class labour being undercut by foreign labour.
Sure, that may work in a purely hypothetical construct with rational economic agents, no second-order effects, farmers that are OK with going out of business, no political pandering, a the Conservative government that cares about labor (the class) and spherical cows.
Why are the anti-immigration politicians, now that they have "taken back control" - still keeping the immigration pipeline running? Just with fewer EU immigrants.
Blaming foreign laborers for systemic problems is a lazy cop-out: that is the bloc with the least say.
Safe working conditions are worth 5 pound strawberries.
We also have the highest tax burden as a % of GDP in 70 years. House prices are the highest relative to income than they have ever been.
We're a country circling the drain.
Blaming immigration and the EU in political discourse just suits the political agenda of our clueless, ambivalent politicians who haven't got the vision or balls to radically change anything for the better. Instead they'll just pick over what benefits they will cut and what taxes they will cut/increase and run in circles.
Particularly this line: Xi sees the break-up of the Soviet Union and the end of the CPSU as the result of “ideological nihilism”: the ruling strata have ceased to believe in the advantages and the value of the system, but lacked any other ideological coordinates within which to situate their thinking.
https://braveneweurope.com/branko-milanovic-the-rule-of-nihi...
My personal term to describe the players in Britain's politics is functional incompetence. Which is while they are adept at gaining and holding on to office, they are hapless at performing the actual duties of those offices.
Yep, our ruling class is educated to be quick witted in abstract debates and that is the extent of their depth.
With that logic, education is the primary enemy of the middle class.
Seriously though, this demand to control the supply of labor is a strange one. Everybody is for meritocracy and free market until they are expected to perform. Working permits are like the taxi medallion system.
If someone who speaks native English, went to British schools, have a network in the country thanks to living there since ever cannot compete with someone from, say Romania, it's only fair for the immigrant to take the job.
> However, skilled immigrating workers can bring capabilities that are not available in the native workforce, for example in academic research or information technology. Additionally, immigrating workforces also create new jobs by expanding demand, thus creating more jobs, either directly by setting up businesses (therefore requiring local services or workers), or indirectly by raising consumption. As an example, a greater population that eats more groceries will increase demand from shops, which will therefore require additional shop staff.
If that's the "fallacy" then it's not much of a rebuttal. The UK has an immigration system that allows in quite easily the kind of people who do academic research and information technology. How that has any relevance to low paid workers in far more precarious professions (or no profession at all) who have to compete with low skilled immigrants who are unlikely to know their rights, thus pressuring conditions downwards, who are likely to find the low pay better than they could get back home (or worse, taking lower pay out of necessity because of their illegal immigration status) which again, pressures downwards the pay levels, you'll have to explain.
One of my friends is from a Baltic state and wasn't claiming for money she should've been paid, which suited her employer just fine (this story[1] turned up a week after I learned about this, about her industry and mirrored her situation) - do you think there was a reason my friend said all her colleagues were foreigners? I'll give you the two best reasons I think for that:
a) The company wanted to hire foreigners because it would be easier to scam them out of money and rights
b) Locals would be less inclined to put up with that kind of nonsense
How is any of this helpful to a country, the locals, or the immigrants?
The harsher the climate towards immigrants in laws and officialdom, the easier they are to exploit. The anti-immigration voters who demand this harshness are shooting themselves in the foot a bit, and should reconsider.
That ignores opportunity cost. There's a reason there are camps at Calais, and it's because those in the camps believe - rightly or wrongly - that they are better off applying for asylum in Britain than France.
> Numbers in this category have also grown significantly in recent months. Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said that the increase is in response to a new UK policy being introduced which threatens to deport new arrivals into the UK to Rwanda in central Africa.
[1] https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/what-should-be-done-ire...
Fraternal relationships with similar nation states (all singing the nationale together) was arguably one of the reasons for the creation of the common market (which of course mushroomed over time into the huge undemocratic bureaucratic monster it now is).
Naturally those benefits (literally in some cases) were very attractive to people like Mo Farah's family from afar decades ago and the UK and Europe were empathetic to allowing some immigration.
The tragedy of the commons is epitomized by globalization, the vast offshore empire that now controls the planet. The globalists want compliant, overpopulated workforces with no negotiating skills in all countries and thus encouraging borderless society. The result is mediocre wages, large amounts of trafficking of in some cases literally slave labour and few opportunities for what used to be termed the working classes.
These are huge global problems that are currently spinning out of control due to the globalists also controlling the central banks which have enabled finacialization of everything and now ferocious inflation
It's appalling how people pretend that they don't have anything against immigrants but they are against illegal immigrants as if the paperwork for legal work is a natural phenomenon and they can't do anything about it.
You've just given me a great business idea. Votes for hire. I bet I could charge a fortune, and I would only have to pass a small fraction of that on to the immigrants I employ.
To be clear, as suggested by the rest of your comment, it is currently not allowed due to various political reasons. Nobody is arguing ideal situations, only reality.
There are probably many million starving African desperate to work a job like trash-man or food packager. Competition for lower skilled jobs will become fierce, but I guess competition is a good thing.
They can’t physically fit, huge amounts of protected greenfield sites are being demolished by the government for cheap new build housing
The fallacy that all immigrants are hard working, clean living people slowly moving up the economic and societal ladder is popular with limo liberals who don't have to coexist and compete with the new arrivals, and worse deal with their sometimes illegal activities.
The internet has allowed enormous numbers of people in the third world toeducatethemselves on the advantages of being in europe/uk as this video illustrates. Who can blame them wanting to game the system...
I’ve been illegal in Turkey and legal in UK and Germany as a EU citizen and worked as a waiter for months until get my first white collar job. No, I’m not speaking as a liberal who doesn’t have idea about the actual immigrants or the working class. I’ve been all of those.
Hospitality workers are usually sink or swim. You won't find many people but hard workers there (local or immigrants)
Now of course this ignores the ones that don't work and the cultural clashes that happen with lots of immigrants
Framing everything as "immigration good/bad" is of course the main issue, it's like saying you fix obesity with eating/not eating
I met very large number of people from very different professions. Some unskilled, others blue collar and white collar. I’ve met legal and illegal people.
Where are all those lazy immigrants? Everyone was working.
I also don’t see any point of not working.
Also, the numbers suggest that the immigrants are indeed hard working and contributing more to the system than they take and their per person net contribution is higher that the natives.
What exactly makes you believe that the immigrants don’t work?
You can find the ones that don't work in the same places you find the locals that don't work (not saying it's the majority - and it might be even smaller than local unemployment). Or you can search for statistics around that area.
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/mi...
> estimated the net fiscal contribution of EEA migrants in the financial year (FY) 2016/17 at £4.7bn, compared to a net cost of £9bn for non-EEA migrants.
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/th...
I’ve met people with refugee status who did receive some benefits and worked hard illegally. I’m not going to count them as a cost, they were working in construction jobs, making honest living and not taking the benefits was not an option for them because they would have had to explain how do they sustain themselves. A Palestinian guy that I met who was in this situation is now doing real estate development, now legally since he eventually got a legal status. There are plenty like that.
Do you know how expensive UK is? You can’t have a life on benefits, unless you are rich you have to work.
It doesn’t make any sense to go to UK to spend your life in a room barely being able to buy food using the state benefits.
Ask any immigrant community whether southern Sweden, UK, US wherever about the criminal underworld and you will hear plenty of 'colourful' stories, not least immensely lucrative traffics and smuggling. A lot of hard working illegal immigrants are exploited by these unsavoury types.
Have you any actual evidence?
My experience is the opposite, for poor immigrants. Rich ones, on the other hand....
My prejudice is showing, is yours?
I am really unsure what the data says. I hear claims, but always from agitators on one or other of the sides, and I do not trust them!
sub saharan illegal immigrants into europe https://youtu.be/LY_Yiu2U2Ts
Everyone and his cousin is called Mohammed, heck in certain areas even girls have it as a second name.
There’s no slave debt, it cost a few grands to get somewhere illegally and most people pay that through the money from friends and family and savings.
Once in UK or another rich country you work crazy hours and you make that money back in a month or two. After that you start looking how to improve your own situation and make it worth.
UK or EU is not Dubai, no one takes your passport and make you work like a slave. There are some fringe cases but it’s not how it work for the millions of immigrants.
https://www.europol.europa.eu/crime-areas-and-statistics/cri...
The rest of your comments here just look like a typical copy-pasta fallacy, simply ignoring the scope of the assertion the parent comment made, to make an unrelated point.
Of course, all is well when somebody denies facts.
> UK or EU is not Dubai, no one takes your passport and make you work like a slave. There are some fringe cases but it’s not how it work for the millions of immigrants.
This is an objectively false assertion, forced labour AKA slavery is a thing in Europe.
https://www.euronews.com/2019/07/17/forced-labour-most-preva...
Your own source mentions 136000 cases in the UK, while the comment you quote says for "millions of immigrants." So it'd be something under 10% of immigrants would be in that situation.
Calling that "fringe cases" is a bit of a stretch but not "objectively false."
See what is your problem? You don't even care about what the parent says so you choose to wallow into making strawmen that have absolutely nothing to do with what the parent said at first place, or even bother sourcing your already off topic claims, just spewing generic talking points about god knows what. When did I or OP talk about drugs? never.
It doesn't make any sense to go to another country and possibly spend a lot of money and risk your life and live on bare minimum. Very small number of people take that path.
Evidence?
a) being criminals who inflict various kinds of harm on others
b) working in jobs that would otherwise be taken by existing locals, who are now displaced onto benefits
c) working in jobs that would otherwise not be able to find employees, thus asserting downward pressure on wages/conditions
d) using those benefits which are available, such as (in the US) public schools, emergency departments, and sometimes state-specific benefits
e) using resources from a finite pool such as e.g land in a farming county, houses in a city that refuses to allow further development
Most of these arguments can be found when people are objecting to legal immigration
I'm not much of an "agitator on one of the sides". I can't afford to be an agitator, I might get deported. I'm just telling you what my life is like.
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>Leechers exist among natives too. Any particular reason to believe that it’s worse with the immigrants?
No in fact I've stated the opposite. The incentive structure for immigrants self selects the illegal ones as ones willing to work without social support, because it isn't offered to them. The legal immigrants, unless sponsored by family/spouse, generally have high education or wealth requirements than our average populace thus they're less likely to use benefits.
In fact I think my country could look at the incentive structure that has made the illegal immigrant in my country so hard working, and think about how we can apply to making our own citizenry more independent and less dependent on public benefits.
I don't think any country needs to give the right for anyone to come there if they want.
In attempt to tackle the economic crisis that the Turkey is in, last December the Turkish government introduced a banking instrument indexed to one of the USD/EUR/GBP currencies where you can put your Turkish lira and earn interest of up to %17 but if the Turkish lira loses more value than your currency of choice the government will match the difference. So at the best case you earn up to %17 interest and on worst case you don't lose in terms of foreign currency.
Anyway, they made it available to foreigners too in attempt to have the Turkish diaspora in Europe and UK bring their money to Turkey. Unfortunately it failed to fetch any significant demand and BBC Turkish made a small documentary with the Turks living in the UK and talked with them on why they did not took the opportunity.
The answers were actually shocking: Turks were working illegally so that they don't pay income tax and receive state benefits and as a result they couldn't put their money in the banking system because Turkey started sharing data with EU and UK. It turns out, there are many Turks who are officially unemployed but are actually working illegally and not paying taxes.
I don't deny the existence of leeches, I wish they were caught. EU made a significant progress with the Turkish cheaters and their money is no longer in heaven in Turkey.
This is misstating the situation.
1. People working under the table don't pay taxes.
2. Those who do pay taxes are not earning that much as such not paying much tax
3. They do get benefits. For example CA gave illegal immigrants payments. https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/california-give-cash-pay...
Immigration is complex. Filled with bad faith and misleading arguments from many sides.
Sending illegal immigrants from Norway to Svalbard is not a practical suggestion.
> send anyone who can't support themselves back to Norway
I mean for illegal immigrants; if they can't support themselves they can be sent back to their own country. They have no right to stay in mainland Norway, so that won't be a problem.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/norwegian-po...
https://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/4956-frp-politician-propo...
Unless you can't physically fit people in the island, the solution would be to let the immigrants work legally. Number of houses are not fixed like the total number of bitcoins, people can build new ones.
Despite the political rhetoric and recent trends, immigration is a good thing and the problems it causes can be reduced when handled properly. That's why the government, despite being dominated by Brexiteers who won by preaching the horrors of immigrants and lack of border control, actually don't try stopping the immigrants.
Surely the topic is a good tool for populist politicians but once they got the results for their careers, they can't actually live with those fantasies because people will notice.
I know that this is not a popular opinion but that's that. UK had option to control the immigration when was in the EU and choose not to. Why do you think is that? Because people who work are a good thing.