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
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.