There are several problems with the immigration we have now and as my polish sister in law says ( she has been here for 25 years, has never claimed benefits and is a high tax payer now),
when you have a large amount of people coming in - you are going to have a high amount therefore of good, hard working people who will benefit the uk, but the rest as SHE says are people " quite frankly poland is happy to see the back of".
ie, 100 people coming in, 80% are great, 20% bad, becomes far more problematic when you are dealing in very high numbers.
Thats one problem, and when I say problematic people I mean what I have personally been exposed to where I live - in dense housing. There about 5 houses up and down my road with lodgers living in them; of moslty EU origin, a few Polish but the main problems seem to be consitently coming from the Lithuanian and Romanian people, usually young men.....
stabbings - anti social behaviour leading to severe reduction in the quailty of daily life for the other residents etc on an almost daily basis; down to smaller things like never parking properly, blocking the pavement - drug dealing and litter. The police are in almost weekly attendance to these houses - and an ambulance has been seen outside a fair few times as well as council involvement.
The other problem is - resources. We have been in one of the most hardest hit areas and the hospitals have put lives at risk, due to high numbers of people and we are not prepared for it and we have little money to cope and expand to deal with it.
Our hospital has been closing its doors now for a long time on a regular basis - I do know of women turned away in labour, and I am terrified at the prospect of any of my family needing the local hospital with the sheer amount of horror stories coming out of it.
Schools, doctors - is widely known here to be under immense pressure.
One school - primary is 79 - 90% non english speaking, being predominanlty Eastern European.
The school that my DD is at - has however a broader European mix - from EE but also Spanish , French, German , Amercain. I would say 60 - 70% English origin and the rest a mix, and I LOVE that.
As my polish DSIl says - she doesnt blame anyone for coming here or anywhere else to make a better life ( thats what she did) - BUT she thinks our goverment is utterly ridulous in making such a range of pull factors to come here....they are disproportionate to the benefits you can claim in Poland. Its not a level playing field.
The bottom line is - do we really want other countries undesirables to come here as well as having to deal with our own.
And can we " afford" the volume of people we have coming here, can we cope with them? And can we cope - physically and financially with any more?
All the polish I know have been here for a long time, one is second generation and she and her family dont understand whats going on, another has just finished studying she has been here for about 6 years now, and she is the same, another friend was here maybe 12 years and then my DSIL> all of them say the same thing.