Does anyone have any actual personal experience of immigration being a problem?

I once had my hair cut by a New Zealander who made me cry.
Bloody good haircut, though.

shall we invite lincstash and crystal-something on to this thread? ;-)

School places in my area are massively oversubscribed and this is largely because of a unexpectedly huge influx of people to my local area in the last few years whose presence was not part of the long term planning of LEA when assessing future need of school places. This means my son may end up being bused across the city for primary school

Of course I should point out that these people are not foreign nationals but bloody incomers from London with huge buggies and chelsea tractors!

I've never had a negative experience directly because of immigration.

However like others on here I've had very positive experiences; excellent dental care, exposure to new foods, music, and experiences.

My family history includes German Jews, Chinese, and Austrialian immigrants and all of them made valuable contributions to the communities they found themselves in, immigration is an integral part of this country's history and we should view the cultural richness it has left us with positively, whilst acknowledging that there can be tensions which need to be addressed.

OP: no, I dont have any personal negative experiences caused by immigrants in the Uk.
Have a few negative immigration experiences in germany...oops, Im the immigrant there!

so aside from posieparker's horrendous experience of Somalians not having the decency to rsvp to a childrens party (I blame the parents), and a few Polish kids getting into school (what do they need an education for anyway?), immigrants are pretty much positively impacting on MN's communities.

HURRAH!

I am an immigrant too. I've not taken anyone's job, my employers have always love me, sadly I've never been housed, I pay taxes, never been on dole, and my DD is British (as am I now) and will go to the best school we can find for her.

Once about two years ago the beigels I got in Brick Lane weren't as fresh as they normally are.

I was outraged and wrote to the Daily Mail saying send all the Jews back to, like, the place they are flocking, East Angular or wherever they come from. Let white working class people make beigels, i'm sure there are legions of eager bakers in Canning Town.

Yours,
N Griffin.

There are not huge volumes of immigrants on my area (I am one!) but those I have come across are hard-working, reasonably friendly, etc and I appreciate that I can get to know people from other cultures that often get bad press so I can find out what people from there are really like, rather than the stereotypes, iyswim... (maybe I am more interested in this than other people as I grew up in a very homogeneous society)

I know a few people involved in trying to get disadvantaged yoofs into the workplace and tbh I think it is their lack of interest in working (often coming from families where no-one has worked for generations) rather than immigrants, that is preventing them from getting jobs. And this is in a fairly affluent area with low unemployment...

I can't think of any negative effects I've personally suffered due to immigration, and I can think of plenty fantastic things I have gained - you can buy all sorts of different tasty foods in the shops that people have brought from abroad, I have had many wonderful friends from all over the world with different habits and ideas and new things to talk about...
(Hmm, I should have put those the other way round, you can tell I'm greedy.)

Nope!have had 2 transplants both done by 'immigrants' and the second one was touch and go and he was the only surgeon who could do it.Also have serious heart condition which was dismissed as a combo of indigestion and stress until a young polish doctor spotted an irregularity on a scan and saved my life!Thank god for both of them!

Nope.

And I live in a small town, almost 100% white British until a few years ago when people from Poland and Lithuania started to arrive. And now there's lots. And it's great. I like that I can hear other languages and that my children mix with children with different life experiences.

It's quite a deprived area. And I have heard 'those Poles' blamed from everything from littering to drugs . So in theory potentially fertile ground for racism - interesting to see how the BNP will get on next week.

I don't think Ive taken a job away from a British person. Last time I checked they were still offering £10,000 handcuffs to recruit people into my area of expertise.

I asked this exact same question and according to DH, in certain industries there has been a large flux of Polish/Eastern European workers who are willing to work for less than British workers. Salaries in those industries have therefore gone down and the British workers aren't happy about it.

As someone else said, supply and demand. But if this is true then I can see how this might make people negative about immigration.

(I am all for immigration btw).

Interview with Nick Griffin in today's independent;

'I ask Nick if immigration has had a direct impact on his life'

...he tells a story about having part of his finger bitten off by a dog in Birmingham and a south Indian doctor sewing it up.

Er... that's not a great reason for throwing them out of the country, is it?

Afraid it's the old 'taking up school places'. I was going to move recently, in with MIL (must have been drunk!) but it boiled down to all the Catholic schools in that town being so so so over subsribed. This is a town now called Mala Polska - Little Poland. My town also has a rising no. of immigrants and again, this year many many Catholic children were left without a place (as indeed were many non faith school school kids) because there has been a sudden rise. The school which was my no.1 choice has many children who do not speak English. I am all for immigration but schools/hospitals etc. need to increase along with it.

Nope. No problems. My father had his own building firm and wasn't effected either. He says people generally hire you based on recommendations from friends/family/your prices/your references and not your nationality. So if you are a good English builder you have nothing to fear from immigrant workers.

no personal exp of losing out to immigrants.

meanwhile can i just clear up the housing issues.

asylum seekers are not accomodated in council houses. they are housed in properties owned by private landlords who have been awarded the contract. these proiperties are often in a very poor state, usually below what is anacceptable condidtion for council accomodation.

once asylum seekers have been given refugee status they then qualify for council housing but have no further entitlement than british people. they are just banded according to need ie if it is a family with children then they are likely to be housed under national assistance act (i think) but if they are single people or couples then they are very unlikely to get housed. all refugees are subject to the same housing criteria as the indigenous population.

also fwiw i have seen housing officers throw tantrums when they have had to assign properties to refugee families and make very prejudice comments.

i know all this because i was a sw with a charity for asylum seekers and refugees before i had dd.

Quite the opposite, but I am on the other side of the issue as I am a British expat in Europe.

One thing that did strike me, reading this thread, is that I was never made to feel that I was taking job away from a German when I lived in Germany.

I am sure that if I were from a different country that I would have not had the same experience.

There is a hierarchy of acceptable foreigners in Germany. This exists in UK as well. It is not fair but it is there.

No, none whatsoever.

I used to work as PA (ie. assistant, dogsbody, secretary, receptionist) for a very small local business that manufactured wooden items in a workshop. The boss was always advertising for new people to work on the machines and we just couldn't find people who were committed to learning how to use the machinery. (or to coming in every day. ) He claimed that British workers had 'lost their skills base' in this regard. He recruited from Eastern Europe and over half the workforce were from Czech Rep, Hungary, etc, where, it appears, the skills for wood turning and associated work haven't been lost yet. I think he'd have gone under a few years back if he hadn't been able to employ Eastern Europeans. He's survived the recession and is still employing a mixed British and Eastern European workforce.

And it might sound really cliched and patronising, but the vast majority of the Czech, etc, workforce he employed were responsible, very committed and hardly ever took days off. The young lads he employed out of technical college in England, however, seemed to try it on with hangovers sickies every week. It was an interesting contrast.

The Czechs brought killer booze with them for work parties, too!

white british men, let me clarify.

the only sexual harrassment i've encountered has been from british men.

possibly.

my dd1 wasn't offered a place at any of the 3 schools we asked for.

whether that is because immigrants have taken the places is debatable, but i think not.

immigration has actually been positive for me. i have a really wonderful cleaner, but she's so much more than that. helps me out with all sorts of stuff. she's legal, of course.