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

Um... can I just clarify that I don't work on the streets?

Yes.

Work and sexual harrassment in the street as 2 examples off the top of my head.

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to clarify - I'm not sure my examples show 'immigration is a problem' but they do show real life examples of things most politicians will deny being true. a more grown up debate would be helpful

a lot of council houses here go to refugees. this doesn't bother me but I can see why it bothers other people when the usual waiting list for a house is years and years and years. the fact that this is true and happens is never addressed by any politicians which imo is a big mistake - if it was spelled out to people the kinds of conditions those people had escaped they might be more sympathetic or at least the debate could be opened up about whether we should accept refugees etc etc. brushing it all under the carpet and pretending it doesn't exist is not helpful.

my brother and all other british workers were laid off a few years ago to be replaced by Polish migrant labourers. many were subsequently re-employed a year or so later but it also is not true to say that there are no british farm workers who want jobs in that area etc. it's just there are cheaper labourers from other areas

where I live there are a lot of immigrants. It is really difficult to get places in schools. Think in a recent report, my town came about second in most over subscribed schools list. Whether this is down to immigration, I can't say and some schools have been difficult to get a place for years anyway. My friend (who is herself an immigrant), says she has noticed a big difference in the overall ethos, attitude, standards etc, in her childrens school (she is a TA there) and she puts this down to the large number of recent immigrants the school seems to be giving priority to.

No - far from it. For years there was no NHS dentist to be seen anywhere in our (rural Welsh) county. The nearest one was a 100 mile round trip away. Now we have 2 new dental practices and guess what? The dentists are all Polish. Good on them.

As I happen to be an immigrant myself, I would have to say no. Immigration has impacted very positively on my life, and I hope it has also impacted positively on the lives of my British husband, my three British children, my employers past and present, the children I work with, the voluntary organisations I give my time to... you get the picture.

Quite the opposite. I work for the NHS in mental health a real cinderella speciality. We used to have really good Indian and Pakistani drs who spoke great English and trained under a similar system to ours propping up our service then the government tightened up the visa rules saying we had enough Drs and now our rotas are falling to bits because we can't get staff. There are enough Drs in popular specialities in London but not in unpopular stuff in other areas. Paediatrics is really bad too (people don't want to work the long hours) so it could be our children suffering.
I have only ever seen good from immigration.
I also get to see through my job a lot of the people who are on long term sick and not trying very hard to get back to work or who have never worked and I'm afraid the vast majority of them are White British. Immigrant families I work with, mainly Asian, all seem to have at least one family member in work and are very keen to look after family members who are ill thus saving the state a lot of money.
I can't see any evidence that the immigrants are taking jobs from British people but I do see quite a lot of them doing jobs others won't do such as picking cabbages in Wisbech!

Yes. I keep looking for a Polish builder and some other bugger has hired them. Need to let some more in.

Nope, the only problem I had/have is trying to get my son's Ghanaian father into the country in order to have contact.

We managed to get him a visa a few years back when we were living in Spain, but in the end we decided to stay there and didn't use it. Now circumstances have changed, and we have separated. Unfortunately he cannot get work in Spain (economic situation there is far far worse than here, and no benefits at all). I cannot help him to get a visa again because I don't earn enough to sponsor him, and so he won't be able to get a visa.

Consequently, my son hasn't seen his father for 4 years.

It is NOT easy to get into the uk legally.

I have however employed a lazy eastern european!

They do exist.

Mind you I also sequentially employed four lazy trollops who grew up down the road

Says more about my hiring skills than anything I think

British skitish.

I am one of those poor white working class people that Griffin and his pals speak for

I apparently feel like a second class citizen in my own country and suffer from the fall out of the 'influx' and 'flooding' of immigrants.

Which is odd because I do not feel in the least like a second class citizen and have no problem with immigration. Despite living in an area of high cultural, ethnic and religious diversity.

Surely if one of those things that have happened to various friends, aunts, cousin's boyfriends etc etc were actually true, they would be happening left, right and centre to ME?

I mean I am in the perfect position to be refused a job because I am too white, kicked out of my house and replaced by 20 Albanians, have a tribe of displaced Somalians set up home in my garden and eat my dog

Strangely non of the above has happened (yet).

polish young women are generally intelligent, educated, reliable and hard working, but don't know a great deal about British working time regulations or the tax system.

unfortunately, employers know this and a LOT of positive discrimination goes on in the lower end of the job market. Job adverts up in chippy windows printed in Polish only, because the employer wants someone they can exploit. Insisting, for no reason, that "applicants must be fluent in Polish/Serbo-croat" - who speaks polish or Serbo Croat, ap[art from eastern europeans?

It does impact on the poorer, less educated sections of society. I'm not saying it's the fault of the immigrants, it's the fault of the employers who are allowed to choose one race of people only to employ from, and it seems that as long as that race isn't white and britsh, it's fine for them to do so.

No, the place where I work would fall apart without bringing in people from other countries. They literally have to go abroad and drag people back over here to work because there are not enough UK nationals to fulfil the positions.

xpost with Posie!

nope - think people really worry too much but then I am a no borders, live and let live hippy at heart!!!

That reminds me of being at uni Suzi. I registered at my nearest GP practice to where I was livinh. Housemates all went and searched a surgery with a white Dr.

From birth I had never known anything other than asian doctors and guess what, my GP had far more about him and gave a better service than theirs. OK so I did have to listen hard to tell what he was saying but that applies to anyone with an accent you are not used to.

Loads of people said they didn't want a p* Dr.

I have just been having the same discussion with my DH!

I think that blaming immigrants for society's ills has been around for ever. It's a pity we can't (as a society) realise what benefits we get.

The classic story is of people who get a Polish builder in to do a job because they're on time, cheap, work hard, etc, etc and in this respect totally unlike the stereotypical British builder.

No. But my grandma's very rural area had an immigrant GP for about 10 years who was treated abysmally by the vocal, racist and not insignificant minority.

He stuck it out though and, by the accounts of the reasonable, was a good GP, driving a 40 mile round trip every winter to give my gran and other local elderly their flu jabs etc.

Then he retired and noone wants to be a GP out there. There's a large part of me thinking "serves you right".

All cleaners i know are Polish, but that's because they are reliable, trustworthy and very hard working!

I did meet a few nannies when I was looking for one who said they'd found it hard to find work because there were a lot of eastern european nannies who were willing to work for less money. But I guess that's just market pressure?

It's very difficult to discuss this sort of thing without feeling like a racist. I'd love to imagine it doesn't matter where people come from but on a sort of socio-economic level, perhaps it does sometimes, however much we might not like it?

Honestly, yes. It is completely outweighed by the positive impact of immigration.

We have lots of Somalians and most that I have talked to are very pleasant and happy people(so smiley in fact makes everyone else look miserable), but I find (and have met) their community leaders and they are doing them a disservice. Little customs that would easily assist their adaptation to life in the UK should be introduced to them. For example, my son asked his whole class to a birthday party and not one Somalian family EVER responded to any invite. This got some backs up and probably stopped some of the more narrow minded people from talking to the parents.