To not like this Idea of a new multicultural Britain

[monkeyfarm]

I suspect this probably won't go down too well but I'm just being honest as I'm interested to see if I'm the only one who feels this way?
I hate how things are changing, how I can be in a store feel like I'm in eastern europe, why are we one of the only countries that do this? why can't we take a leaf out of the book of Australia and open our doors to people who have something to contribute and not just all and sundry?
Am I on my own in feeling this way?

I picked grapes in Australia just over 10 years ago while on a Working Holiday Visa. The farmer relied on backpacker labour as the locals generally wouldn't do it as the pay was too low and the work pretty hard. For me it was the ideal job for a month and it was a way of continuing to fund my travels(swanned off to Bali for a month with the proceeds!). I don't think i would have been in a hurry to do it long term if I'd had rent/bills to pay.

The farmer was a decent guy, he even paid by the hour not the bucket but if the profit margin isn't there you can't bankrupt yourself. He reckoned he would have to move to mechanical picking withn a few years (wrecks your vines).

most Austrailians i have met reaffirm seekers opinion though.

i have spent two weekends in Sydney, too :)

and working abroad was one of the best experiences of my life. everyone thinking about giving it a go : go for it!

i hope for a borders-free world for everyone's benefit.

also: most employers will take UK over non-UK for a variety of reasons (xenophobia included) - if people employ foreigners it usually reflects a skillset shortage.

bev i bloody loved Ubud. great little place.

A borders free world would be a nightmare for everyone except the ultra-rich.

Not new! I have a problem with lazy scroungers - I don't care where people are from if happy to give to their community. Btw, not against benefits but just those who take advantage.

Change is difficult and I understand it can be difficult for people to see their communities change. Where once people shared background, class, language and religion with their neighbours now the commonalities are much more about shared belief in democracy and probably capitalism.

I think the OPs comments are valid. Barking at people to accept multiculturalism doesn't always do the trick.

Abitwobblynow why are you being ignored. I understand what you are saying but you seem to have been rendered a non person. How very Soviet!

I think an issue that isn't addressed here is class. I'm very much of the opinion that immigration and multiculturalism is a good thing ... but, and here comes the but, I think one's experience of immigration and multiculturalism is linked to class.

I'm fairly well educated, and work in quite a multinational environment. My colleagues are Serbs and Indians and Chinese and French and Italians. We all have higher degrees, and I think importantly, we have shared opportunities for migration. I could get a job in Germany or France or Canada doing something similar to what I do here. When I interact with less skilled immigrants, it's typically in a restaurant setting, or I might be able to employ a polish plumber a bit more cheaply.

However, I think for many people with fewer qualifications and opportunities, your experience of immigration is the polish plumber or taxi driver, who will be prepared to work for less than you, and they present a threat to your livelihood. I have sympathy for those who are at least fearful of immigration, even if I think they're wrong.

Beo, for sure the influx of workers has been regarded differently according to your work type. I know many programmers who are very resentful of the cheap Indian programmers. I am not one of them I hasten to add as I work in a very niche area.

beograde your experience is not multi-culturism. Your colleagues are all academic high-achievers striving for excellence and advancement. Your menus may differ, your values don't. Please don't tell me that it's because "we" have no class.

As someone so rightly pointed out up-thread, wanting similar cultural values is not the same as requiring similar skin tones.

Dolomites, I don't entirely disagree with you - I was just in Bangladesh this week, working with Bangladeshi engineers - and of the four I was working with, two had taken their masters in the US, one in Australia, and one in the UK - although the food we eat is different, and they have a different religions, we have a great deal in common.

I wasn't attacking the working class, just to clarify

It's not about "no class" its the basic fact that the less skill a job requires, the easier it is to pitch directly against local people if you are immigrant because money is the driver. If you are specialised in a particular field, it is is easier to
Withstand economic competition from others as its less about undercutting the competition. Plus barriers to entry are higher where there is regulation or laws requiring that certificates are homolgated etc.

Brits often like to call themselves expats when going off to Spain etc to make a new life, but there is no difference between them and immigrants coming into the UK to do the same, and in both situations they end up in direct compeition with local workers. But of course, its exciting to go abroad a find a new life, not so acceptable when people come here to do just the same and often for more pressing reasons. These double standards are what i find totally depressing. My sympathies lie just as much with spanish bar staff as with british brickies. So, yes, class does come very much into it.

Multi cultural is great when they come here to work and contribute. However this is not always the case.

'They'. Who is this 'they' you speak of topsi? I find language like that terribly divisive. Takes me back to the us and them mentality of the 70s. I am sure no-one would like to live back in those times again.

Anyone topsi, we have enough of our own problems without importing other peoples.

given one problem - skills shortage in the NHS - has been solved by immigration, why not look at immigration as something with plenty of advantages?

a borders free world would get everyone to take very seriously the conditions people live in in other countries.

It would just lead to everyone living in 3rd world conditions except for a very small number of privileged people.

OP i whole heartedly agree with you. makes me bloody sick.

YABU, I am a half Asian person and am proud to be so!. We are all equal, I only judge people on their behaviour NOT their race/ethnicity. There are still many English people about.

Mybaby, but your point is exactly the same as those saying "enough with multiculturalism". You say you judge people on behaviour, which is not the same as race. I bet you are proud of your Asian heritage, but I bet there are some bits which make you want to bang your head against the table - that is culture, not race.

At least in Australia they make a fair go of actually running a system which by and large tries to take skilled immigrants and has an organised system for distributing them to areas where skills are in demand etc.

Unfortunately for the UK, it has taken in several million largely unskilled third world migrants in the last 15 years, and are about to open the door to potentially hundreds of thousands more when Romanians and Bulgarians are permitted access in the New Year.

The UK has, and continues to importing the bottom of the barrel from countries around the world, and losing many of it's skilled residents to countries which now offer a better quality of life and more prospects and which actually have proper immigration policies that attract skilled people who can add value in a real knowledge economy - not those who come to sell pound a bowl fruit for cash down the market, claim benefits, or send money from earnings back "home", leaving the UK economy entirely.

What the UK has done to itself is not normal, it's borne of total incompetence by those who govern and administrate.

Do the Brits want even more police resources tied up in tracking down overseas crime networks who come and go and operate in the UK as they please?

Some people who write here believe their own hype of the joys of unskilled mass immigration. Britain is not looked at as a "beacon of tolerance and multicultural peace" - it's well regarded to have in the last 15 years utterly failed in controlling it's borders, whilst allowing unfettered acesss to people from every corner of the world, regardless of ability, or worth, or honesty, or desire to to fit in.

Looking from the outside, other European countries are only too happy to funnel these people to the UK - they know the authorities are incompetent and often compliant.

Things have got to such a stage now that are now thousands upon thousands of illegal overcrowded shanties / sheds which people live in, being built in East London boroughs and other places, by migrants, legal and illegal, every single day due to this uncontrolled influx. Living conditions that have not existed for over 100 years.

All very well to look the other way and stick your fingers in your ears and say "we're all immigrants really" and pretend it's all great but reality will catch up.

There's big trouble ahead for the UK - it's a powder keg, and i can well see why many people are now getting to the point where they feel strangers in their own country.

I am not against immigrants because of their race or ethnicity but I am against immigrants who have profoundly different cultures to traditional British attitudes and are here not because they admire and want to emulate us but because they can follow their own entrenched and extreme beliefs in a more comfortable and wealthier lifestyle than in their own countries which are unsafe and corrupt.

And because of this they don't want to assimilate or change so I feel we are storing up infixable problems for future Britain. Perhaps their children or grandchildren will be more broad minded and accepting of other ways of life but, as their is no pressure in this country to do this as it is seen as racist, perhaps they won't.

What I have heard of Polish workers is that many employers are keen to have them because they are in fact highly skilled- in practical, manual skills, which is something that is undervalued here, but not in other countries. A culture which regards carpentry as unskilled is likely to find itself outcompeted in this area.

as EdgarAllanPond put it: "if people employ foreigners it usually reflects a skillset shortage"