To think 335,000 extra people coming to the UK in a year is too high

[jdoe8]

Where will they all live? What jobs will they all do? I know it may help GDP, but that is irrelevant as GDP per head is the important thing.

It does seem to be race to the bottom with more part time work , uber type work and the country is borrowing more and more and the national debt is 35k per head now.

The last ten years have been hell for the people born in and after 1980s. Why in the world should we face more hell?

Wait, what? I've got a £27k a year job, I can afford to go on holiday, I went travelling, I can save £600 a month. I have lots of technology, a decent car, decent friends. My parents on the other hand were always skint, everyone else I know their age is skint. I really don't think us 80s children have had it hard to be honest!

I've got a £27k a year job, I can afford to go on holiday, I went travelling, I can save £600 a month

I doubt you live in London then if you can save £600 a month?!

Yanbu. The government doesn't provide enough resources for education, NHS etc as it is. Immigration should be based on skills needed, not just cheap labour.

The cheap labour point interests me.

Surely those paying for cheap labour should be held to account. The minimum wage must be adhered to at all costs.

That way there is no 'cheap labour'.

NMW is cheap labour. Very cheap.

NMW is cheap labour. Very cheap. By our standards, yes, but compared with Roumania, no. Hence there's quite an imbalance and an incentive for people to come here - as evidenced by the (by any measure) massive numbers.

Sobachka

I'm not sure what your point is. I was thanking Valentina for her perspective, saying I was lucky that (i don't think) lack of free movement would destroy my job in the way she says it would destroy hers.

I don't disagree about housing, although there's no shortage of housing in areas where there isn't any work - the picture is very regional.

It's hard for me to reconcile the idea that 335,000 extra people aren't putting some demand on housing though, even accepting they are net contributors in purely tax/NI terms.

By our standards, yes, but compared with Roumania, no. Hence there's quite an imbalance and an incentive for people to come here - as evidenced by the (by any measure) massive numbers

Yes. And people from Romania can come over here and take living in absolute shit conditions like 4 to a room, sharing mattresses on shift, to save up £10k which will set them up for life in Romania. However if you're settled here that sort of money wouldn't even be a deposit on a house and your salary wouldn't be enough to buy one anyway.

It's not just a matter of wages either. Working conditions are being eroded in industries with high migrant numbers. In construction training provided by employers is virtually nil, people are forced self employed, 6 or even 7 day working at 10-12 hours a day common. There's very little compassion for circumstances and family life.

My husband works in construction and when I very nearly miscarried IVF twins in Feb and he had to come to hospital for the scan to see if I had or not, his boss said 'If you walk out of that door there'll be a Romanian in your job come Monday'. He did and there was.

A workforce with a large quickly available mobile workforce of young itinerant workers becomes a workforce where staff are not valued and can be hired and fired at will.

By our standards, yes, but compared with Roumania, no. Hence there's quite an imbalance and an incentive for people to come here - as evidenced by the (by any measure) massive numbers.

Of course. So what do we do? We need to prop bottom-end wages up with various measures, not least a dramatically increased NMW rate. Otherwise it's not desperately surprising that low earners start to resent the immigration that is keeping low wages low.

But that doesn't happen.

Business loves the cheap labour and makes fat profits.

Government subsidies those businesses by paying welfare to their workers but blames the workers via vicious scrounger rhetoric.

Low paid Brits struggle and seethe. Some of them blame business (reasonably), some of them identify mass immigration as part of the difficult equation (correctly) some of them go further and blame individual immigrants (completely unfairly).

The liberal MCs scream at the struggling WCs that they're racist for (correctly) identifying mass immigration as a deflationary pressure on wages.

NOBODY does anything to correct the wage/housing/cost of living imbalance.

The government are completely to blame for this mess. They could close the gap but they don't want to. They'd rather dismantle the welfare state and plunge millions of the electorate into semi-destitution.

A workforce with a large quickly available mobile workforce of young itinerant workers becomes a workforce where staff are not valued and can be hired and fired at will.

Yes, the government want, desperate, scared, malleable workers with few employment rights prepared to be treated like shit.

And they're getting them.

I hope it worked out okay Bill. Good on your DH for coming to your side and not cowing.

So we need to enforce employment rights.

Make businesses stand up to account.

We are blaming the wrong people here.

Maybe Gordon Brown's I.D. card wasn't such a bad idea.

Agree with a lot of manumission's points - but if you increase NMW, surely that's going to attract even more people rather than addressing the issues? Plus the businesses will increase costs to cover the increased wage bill, so the WC will end up no better off?

Completely agree with manumission.

The last time I was job hunting was 11 years ago. I'm thinking about returning to work after being a sahm. I was tentatively looking at job adverts and was shocked to see salaries for the type of job I used to do have not increased at all! Yet, my house has nearly doubled in price in the last 5 years. Terrifying.

Of course no one can deny that we have racist people that will blame any immigrants for whatever they can

But many many people do blame the system but as soon as they mention immigration is too high to some they have written them off as racist

And areas of the press support this tv programmes after the referendum remains interviewed university graduates leave voters working men at a workers club who are not as articulate with their language who is to say they haven't done as much research or haven't experienced the negative impacts of high immigration

And so many people buy into this why didn't they film the wealthy or middle class leave voters

The truth is many are not well qualified, here many do not speak English and do menial jobs, minimum wage often zero hours contracts, as a result wages for low skilled locals have dropped. Once the immigrants start having children they are costing the health service thousands they will never pay enough tax to cover. Often they bring grannies, aunties etc with they who will be a drain on the economy.

I saw a non-English speaking Big Issue seller yesterday - how much tax is she paying?

Immigration needs to be controlled

Facts and figures around immigration posted on this thread does not matter one bit for people who have seen a non British big issue seller in the street

Britain needs immigration. It needs immigrants to have these children who are not a drain on the system, but an assett as future tax payers and contributors to the economy. I work in banking and 2 people put of 50 in my team are Brits. Europeans are highly educated, qualified and with language skills. Poland has fantastic universities. There is a a real anti education/ knowledge wave in the UK. I see the future as British workers ending up as fruit pickers in Poland (if they can be bothered to take the work)

Lack of freedom of movement wouldn't threaten my job

Wasonthelist, sorry I took it out of context, I was juxtaposing this sentiment against the enormity of the overpopulation crisis.

accepting they are net contributors in purely tax/NI terms.

Most EU nationals entering the UK do not have pre-arranged work (statistics up-thread) so of course they're not net contributors.

there's no shortage of housing in areas where there isn't any work - the picture is very regional.

I agree that there are a few exceptional regions but overall we are suffering an acute housing shortage:

"Estimates put the need for additional housing in England at between 232,000 to 300,000 new units per year, a level not reached since the late 1970s and two to three times current supply."

www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/key-issues-parliament-2015/social-protection/housing-supply/

I hope it worked out okay Bill. Good on your DH for coming to your side and not cowing.

It did. Thank you. My husband has probably the very best reputation locally for the job he does and for being reliable (never misses a day, never late) and even he got sacked off which shows how bad it is. But he was on another job by Wednesday. His replacement was nowhere near as good him either.

Incidentally my DH is a migrant too, but he sees the problem. When he emigrated here in the early 90s migrants were more or less the same as young British people in terms of how they lived. They lived in flats or houseshares with tenancy agreements and their own rooms. They had the same financial responsibilities as young British workers so in terms of wages it was a pretty level playing field because both migrants and resident young workers would need work with wages that would fulfill those responsibilities. Now resident workers are competing with people who will work for wages that mean sleeping on a mattress shared in shifts or a leaky caravan or a car. They can do that because it's temporary. But for resident workers it's forever so they're having to fund lifestyles that are tolerable in the long term on wages that you need to be prepared to live intolerable lives to survive on.

I think one of the greatest cons of the last 20 years is that the left wing's position as the party for ordinary workers has been totally subverted by identity politics. It's no longer a force which helps people on the basis of their wealth, but on the basis of their race or religion etc, etc, etc.

I personally think this has been a big factor in the left becoming the party of choice for the wealthy and for establishment figures. They don't have to feel guilty about their wealth or power anymore to be left wing. Because the left wing has almost entirely abandoned the position that wealth causes inequality to a position which says that ethnicity or religion or nationality etc causes inequality instead. This also gives them the freedom to give the white working class a good kicking on the basis that they are no longer victims of inequality just because they're poor. Instead the left wing seems very quick at the moment to say that any white working class person is poor because of faults of their own like stupidity, laziness, ignorance, lack of drive to succeed etc. They also frequently seem to be saying that they are incapable of taking part in or understanding political processes and should be ruled and guided by their betters who know what to do even when it acts against their interests. It's insane. The left has now started using the same sort of thought processes and language about the white working classes as the sort of exploitative 19th century mill and factory owners it was set up to oppose.

There is a a real anti education/ knowledge wave in the UK. I see the future as British workers ending up as fruit pickers in Poland (if they can be bothered to take the work)

Is there any other group you would feel comfortable about dismissing as lazy and unwilling to work? How about taking that statement about not being bothered to work and applying it to Jamaicans or Mexicans or black South Africans? It's simply a racist statement, you're being racist.

Leaving that aside, until very recently we had the highest university participation ever. So you should in theory have plenty of educated British workers to choose from, your 'anti-education' point doesn't hold water.

In fact, the vast majority of young workers at the moment will have spent the majority of their schooling under a Labour government. It's not that they're anti education, it's just that the education system they went through is so poor. And then they come out the other end of their education, and they are told by the same left wing that provided most of it, that it's not good enough and they are too badly educated to be valuable to the workforce.

The outgoing head of Ofstead this week pointed out that inequality in education was a big factor in Brexit voting and the anger and inequality it created was a big factor in the vote.

Can you not see the irony that the people who provide the terrible education are the same ones berating the results for being poorly educated and apparently useless?

The thing that worries me about my dcs generation is if we continue to import both skilled and non skilled workers into the UK where are the jobs for them in the future? A ready supply of skilled workers coming from abroad means employers have less incentives to train up the indigenous population to do the skilled jobs and if for whatever reason this skills supply dries up then we are buggered as a country.
The bigger picture is we are taking qualified people from poorer countries meaning their populations also suffer. The only winners from this scenario are the employers who are usually big faceless multicorporations

No one has said kick all immigrants out and let no others in

I would expect if you work in banking I assume you are taking about investment banking that educational standards will be high, wages are high competition for these jobs are high

Unskilled workers as they can be exploited by business the race is to the bottom who can pay the least

Maybe Gordon Brown's I.D. card wasn't such a bad idea.

Er, no. That was the Civil Servants and Snake Oil IT companies coming up with a very expensive "solution" to a problem that largely doesn't exist - and that in any case wouldn't be solved by ID cards.

YY BillSykesDog

I often wonder if some employers in London would rather have a foreign employee than someone from Scotland or the North of England, given the sort of prejudice that often spills out.