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.

One million UK citizens immigrated to Australia and New Zealand under the Ten Pound Poms scheme.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Pound_Poms

Why would half a million people from the EU want to come here? Because (and I know a lot from EE) things are much, much harder there. My DH has colleagues who say that they do not know how their parents and relatives manage to put food on the table day-to-day. Things are hard in my DH home country, we just about manage yet we have had to send money to his parents, just so they could keep a roof over their head. Even sharing a house here is sometimes much more preferable to what they have to face at home. I don't think we realise what it's like for some Europeans. MY DH was speaking to a Greek colleague, who had a nice business years ago, now he has nothing, he says people there are struggling to eat. Why wouldn't you come here?

The EU can't be described as a failed experiment either.

I think the Euro is arguable.

sportinguista

This is why I believe free movement of people can only work with countries of comparable economies and standards of living.

Hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans have come here yet how many British people have emigrated to EE?

Sport a link would be helpful regarding how hard up Germany, France, Sweden, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece etc; are.

Plus I'd like to know how wealthy the UK is thanks? After all the UK has had to have austerity measures.

Formerbabe
The post Brexit spike in hate crime (and did you see the moving pieces on Black and British Forgotten History last night?) show massive complacency about our levels of tolerance

Formerbabe
That is all benefits

Can someone please explain to me austerity measures in the UK imposed upon UK citizens? Why is this happening?

Why would half a million people from the EU want to come here? Because (and I know a lot from EE) things are much, much harder there. My DH has colleagues who say that they do not know how their parents and relatives manage to put food on the table day-to-day

Where is "there"? Where in the EU do you imagine everyone is barely feeding themselves?
I can assure you that if you asked the average person on the street in most of Europe if they would like to move to the UK, they would laugh. Of course they don't.
This bizarre sweeping generalisation of struggling Europe is insane when you consider how much worse things are in the UK.

Out of 650,000 immigrants, the highest estimate recorded, only 182,000 had a definite job lined up when they came to the UK

Post Brexit, the government should work out how many jobs and in what sectors we need, then issue work permits for them. I imagine that would be less than 200,000 a year.

As a country we are living beyond our means, we are consuming more than we are producing and at some point in the future our children will be screwed.

Doctors should be contracted to work in the UK or repay the full cost of their education. Maybe families should actually have to look after their own elderly instead of expecting the state to provide 24/7 care.

The wealthy liberal elite are in a flap that they might have to actually pay a decent wage to their employees. Well I dont care about them, I care about the majority of the country who are demanding fairness.

Importing massive numbers of people to do the jobs we dont want, for wages we wont work for is screwing up the whole world. Pull the plaster off fast.

Taking back control?

Make the UK great again?

By imposing austerity measures? That is working in Greece is it? There are no food banks in the UK? No one in the UK worries about putting food on the table?

Speak to me Sport

Maybe families should actually have to look after their own elderly instead of expecting the state to provide 24/7 care.

I'd love to hear how this would work in practice.

This is why I believe free movement of people can only work with countries of comparable economies and standards of living.

I agree with you on this.

The 2004 accession of 10 countries was a fundamental change to what the EU was and it was not done with the informed consent of existing EU citizens.

But the issue is not why would a Romanian or Greek migrate from their country, it is why would they choose the UK over Germany, Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium, Sweden etc (or even the EEA countries which have free movement like Norway)?

As I said farmers are starting to struggle to find EU migrant workers because the prospects are better elsewhere in other EU countries. We are not that special..

My sense is that the Govt will continue to spout publicly nonsense about limiting migration to 10s of thousands whilst privately finding mechanisms to allow the same number as now or even more.

It is notable that we hear little about inter-company transfers which allow for huge workforces of IT staff come in from India (arguably allowing the companies to not have to train local staff) because the government know if they shut that route, most of the Govt IT projects would crash.

yes it is too high

We do need to manage immigration better

how many do we need to come into the country well that will change with the economy and what is happening with the economy

London is so much more crowded now services are really struggling as they are in other parts of the country

The post Brexit spike in hate crime (and did you see the moving pieces on Black and British

Yes I watched it. Let me also say that many migrants from the EU can hold extremely racist views towards non white people..I know this first hand as I'm in a mixed race relationship. This is hardly ever spoken about though.

I don't know in terms of exact wealth of those countries, they may have high GDP

LInk: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_GDP_(nominal)

but in fact what you have to look at is the amount of wealth that sloshes around and actually gets to ordinary people. Now ours is not much to us and many of us find it hard to make ends meet but to someone in EE it looks like a lot, no matter that once they are here they may find it's not so much! But it's attractive all the same whether or not we think so. If we had more economic parity across the EU we'd probably find migration would even out a bit more, it's difficult to say. Most Poles and EE I've spoken to say that they had more expectation that being part of the EU would have driven more jobs and industry and thence opportunity/living standards inside Poland therefore negating the need to emigrate to find those things.

It is a complicated situation. My DH is a migrant from EU, one of the poorer countries (Southern EU) and we looked this summer at if we could afford to move back there, we concluded even with my income and having more or less all the money for a home on the wage he could expect there it simply didn't add up. And believe me I would LOVE to live there!

Formerbabe, one of the weirdest moments for me was seeing a friend of my Polish neighbours wearing an EDL or something similar sweatshirt. I couldn't believe he was wearing it in public let alone with being Polish but go figure!

London is so much more crowded now services are really struggling as they are in other parts of the country

This is what I'm talking about, unfounded opinion instead of facts! More crowded than when, exactly? The population of London is about 8.5 million now. Almost the same as in 1939.

So Supper if there is a harsh requirement in people coming into the UK then naturally there would be an equally harsh requirement in those wanting to leave. It's only fair after all.

N'est-ce pas?

The EDL are white supremacists.

Why wouldn't a Polish person support them?

White supremacy has a scary amount of support across Europe, particularly in parts of Eastern Europe.

The history of 2004 accession is interesting

"In the early 1990s, when John Major was at war with his party over Europe, there was one issue on which, broadly speaking, he found common ground with the Eurosceptics. It was EU enlargement. Supporting expansion to incorporate the former communist nations of central and eastern Europe was the golden scenario.

"Wider, rather than deeper" was the catchphrase. By expanding eastwards – so the Tories believed – the European Union would become so big that political union would be impossible. A bigger EU would evolve into a looser union of free trading nation states, with weaker institutions at its centre. It was the way to put the brake on Franco-German and Benelux ambitions for ever closer union, while widening the internal market and promoting stability between east and west. The vision of Europe that Margaret Thatcher had outlined in her Bruges speech in 1988 would come into being.

In 2002, Tory MEP Roger Helmer, who went on to defect to Ukip, put it like this: "Tory policy on enlargement is clear. We are in favour of it, for three reasons. First, we owe a moral debt to the countries of central and eastern Europe, which were allowed to fall under the pall of communism after the second world war. Second, by entrenching democracy and the rule of law in eastern Europe, we ensure stability and security for the future. Third, an extra hundred million people in our single market may be a short-term liability, but long term will contribute to growth and prosperity.""
www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/21/tories-conservatives-eu-enlargement-bulgaria

A significant number of people from 2004 accession countries (which UK was at the forefront of advocating for) could already come to UK on the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS)

Justice, they don't always choose the UK, even my DH home country has large amounts of Romanians and also Moldovans and Ukrainians (not part of EU). Who chooses where and why is down to individuals and may be down to if they already know someone here, have visited, think they have a chance at a job etc.

Yes I know the population of London is at its highest since the late 30's and how did many people live families sharing small houses - family in two rooms

Schools, GP surgeries over subscribed. Hospitals struggling with providing the services for the amount of people using the services

More traffic, over crowded public transport

It's grown faster than services can keep up with and it was struggling before the cutbacks

This is what I'm talking about, unfounded opinion instead of facts! More crowded than when, exactly? The population of London is about 8.5 million now. Almost the same as in 1939.

Good grief you are being epically disingenuous

Higher than in (most people's) living memory, of course. And it is fact;

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-31082941

The pre-war overcrowding in London was much-deplored and nothing to aspire to.

Very odd that your posting seems to centre around disputing the indisputable.

It would be much more productive to suggest how employment and development could be shifted away from London and further distributed around the regions.

No one in the UK worries about putting food on the table?
Luckily we live in a country where if you can't afford food you can go to a food bank, so you dont starve.

Maybe families should actually have to look after their own elderly... I'd love to hear how this would work in practice.
Well IME it involves selling off ALL of their estate to help pay for their care. Watch the relatives come squealing.. '"NOOoooo you can't sell their house its my inheritance, of course I will look after them".