To think it’s easier to want open boarders if you’re privileged?

[Theselfishsister]

Having an ongoing conflict with my sister regarding refugees, she’s very ‘let everyone in’ I would say I’m somewhere in the middle.

She’s given up spare bedrooms to refugees, spends weekends in Calais helping them and is posting everywhere on SM about letting them all in. As well as attending protests regularly for the last 4 years or so.

What strikes me is that her and her other friends going to all of the events are white, MC (although she is by marriage, we grew up very WC) and live incredibly comfortably. She’s a SAHM and her husband owns his own company, they have never needed benefits or social housing and her children are privately educated with all of them receiving private medical care.

A massive increase in people here are unlikely to ever have much affect on her life, she won’t have to fight for jobs or wait for a house or deal with benefit cuts when too much is paid out, as well as the increase in waits for Medical care and school admissions. Whereas for someone like me, this is obviously a more worrying factor and the thought of just opening our borders to everyone does scare me. As much as I would love to be able to take every person fleeing a great life, it just causes me worry and I don’t think I could support completely open boarders.

She obviously just thinks I’m a selfish heartless bitch for not protesting to remove our borders or similar. When I asked why she let refugees sleep in her spare rooms but never the homeless man on the road behind her (who’s been in the same spot since she moved there 5 years ago!) she called me a racist!

So AIBU to think it’s easier to want open boarders if you’re privileged or am I just a selfish cow?

We should do this by questioning and opposing the wealthy

I’m genuinely interested to know how you would approach this though. Do you mean incredibly wealthy businesses, like Amazon or Starbucks, who should be paying their fair share of taxes? I don’t necessarily think there’s anything to be gained by opposing people who’ve become wealthy through their own hard graft.

We all agree immigrants are not to blame.

The government that has pushed through austerity that has caused misery to millions is at fault.

So we need to blame who?

The other poor person living in poor housing on a poor housing estate working for shit wages or ...?

Borders (not boarders)

So if you don’t believe in opening our borders you’re not a kind person?
But we don't have open borders.

This is what confuses me about this sort of whining. It's always about how our borders are apparently open, and yet every time I've come home from holiday I've been stopped at the UK border and had to prove I had a right to be there.

I'm more than happy to consider alternatives and immigration reform but it's really difficult when the starting point of opposition views is factually untrue.

OP what exactly is your issue here? You keep changing between talking about immigration in general, which has a big effect on communities, and then talking about refugees and saying we shouldn't let them in, despite them having a very small effect on communities. Which exactly are you focused on because it's confusing and they are two very different things.

Open borders as per my title and OP.
Part of that is also about the way we let in refugees currently, as that is an issue. I do think we’ve got it wrong and the people we do take should bemore families from the camps in Jordan etc and not the blokes waiting in Calais/ arrived here on a boat. I don’t think we should just let them all in as my sister wishes.

But we don't have open borders
I’m aware, hence why the post you’ve quoted mentions ‘opening’ them so what point have I stated that is untrue?

Thanks user spelling was picked up on page 1

Also taco I certainly never said we shouldn’t let any refugees in. I’ve talked about both immigration in general and refugees, based on what I’m replying to at the time.

Is your issue money and resources or not?

Letting families in will cost more money and be a bigger strain on resources than letting in young single men.

I do agree though there are social issues to a society having more of one sex than another.

Lots of fallacious arguments here.

One the conflation between immigrants and refugees, and even further between EU immigrants and non EU immigrants. They aren't all the same.

Further the idea that immigrants put pressure on services, outside of London there are no regions which have over 10% of the population born outside of the UK, the immigrant groups are not large enough to put undue pressure on services. Furthermore, immigrants tend to be young and healthy, there is a thing called the healthy migrant effect, they use less health services than the domestic nationals. 87% of students in primary schools get their first choice, with 95 % ( actually higher this year) getting first or second. Outside of London in the majority of areas its actually over 90% getting first choice, even in the much mentioned Boston, Lincs.

Immigrants don't drive down wages, the research shows that between 1994 and 2018 the impact on the lowest paid has been a 5% lower level in pay rises ( cumulative), but the wages of the lowest paid did increase 49% in this time, should also be noted that the 5% in lower pay rises is utterly negated by the change in tax threshold between 2011- and 2012.

Immigrants don't cause unemployment either, that's the lump of labour fallacy. All the studies show this.

What we have here is lots of anecdote, and prejudiced rubbish.

An appeal to social frustration, I wonder what Umberto Eco would make of that?

Letting families in will cost more money and be a bigger strain on resources than letting in young single men.

This is true. Surely more people will be without housing if it's families instead of single men

People equating refugees with immigrants is the problem here

I think if is a balance between helping our own and helping out refugees at risk. I don’t think there should be no controls over this.

I don't think the British empire was on par with the Nazi regime but of course there were atrocities.

I don't think the British empire was on par with the Nazi regime but of course there were atrocities.

Why are you comparing it with the Nazi regime? Were the Bengal famines, Amritsar massacre and Boer concentration camps not bad enough for you? How many people did the British Empire have to murder before they become 'on par' with the Nazis?

Many of the refugees are not actually refugees are they though because to meet that legal definition they should stop at the first safe country not continue to a country of preference. Most of the refugees are men, very few women and children.
I do think that the privileged are more likely to support open borders. Poorer areas live where the landscape has changed, are more likely to feel affected by large scale migration.
I don’t buy the British are too lazy accusation either, should we not be asking what the reasoning behind this is and finding a solution- encourage people to take up jobs?
Bringing in more migrants on a large scale drives down wages- Globalisation/ open borders means there’s always a steady stream of people willing to work for poor wages. It benefits the rich and the corporations. Is saying we want people to come here and work for low wages acceptable?
I think open borders would be totally irresponsible- it damages culture and social cohesion. It will cause massive instability and resentment.
I think we have a duty to help people, but to think opening the gates and allowing everyone in will achieve nothing other than to cause large scale instability and poverty- then we won’t be in a position to help anyone.
I really think people who just want to open the borders whilst meaning well, have not really thought it through.
They say ah well migration makes us richer- but it isn’t “us” that’s getting richer- gdp might go up but this is not gdp per capita head. It will have no affect on increasing personal wealth for the majority.
As for the NHS, I wanted to study nursing and found the majority of (more than half) nursing applications are turned down- competition for places is very high. Same with doctors. Therefore people who have the right qualifications are being turned down due to lack of places. So whilst the uk could train its own nurses/doctors most applicants are turned away and nurses taken from other countries. Why not invest in training nurses in this country?

but the wages of the lowest paid did increase 49%

Yeah but in real terms wages have gone down- the cost of living has increased massively, the cost of housing increased massively compared to the average wage in such a short space of time. People are struggling to keep up- personal debt is it the highest levels ever.
So wages “increasing” is a bit meaningless!

“Something that frustrates me is how often immigration is blamed for things like the failing NHS when this is almost entirely caused by something else (aging British population”

Artificially inflating the lower rung of the population pyramid via immigration will only defer the problem to a later date- because the newly imported population will also age. It’s creating a bigger problem for further down the line. Unless you can find constant and ever increasing influx of immigration to prop up the population, forever.

They say ah well migration makes us richer- but it isn’t “us” that’s getting richer

How can migration make everyone richer?

There are only a certain number of jobs to go round and if we have migrants coming in undercutting the people already here then a section of society is ostracised.

There are people on here who think British people haven’t picked their own fruit and veg for 100 years.

Truth is up to about 20 years ago we knew British families who during the Summer holidays would go fruit and veg picking as a means to subsidise their annual income.

I know families who found the jobs were taken away and overseas people came in and worked the fields for less. These families were left with less money each year so ended up claiming benefits where they couldn’t make up the short fall.

But the farmer was ok because he saw his profit go up.

The supermarkets were ok because the produce cost less.

But the tax payer ends up paying for the benefits the families then go on to receive.

I am a firm believer in joined up thinking.

Unfortunately no one in any sort of power seems to think that if we do A then B could happen but ultimately doing A would also result in C, D and E occurring which is ultimately going to cost more in the long run.

Everything is done as a quick fix and if the initial action saves money then £ signs get in the way of objectivity

Someone up thread mentioned it.

YANBU at all, it won't be her losing out on social housing etc in such a privileged position, it will likely not affect her at all if we 'let them all in'. I agree with you in that in somewhere in the middle. Not anti-immigration but very aware we live on a small island collapsing under the weight of overpopulation and underfunding and the last thing we need is for no limit on who can add to that weight

A homeless man isn’t the same situation as a refugee. Many of the refugees are people who have been forced to flee their rather nice lives because of issues in their country which are making it unsafe. They are normal healthy people. A lot (not all) homeless people suffer from addiction issues, mental health issues etc. Asking your sister why she will house a refugee but not the homeless man isn’t fair and YABU.

As for “fighting for jobs”...not really. Employers welcome migrants to work in their businesses because there is a lack of labour supply already here. Some people aren’t aren’t willing to do certain jobs. If someone else will, then why complain?

As for the NHS.

I don’t think they can be struggling all that much. I know groups of British born nurses who have had very nice redundancy packages from the NHS.

Only again to see their jobs undercut and farmed out to much younger people who haven’t a clue.

We know an NHS pharmacist.

For years she ran the pharmacy at a busy place and everything ran like clockwork.

She was made redundant and replaced by 2 newly qualified people.

The medicine bottles and pill boxes were kicked around the floor, medicines that needed to be refrigerated were left out and syringes were put in the fridge.

No one would get what they needed. Usually you would come away with 2 out of the 5 things that were on your prescription.

It is a mess yet they change the staff regularly and mix up patients.

It is a wonder no one has died.

They did tell Dp who is terminally ill that he was dead so couldn’t hand his prescriptions over to him.

Oliver’smum - I agree there’s no long term thinking and it’s all about money.

I think a lie was pushed that immigration makes us all more proseperous, when it doesn’t, it only really benefits the rich. And even if we did all become slightly richer (which we haven’t), what would it be worth when the social fabric of society is damaged?. But hey, so long as there’s someone to serve us at pret....

I don’t buy the British are too lazy accusation either, should we not be asking what the reasoning behind this is and finding a solution- encourage people to take up jobs?

I made this point in a couple of threads, but was shot down cos capitalism, but surely if you need the workers you pay them more or give them more perks.