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?

YANBU. Nothing worse than a “Champagne Socialist”

zsazsajuju

No-one has peddled the idea that immigrants do only or predominately low skilled jobs, unless they have change the skill level for drs and engineers.

but some posters are only seeing what they want to read.

Surely immigrants would benefit the poor more than the rich? I can think of the examples off the top of my head-
Housing (there is a massive housing need we need Polish builders to build them as there isn't enough British builders to meet demand).
Food - without immigrants the cost of food would go up as there would be a shortage of people to pick the cabbages e.t.c
Care homes - we need immigrants to provide care for the elderly.

It's easy to say the British unemployed should do these jobs but many wont/can't for a variety of reasons.

I am aware immigrants also help the country by doing highly skilled, well paid jobs as well.

I sometimes wonder if the open borders proponents have actually thought it through- the actual implications of what would likely happen. I don’t think they have- but i would be interested to know how they think they can create this wonderful utopia from having open borders. How would they support everyone? Keep services running? House everyone Etc, I would really like to know how it would all work!

There is a massive housing need so let’s bring the polish builders over? What, to build their own houses?
Part of the reason More immigrants do these jobs is because immigrants can and will do it for less pay, worse working conditions (eg 0 hr contracts, lots of unpaid overtime) is that what we want? Who’s going to care for these immigrants when they age? Will we just keep bringing more and more people for ever?
I agree immigration has benefits but think some people have their heads stuck firmly in the sand on some issues.

What on earth do these people think will happen if millions of economic migrants arrive here.

I find some people laughably dumb, no matter how wealthy they might be.

kayakingmum

Housing - the builders are not building social housing, they are building houses for private sales or buy to let.

Food - doesn't matter who picks the food if you can't pay for it, if the poor of the UK had money they wouldn't be going to food banks. and who benefits from low paid workers?

Care homes - around here it is low paid local people that are working there, normally parents looking for pt hours that suit the school pick up and young adults with very few qualifications. (I realise that this changes from area to area).

It's easy to say the British unemployed should do these jobs but many wont/can't for a variety of reasons.

how many can't or won't because employers won't employ them not just because they won't get off their arses?

So let’s just give everyone a UK /EU passport then.
If we need immigration and refugees need us, let’s just go to Yemen and hand everyone a passport to a better life.
Why not?

Bloody hell- this thread!!! Filled with so many dailyfail stereotypes and assumptions! As the daughter of 'immigrants'- I'm disgusted by the xenophobia expressed by some people in their posts. Also, why are people with pigmented skin/a foreign accent coming into the UK= 'immigrants'/'refugees' and Caucasian, British people moving abroad= migrants or 'ex-pats'. The hypocrisy is astounding on this thread.

Ps. People having to rely on food banks/there being a shortage of jobs and housing/our wonderful NHs and schools being under pressure has nothing to do with refugees, it's to do with the Government. But, it's easier to blame the 'P@ki' down the street than educate and empower yourself and actively do something to change the status quo.

Verytired thank you. Some of the posts on this thread are so miserable to read. Until the referedum id believed that most people were largely accepting of the contribution that immigrants have made to the uk but I can see I was really wrong there and we are judged to be using up valuable resource while doing bugger all.

verytireddontknowwhattodo

So everyone with a different view to you is xenophobic but you are the first to use a racist term.

Your attitude of shutting down the discussion by name calling is part of the issue.

@boneyback a pp said that migrants are not going to be lawyers and accountants. In my experience the opposite is the case.

We should of course be training our own population to do professional and skilled jobs. But we don’t owe anyone a living- Lower skilled jobs have no more right to no competition for jobs than higher skilled professionals.

zsazsajuju

I think that they said "not all are going to be" but it may be a different poster.

But we don’t owe anyone a living- Lower skilled jobs have no more right to no competition for jobs than higher skilled professionals.

no-one has said that, but there should be more of a push to stop the illegal and unfair practices that go on.

Verytired-
It’s all very well telling people to “educate themselves” (really hate that line it smacks of arrogance), whilst you have offered nothing factual- you just start brandishing the term “racist” , usual no debate tactic. You say it’s the government austerity that’s put pressure on services and that may be true to some extent, - but how does that equate to immigration having no negative impact on living standards/wages?. No one had said immigrants dont make a positive contribution, the conversation was about open borders and scale of immigration.

"but how does that equate to immigration having no negative impact on living standards/wages?"

As stated previously, immigration has a negligible effect on wages, its absolutely tiny. In fact in the last 30 years a whole host of other determinants are more important on wages, mostly the fall out of the 2008 crash. Prior to this wages rose in real terms most years. Following 2008 people were willing to accept lower wages to stay in their jobs.There are more, the fall in the amount of trade union membership and power, increasing mechanization of task, industrial change etc have all had larger effects.

The idea that immigration is the main driver of low pay is simply not supported by any of the evidence.

Do we all remember the FEAR, the scare mongering about the influx of Romanian people we would be besieged by a few years ago?

That basically.

We do so little to help refugees compared to other countries, lets not pretend we are saintly. People are getting their knickers in a twist about the wrong things - the reason the number of homeless is increasing, the reason the NHS is woefully underfunded, the reason MH services aren't meeting demand is because we have a Conservative government with an austerity agenda. Which only hurts those earning a lower wage, needing benefits or requiring state support. If you want this to change STOP voting Tory!

And don't believe everything you read in The Sun.

bollocks to the idea that we need polish builders. they undercut existing trades. then when it all goes wrong they have gone back to where ever.

I think we have an absolute moral duty to protect refugees, but I do think my privilege makes it easier for me to feel that way.

While the government perpetually insists on austerity and cuts to services, the economically disadvantaged will inevitably be insecure. It’s not surprising that, in the face of that insecurity, refugees are an unwelcome prospect.

"bollocks to the idea that we need polish builders. they undercut existing trades. then when it all goes wrong they have gone back to where ever."

Except that we do need Polish builders, oh and the "undercutting" thing is about as much evident as lazy brits not wanting to take jobs.

We have skills shortages in this country, majorly.

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

OP would you mind responding to this post by a PP? You claim to not want to stop refugees altogether and bring families instead although your main argument is that refugees are a strain on resources, even though families would be a much bigger strain on resources than young healthy single men?

I find it interesting that the same type of people who point out the sexism of white, middle-class western men are so eager to import men from cultures much more sexist. I can only assume it’s because they have to rub shoulders with white middle class men but not the much more sexist foreign men.

I think we do need to help families in this situation, as I’ve said. We do need to help these people out, yes they will strain services also, but they are ultimately in need. Our housing service (for brits) relies on the mentality that we have a duty to house families, but no duty to single people. So why are we letting in so many single Male refugees? I also think our obligation of taking refugees should come directly out of the camps in Jordan where the families are And not the men who rock up on boats, who knows who they are?

Also, an influx of young Male men changes the attitude of neighbourhoods majorly. As I said before, our old estate was taken over by mainly young men on the streets shouting ‘gory whore’ at the white girls that came by.
An influx of men is going to have a far more negative effect on neighbourhoods.
As I’ve said, refugees are different to mass immigration though. Families in Jordan are refugees in need of help, families in Poland etc, not so much.