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?

Well the wonderful EU have been making a fucking spectacularly useless job of that - try telling the people in Shirebrook about all the wonderful rights the EU has given them.

Haha. I’m from around there. Live in a street of working class terraces. I remember them canvassing before the referendum. I think Remain decided that in a working class area telling people about all the rights the EU gave them at work. 7 out of 10 people on my street have zero access to those rights and they’re seen as something mainly for middle class salaried employees.

The EU has always been an organisation which promoted the interests of the middle classes. The idea they support the poor is pure delusion.

If they do, how come the poor so resolutely rejected them at the referendum? Oh yeah, because they are too thick and I’ll educated to vote. It makes me sick people on here with that attitude pretend that they care about the poor and want the best for them and that means disenfranchising them and silencing their voices.

These are exactly the arguments that the aristocracy and bourgeoisie used to keep the poor disenfranchised.

Remainers have a very thin veneer of kindness but it’s false kindness.

"7 out of 10 people on my street have zero access to those rights and they’re seen as something mainly for middle class salaried employees."

Except that all emplopyment law and rights are applicable to all employees, apart from the ones that UK giovernments have control over.

Please don't portray the referendum campaign as a victory of the poor, the poor will suffer most.

No one is disenfranchising anyone or silencing.

Please don't portray the referendum campaign as a victory of the poor, the poor will suffer most.

Please don't portray the EU as the champions of the poor, the poor are suffering the most.

"Please don't portray the EU as the champions of the poor, the poor are suffering the most."

Not for any reasons to do with the EU!

The inability of people to see anything negative about the EU is worrying.

Well I guess we'll see when we leave the EU. I'm very concerned about employment rights.

I don't think the EU are massively invested in the poor, the regulations do protect workers though.

They are however, a bloody site more invested than the Tories are. If you think a Tory government will give a shiny shit about Shirebrook you really are in cloud cuckoo land.

The EU has given you rights you don't need? Ok wait until the Working Time
Directive goes, wait until there is a bonfire of regulations. All those
H&S regulations that keep workers alive. When they go you will know about it.

A poster mentions training. That is a U.K. issue. Germany takes more migrants than we do but is committed to training young people and it does so very well.

We don't train our young people because we don't invest. It is not the fault of the EU or immigration.

"The inability of people to see anything negative about the EU is worrying."

Strawman, no one has said this.

But what makes that homeless man on the street more worthy of your help than a homeless person from another country? Because they were born here?
People are worth the same no matter where they were born. The majority of people coming into our country only ADD to our wealth, they are the Nhs workers, the doctors, the workers who take many of the lower paid work etc.
I truly believe that there should be no borders anywhere. These refugees in particular have been through awful trauma. It is not the same as saying someone is skint/ needs benefits. These people have suffered immensely- it’s inhumane to stop people from entering the country in order to try to start again in my opinion.

Except that all emplopyment law and rights are applicable to all employees, apart from the ones that UK giovernments have control over.

Well if the EU can’t defend against that it’s pointless and toothless isn’t it?

And no, the self employed don’t get those rights. For example when holiday rights were brought in most of the construction agencies let their staff go, then hired them back at the same rate but stipulated that it was actually 3% lower than before, but was made up to the same rate they’d had before just with the proviso 3% of it was called ‘holiday pay’. They have no sickness pay or rights no maternity leave. Same with the gig economy. And similar wheezes for zero hour contracts.

It’s amazing how the EU has teeth when it comes to protecting freedom of movement and goods (which benefit the rich).

But when it comes to the rights of ordinary workers, ‘Je suis desole’, ‘Ich bitte Sie’, they can’t do anything.

And cut your ‘it benefits the poor’ bullshit. It doesn’t. And if Brexit makes it worse that will largely be because of EU intransigence and desire to punish the UK to protect the integrity of their project.

They’re perfectly happy to sacrifice the welfare and lives of a few poor British people for political expediency.

"the self employed don’t get those rights"

They could apply them to themselves if they wanted. What the self employed give themselves is down to them no? Or are you discussing those employed falsely as self employed by contractors. See other EU countries don't allow that type of employment just like they ban zero hours contracts, that's one of the things controlled by national governments

Its funny, do you want the EU to take control of these issues that are currently controled by a sovereign parliament or not?

Movement of goods/ people/services/capital mean crossing borders and need agreements on how they operate. Its different.

" if Brexit makes it worse that will largely be because of EU intransigence and desire to punish the UK to protect the integrity of their project."

Absolute crap. So the EU should allow the UK to leave, and dictate the terms that are beneficial to it? The EU is not punishing the UK.

The EU aren't sacrificing the poor of Britain the Tory party are.

You are complaining that an international body won't step in to change the policy of U.K. governments?

U.K. governments have abandoned the deindustrialised areas, they don't care, they have cut them adrift.

And posters complain that the EU isn't doing enough for areas our own governments has ignored, run down and systemically abused.

And leavers stop claiming you care so much about the poor when you are pushing them, hog tied into an even deeper recession. if Brexit makes it worse it will be your fault for voting for it. Own it.

BorisBogtrotter

There was a fly on the wall documentary about a London housing department.

Faced with a couple from mainland Europe and their 5 children who turned up on their doorstep.They got housed in Birmingham and were on the train to their new life. They even got the train fare.

The housing officers knew they had been played but couldn’t do anything because they had children and they couldn’t have left the children out on the streets.

Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen

Just because you saw one example on the TV, that makes good TV, doesn't mean its regular or common.

researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN04737

The highlights for you:

"Official statistics on social housing lettings in England show that between April 2014 and March 2015 the vast majority of lettings (91%) were made to UK nationals. Research into migrants’ access to social housing has found that there is a much higher likelihood of non-UK nationals living in the private rented sector."

Now as UK nationals only make up 85.7% of the UK, it shows that immigrants are under represented in the number of people in social housing.

According to the Oxford Migration Observatory, 74% of recent migrants (those who have been in the UK for five years or less) were in the private rented sector in the first quarter of 2015: they are twice as likely to be renters compared with the total migrant population; 39% of the total foreign-born population were in the private rented sector, and just 14% of the UK-born population.

I think it is fairly common otherwise how would they manage, it's not necessarily EU migrants

They could apply them to themselves if they wanted. What the self employed give themselves is down to them no? Or are you discussing those employed falsely as self employed by contractors. See other EU countries don't allow that type of employment just like they ban zero hours contracts, that's one of the things controlled by national governments

Then why do remainers claim we’re protected by those rights when we’re clearly not.

Its funny, do you want the EU to take control of these issues that are currently controled by a sovereign parliament or not?

Well yes, I would. I’d like the opportunity to vote for a government on their policies for employment law that were applied equally to every worker in the UK. I think that is much more preferable to a system where wealthy people in better paid and more secure jobs are protected by European Law but then a national government can provide opt outs which generally affect the poorest and most disadvantaged workers.

Because as we have seen with Brexit (which only the wealthy AB social classes voted for in majority) wealthier people will vote to keep something which advantages them even if it disadvantages poorer people.

Why, at a general election, would people who already receive the EU legislated benefits vote for a party who were offering to improve rights for everybody (yes, I know in public people like to virtue signal that they would, but in reality if another party offers something very much in their advantage, they probably won’t. The EU creating a two tier system of rights so that only people with higher bargaining power in employment (ie the rich) can obtain them creates imbalances is in our own elections.

Why do you think that is a good argument to stay in? That EU laws which you claim are there to protect ordinary workers can’t be enforced so therefore the EU is great and we should stay in so we can carry on not enforcing their laws. That makes literally no sense.

"I think it is fairly common"

Yet not held up by the information available, look again 91% of people in Social housing are UK nationals, and the vast majority of new migrants are in private lets.

Of course your TV program may not have filled you in on all the details, but hey.

"Id like the opportunity to vote for a government on their policies for employment law that were applied equally to every worker in the UK"

You can and do, in other EU countries the issues you describe do not exist because they are within the jurisdiction of national governments.

You are actually selecting a very small number of the employed people in the UK in order to make this debate, the vast majority of people in the UK are not self employed and of those that are only a tiny number of those are in conditions that you describe.

The majority of people are in roles where EU employment law benefits them.

National governments have the power to change the situation of those that you have discussed.

So what do you want? More power to be given to the EU? Or to stop it interfering?

Just as a point 15.1% of the Labour force are self employed.

So those employed by others or 84.9% of the population do benefit from EU rules regarding employment.

Perhaps they receive housing benefit in the private let.

I think it depends where you live as well.

EU immigrants and non EU immigrants aren't entitled to housing benefit on arrival.

About 2.2% of total claimants for all benefits were EU nationals, under represented because they make up about 6% of the working age population.

So hang on -

UK people keep voting in Tory governments so we need the EU to modify and place a brake on the Tories attacks on workers - but that's NOT undemocratic, not at all, oh no.

Yet at the same time, the SOLE and only reason bad things happen in the UK is because of the (Tory) governments we elect - and NOT anything to do with EU ever?

Either the EU has powers or it doesn't.

People with more bargaining power tend to be in Trade Unions. I don't think UNISON would be happy with you calling their members rich. You would also be wrong.

The TUC - the only body that consistently fights for workers rights wants us to remain in the EU. The trades unions are the only bodies that week in week out fight for and represent working people.

Trade Unions are democratic bodies that represent their members. The majority of TU activity is voluntary. These are the people who represent people at tribunals, advocate on their behalf in work places, who fight for pay and conditions.

These people are telling you staying in the EU is best.

Who has said the EU is perfect? Who has said the EU has no faults?

The EU represents a basic set of standards. Lots of EU countries implement more protection and higher standards.

In the U.K. success governments - of all parties - have failed to assert stronger workers rights so we rely on the basic standards provided by the EU.

Bloody hell. Is there anything what isn't apparently our fault?

Dropping income for "northern plumbers"? May it be because they seem to have a tendency to fuck off in the middle of the job to do another? Not all, obviously, my plumber (Northern plumber actually) is amazing, but even he often moaned about others doing it and him sorting people out so they can use their bathrooms.

Social housing? No access (except very few exceptions) unless we work.

Higher benefit bill? So which one is it? Are we stealing jobs and forcing tradesmen to drop their prices or are we on benefits? Btw an absolute majority of immigrants I know, including myself actually created jobs. Hundreds and hundreds of jobs.

NHS strain? Absolute majority of EU immigrants I know use doctor maybe once a year and know that you don't go to A&E with sniffles...

Now yes. There are bad ones who play the system and they shouldn't be able to! Yes, there are some who are lazy twits and they shouldn't be allowed to be so. But same can be said for British born.