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?

The purpose of foreign aid is not chiefly humanitarian; it's to make the world a more stable and secure place overall. Do some people really think all countries who have foreign aid programmes could just stop them, and all that would happen would be an increase in ill health, malnutrition and lack of education in poorer countries?

OP, your sister's a complete hypocrite regarding the homeless man and the refugees (though she's still doing a good thing, no doubt about that). I agree that we should be letting people in, those of us who were born here did bugger all to earn it, we were just lucky. Everyone should be entitled to the good standard of living that most have in this country.

But these people have not had to jump through the same hoops as people born in this country.
Really? People born outside of Britain have had to jump through MORE hoops to live and work here?

*haven't, not have
Whoops

I’ve had wonderful nhs care from doctors and nurses and specialists who are non native to Britain

That’s nice. And what country has such a healthy population that trained doctors and nurses are surplus and come here?

I’m neither proud of it nor ashamed of the Empire. It’s history. And we are not to blame. I absolutely disagree that because of decisions made by our ancestors long before we were born we, a century later, somehow have the obligation to right the wrongs. I have no responsibility for them, and they have agency over their own lives and decisions.

Very recent history, and certainly less than a century ago this government was fucking up other countries. Didn't Zimbabwe only gain independence around 1980? Hardly ancestors, is it?

They have agency over their lives and decisions? Are you serious? Do the people in Syria being bombed have agency over their lives and decisions? They don't have decisions. They flee, because they have no other option. If they stay, they die.

Do you honestly think the thing Britain should do is stop paying foreign aid, stop letting Syrian refugees in, and watch more people die, knowing that this is a result of this nation's government? We do have responsibility. A country, a good country, tries to rectify its mistakes. Doesn't just abandon people who are dying because it was their 'ancestors' that did it

And you're honestly deluded if you think the extra money from not paying foreign aid is going to be spent on the people who need it most, the working classes and homeless people. Have you taken a look at our government? They don't give a flying fuck. We can stop foreign aid, we can stop letting in refugees. Nothing in the lives of working class people will improve as a result, and you know it. They are a very clever government, getting people to blame everyone under the sun except the people actually in power.

Of course if your white well educated and have a strong support network and are comfortable it’s very different to someone living in a rough area struggling for the Minimum wage type jobs
Guess this is why brexit happened
More people out there are actually struggling a lot more than a lot of people realise

How are the deliberate decisions of successive governments to underfund public services, impoverish the vulnerable, and fuck up housing the fault of immigrants or refugees?

If you actually think those things are the fault of anybody other than our own governments you need to leave your echo chambers and read more widely.

There aren't enough ambulances for the populations they're meant to serve because of deliberate decisions at government level about their funding.

The fucking ignorance here.

Olivers
Maybe if we returned to, in the case of nursing, just being able to go into nursing at 16 we wouldn’t have the shortage we have now.
The NHS has imported nurses from all over the world since the day it was founded.
The UK has never trained enough medics to meet our needs.
And with a massively ageing population and a declining birth rate, its not going to get any better
especially if we shut ourselves off from our nearest large labour market

Not read past the first page, but offering asylum to refugees is not an open border. The UK have taken in very few refugeee compared to other European countries. I think a humanitarian response is required when it comes to refugees.

There has not been enough discourse in the media and our government since 2010 about the many benefits to immigration either. Economic migrants are usually younger, keen to work and add to the country’s coffers. Refugees also are keen to work and contribute to any country that gives them asylum.

Our public services are suffering so badly not due to immigration but due to austerity imposed on the population since 2011. The top 1% get ever richer whilst the rest scramble about below.

Fruit picking is done by seasonal EU labour. Because Brits do not want those jobs

Makes you wonder who used to do before the work gangs came across and the farmers and gang managers were paying the workers an illegally low wage.

But lets ignore that.

Morbidly
State pensions are a pyramid scheme.
Free healthcare for the elderly (when birth rates are below replacement everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa)
is a pyramid scheme

but Politicians are cowards who do not like to tell people what they need to hear about demographics and economics

Of course it is.

My sis and her 2 disabled dc waited 8 years on the list for secure housing. They didnt need an adapted house, just a home suitable to their needs.

The house she eventually got after struggling for years in a 2 bedroomed, rat infested house is on an estate full of Polish, and Romanian people.

All lovely people, all here legally. But it's not to question why we arent taking care of our own people already in need first instead of housing people who choose to.come here ?

Those fleeing war / Syria however I think should be welcomed. They need a place lf safety........partly because of the UK.

I think we got it wrong in some ways, we opened the gates to people who don't really need to be here whilst leaving those fleeing war on a death march to safety.

Rodenhide I am on another thread about the education system those born in the UK are subjected to.

I have a Ds who because of dyslexia will not be able to pass the English GCSE. So despite returning near perfect scores on all the exams and assessments will not be able to qualify in his chosen profession.

However if he goes abroad to study he can qualify a year earlier and you don’t need any GCSEs.

He can then come back and work in the UK with no issue.

I would want to know how many nurses from abroad had a degree before training to become a nurse and like Ds if we are able to employ non UK qualified people without the same GCSE or degree equivalent why can’t we train our own people to do the jobs without the need for certain GCSEs or degrees.

BoneyBack
Makes you wonder who used to do before the work gangs came across and the farmers and gang managers were paying the workers an illegally low wage.
In the 19th century, women and children - paid piece work
In the late 19th Century, Irish refugees from the famine - paid piece work
During WW2 - prisoners of war
Through to the 60's, travellers - paid piece work
Since the 60's the migrant labour scheme brought in East Europeans - paid piece work

Since the single market - East Europeans

basically able bodied Brits have not picked their own veg for over 100 years
But lets ignore that

YABU - if the wealthy and businesses paid their taxes, there'd be money for everything.

YABU - if the wealthy and businesses paid their taxes, there'd be money for everything

Yes! Everyone consistently looks to the bottom (immigrants/refugees/tax credits recipients) for problems caused by those at the top.

The only difference between them and us is luck

And what has been paid in to the country's coffers.

We have an ageing population we can not support we need young people who will contribute financially

Which is why we should only allow skilled immigrants who are paying more in taxes/NI than they take out in benefits/education/health subsidies. The only people who benefit from unskilled/low paid labour are the rich/upper middle class and big companies. Every tax payer is subsidising low skilled migrants via the benefits system (most will be receiving far more in benefits and other subsidies such as healthcare, education etc than they pay in).

Big business loves low skilled labour as it means they can pay very low wages (with very little PAYE tax/NI to pay as below or just over the tax threshold) and they know that these poor migrants working in low paid jobs and often living in very poor conditions will be subsidised via the benefits system (tax credits, housing benefit etc and have their childrens education and healthcare funded by other taxpayers whilst they maximise profits).

This is only the economic cost, there is also the often negative cost to the social fabric of the country - homogeneity of language, culture, social systems, communities - the loss of which apparently is never considered as bad when it comes to totally destroying working class communities that have existed for hundreds of years. Apparently all that matters is capitalism and the hunt for more and more profit for the few at the expense of everyone else.

mother
Which is why we should only allow skilled immigrants who are paying more in taxes/NI than they take out in benefits/education/health subsidies.
So all the low paid jobs will be left to Brits ....
that will go well

Can I point out Germany through open its borders and it hasn’t been a roaring success. A lot of the refugees feel safer going back to Syria than staying in Germany.

For those that voted Remain I have a question.

If Tony Blair hadn’t thrown open our borders for a period of time do you think the results of the referendum would have been different.

I should point out that I am from a refugee family. Over the years we have fled various conflicts from North Africa/Middle East to Central Europe and fleeing the Nazis.
Every time the family has moved as a family, old and young, male and female all going together.
None of this men going first and leaving the women to face their fate.