To think freedom of movement is not understood by most!

[Onetwothree4]

I'm an EU citizen, lived most of my life in the UK and I can't stand this political nonsense of lies and misinterpretation anymore! Do you guys know that the freedom of movement exercised by most EU countries is as follows:

1. You can move to another EU country without a visa for 3 months to stay, study or look for work
2. After 3 months you will have to apply for a permission to settle based on your employment, family ties or studies
3. You will also have to prove you are financially able to look after yourself and not become a burden on the country's social welfare system.
4. You have to apply to be included in the social security system to be entitled to healthcare, education, benefits etc..

The UK GOVERNMENT decided to operate this free for all approach of people being able to just jump on the plane and go straight to the doctors. Most EU countries (maybe even all others!) did not! You can not do this in other EU countries.

The culprit is the UK government, not the EU! Why did they do that? I don't know. Probably needed the workforce? This is all smoke and mirrors and a big game played by the privileged boys in politics who want the top job.

Just to spell it out: If you wanted to move to my country, which is a full EU country with euro as currency, you would have to LEAVE after 3 months if you could not prove a valid reason to be there. This is how EU works. It's the UK law makers who took a very liberal approach to these rules and created this mess called Brexit.

@Chloemol I am genuinely interested in your reasons to vote leave if not for immigration if you don't mind sharing? Not being argumentative at all just really interested to see what are the downfalls of being a member state in your view?

I haven't RTFT yet (but will as what I have read is very interesting).

Years ago I had been told the reason we could not had any system in place was that to make EU citizens have ID/citizenship cards UK citizens would also have to have them (and the consensus was they didn't want them) and to put a delay on getting benefits would have to be brought in for UK citizens too.

From what is said, I do not know whether that is actually true, but I do remember being told/hearing that.

We moved to another EU country - all family had to be fingerprinted & photographed at police station (including 3 month old baby), had to have ID cards. We had to sign form at doctors to say we would pay if found not to be entitled to use service - and we were paying social security.
More recently I went to a Spanish hospital for pre-arranged test for which I had paid in advance by credit card. I still had to show my passport and have credit card swiped, even though I had already paid.

And I agree with the Brexiteer view of mass immigration not being good for the country. Any country. It's not nice to live in an area all your life and suddenly see it change completely. But that's not the fault of FOM. It could have been prevented in this scale if proper measures had been put in place by the government. These things need to be talked about in a matter of fact kind of way so that the public can't be controlled by manipulative statements.

@thetoddleratemyhomework

I guess it is probably because the public has a chance to vote on it, combined with the fact that for non-Eu migrants you have to meet salary thresholds?

But even if non-EU migrants have to meet salary thresholds, it still means that they are migrants who are coming to the UK. Somehow it doesn't make sense. If a country - any country - wants to restrict immigration then they should restrict immigration for people coming in from all over the world, not just from the EU?

I was under the impression that the UK always had more migrants from outside the EU, e.g. Commonwealth countries, etc. If this is the case then what is the problem with people coming in from the EU in particular?

Also, if the UK is planning to restrict migration from EU member states to the UK because of the 'problem' that low skilled workers from the EU are accepting low-paid menial jobs (e.g. fruit pickers), driving wages down thereby disadvantaging the local population then Brexit will discriminate against those EU migrants who don't need/want low paid jobs.
As I said in my earlier post, I personally know a couple of people who moved here from EU countries. Each one of them is well educated, multilingual and has a good, permanent job. Two of those people earn very attractive high salaries, bonuses, etc. They wouldn't come out of bed for jobs earning less than £££!

Not forgetting that we really, really need people for some low paid jobs:
www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2019/may/04/shortage-fruit-pickers-britain-compete-germany

leapyearlover

Not forgetting that we really, really need people for some low paid jobs

Yes. But why would British workers not be able to do that?

They don't want to. The benefits system is also set up in such a way that even if they want to, they can't easily come off benefits for seasonal work without losing housing benefit and ending up with no money for several weeks if not months - which obviously most people can't afford.

@WhisperingPines
Sorry, probably wasn't clear.

I guess what I was trying to say is that we already restrict non-EU migration more than EU migration. I think it is roughly 50:50 numbers wise at the moment, though the numbers are hotly disputed - the migration figures are based on a survey, not cold hard figures - see www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-49420730
In contrast to you, my working day sees me work alongside a lot of Kiwi/Aussie/South African "immigrants" who are all paid six figures (and who have to be sponsored to be allowed to work in the Uk AND my employer has to be able to say on the sponsorship form that they advertised the job to a UK audience but didn't find anyone suitable) but far fewer EU migrants. That is because I work in law and lawyers from the commonwealth come from legal systems where it is far easier to transfer over than it is from EU systems and English as a native language is a huge advantage, bigger than in many other environments. The EU migrants I come into contact with are lower paid (cleaners, servers in Pret etc - valuable and necessary jobs, just lower paid) - this is entirely anecdotal though, just to show that not everyone has the same experience and the figures show that EU migrants are net contributors whereas non-EU migrants are not. This is obviously based on averages - there would be even more net contributors from the EU if you restricted those coming in from the EU to certain well paid jobs etc, or imposed a minimum salary threshold as for non-EU migrants, or if you excluded from the non-EU migration figures those women who are entitled to come to the UK for family reunification reasons and who come from particular cultural backgrounds that mean that they are not going to be able to work outside the home, or if you simply compared e.g Aus/NZ migrants, the picture would be different again. I am not that bothered about migration of any type, but then i don't feel or fear any negative effects from it personally. Others don't share that view and some of them have used recent polls to make that clear, both by voting Tory in 2015 (when they ran a campaign hugely based on reducing immigration of all types and/or fear that labour would open the floodgates) and voting Brexit, which is obviously EU specific. I think that due to the fact that Brexit is such a huge issue, EU immigration is a focus right now, but equally the salary thresholds for bringing in a non-EU partner have gone up significantly in the last few years and this is obviously due to public concern on the non-EU front.

We moved to another EU country and had to register within a few weeks of moving, so as to be entitled to healthcare, child benefit, etc.. No need for extra ID cards, though.
It was quite straightforward. We did both secure jobs before we moved and rented initially. There have been no issues as such.
I remember when I moved to the UK, it was such a palaver getting a national insurance number when I started working because I hadn't been in the country when I was 16. I had to go to an interview at the job centre and bring several pieces of evidence to prove that I should be allowed to start a job. I was still at uni, so not even trying to get benefits or anything similar. I paid full fees without a student loan and just wanted to get some work experience for my CV. It was actually quite tricky when I starter out in the UK. (I moved for my DH and to finish my studies. Not fussed about the NHS, had private healthcare cover before I moved, and don't think I'd make a career out of picking fruit.)

I'm not one of these EU immigrants, who steal British people's low paid jobs...that's at least what I kept getting told. "It's not people like you..." Well, it's people like me, who decide to leave. I'm lucky enough to have the educational background and skill set to work in any EU country. I earn more and work fewer hours where we are now. However, it's a shame. I loved living in the UK. I've spent most of my adult life there, had property, paid taxes and had friends I had to leave behind. Just didn't feel welcome anymore and the situation seemed way too unstable, despite being told that "it wasn't about people like you (me), but about all these other immigrants". I still have family there. We've offered them refuge in our current home, should everything go tits up.

@WhisperingPines I agree that Brexit would require higher paid EU workers to get work permits (or apply for settled status if already here). It isn't really discrimination, as it is treating EU migrants the same as non EU migrants really but I think it is a real shame and I know that it also feels like a slap in the face to those who have come and made a life here.

So obviously this 'free-for-all' immigration policy was put in place in 2004 by Tony Blair's government. That is a checkable fact.
Why did they do it? Who does it benefit?

When you think about it and dig deep, who would benefit from a cash-in-hand labour market? If there were checks on immigrants having a job contract before being allowed to stay, wouldn't that mean all employers would actually have to provide proper wages, contracts, holiday pay, sick leave, insurances etc.. Let alone pay PAYE for every single one of them? How would that affect their profits?

For example when I first came to the UK I was young and clueless. I found a job where I was working for a company selling their goods, but being completely responsible for my own orders, profits and losses. I was taxed as self employed, so that the company could completely minimise their financial losses. It was all on the young staff to figure out.

And I was sub-letting a room in a flat from another EU national. She was sub-letting it from a British person who would not let us put our names on the council tax bill etc. because she was claiming housing benefits for the flat whilst actually living at her mum's. All rent was paid in cash. Wages in cash.

And who did this system benefit? Who does it benefit now? This is a part of the bigger picture why the immigration controls other EU countries exercise were 'relaxed' in 2004.

@Onetwothree4

I can't tell you who it benefits (though I can guess) but working "on the black" in the cash-only economy seems to be far more tolerated in the UK compared to other EU countries, at least in France. Because here, you simply cannot access healthcare or social benefits unless your situation is "regular" i.e. you fulfill the requirements that the government has specified that allow you to obtain these rights - and that generally involves having a full-time job or some other proveable means to support yourself and your family. The NHS doesn't work like that - as long as you can "prove" residence in the UK, that's enough.

The only people I know that work like this in France are British expats who choose to live below the radar so they don't pay taxes! They generally plan to go back to the UK if they need major medical treatment, and they do cash-in-hand jobs locally - often for other expats and / or they have British pensions. They are pretty stuffed by Brexit - if they have been here for 20 years but never paid taxes they have no paper trail to prove that they've been here and living a "regular" life!

But why oh why did they create this open doors policy?

You'd have to ask Tony Blair why he allowed unfettered immigration from the newly accepted countries into the EU. Although at the time, it was said Labour wanted to "rub the noses of the right" which sounds like politics of the playground!

It was indeed a childish ploy to rub the noses of the right. But equally as OP pointed out very eloquently, think critically about who benefits the most from 'unchecked' 'undocumented' immigration - especially in low paid, cash-in-hand jobs? Certainly not the worker in question.

think critically about who benefits the most from 'unchecked' 'undocumented' immigration - especially in low paid, cash-in-hand jobs? Certainly not the worker in question.

Err yes! Not only do they avoid paying tax and NIC, they are also probably able to carry on claiming benefits to which they wouldn't be entitled if they had properly declared wages!

@Kazzyhoward No.. Not the worker. I know and have known many EU unskilled migrants and pretty much all of them have no clue about the benefits system, how to exploit it, how to claim, where to go etc.. The British themselves are very good at that! Many of them arrive with such bad English they hardly even understand simple commands like 'come to work at 9 o' clock'. Unskilled labourers from the EU come with only one goal in mind and that is to work.

So who does it benefit to offer no contracts to these people and pay them cash in hand? Not the worker that's for sure. And who allowed them to come? Tony Blair's government.

Heaven forfend! This thread should probably be used for general information in the public domain. As I said way up thread these ingrained prejudices and indeed propaganda have been fed to the public for decades! No wonder we are where we are now!

if they had properly declared wages!

Who gave them these jobs? Who employed them?

How can this be so difficult to grasp!?

I started a post earlier but it doesn't seem to have posted.

Labour said they expected between 5,000 and 13,000 Eastern Europeans to arrive after opening the doors in 2004 (to rub the Right's nose in diversity) and were totally unprepared for the half a million that actually came - over 20 times their estimate. They couldn't possibly admit they had made a mistake, politicians never do, so they made sure anyone who questioned the tidal wave was labelled as a racist and a bigot. They were hugely successful with this campaign. Communities were changed forever because of the high numbers of immigrants arriving in a very short time scale with no chance to be absorbed into the local population and assimilate, but if anyone were to comment, they were subjected to cries of racism.

I believe it took nearly 50 years for the population of the UK to increase from 50 to 60 million, then a little over 10 years to increase from 60 to nearly 70 million. No wonder we don't have enough houses/schools/hospitals/GP appointments/space on the roads etc.

The official population figures don't say there are nearly 70 million, but supermarkets, water companies including sewerage and waste handling companies reckon there are very many more than the official figures (which the government admits are just a guess anyway)

It's one of the reasons in my experience that people voted Leave. And yes, it's the UK governments' fault - both Tory and Labour.

When I first moved to Spain I was quite shocked at how difficult it was here compared to the UK. I had to register on the padron first, which is a list of people living in an area. Firstly I had to apply for an NIE number and sort out all my social security documentation and start working, after which I could apply for residency to have access to healthcare etc. I also had to provide documentation to get a SIP card which I have to show every time I go to the doctors or get medication. The same process for my daughter (bar the working and social security) to get her enrolled in Spanish school. Before I had my residency, I could only open a non residents bank account too!

My Spanish DP, on the other hand, just turned up to the UK, got his NI number and registered with a doctor. No stress, no worries!!

@VladmirsPoutine that's it! How are people supposed to know the facts when all they hear are these soundbites designed to manipulate their thoughts. Most people don't have the time (or interest) to go and read up about various EU policies like the way freedom of movement is implemented in all the other EU countries. It's not the public's fault that they don't know the facts, because they are not told the facts!

@BazzleJet I think you are absolutely spot on. I think this is exactly what happened and it really is smoke and mirrors to try avoid any sort of responsibility. The politics in this country are not about democracy anymore, because how can there be democracy without facts?

This thread is a real eye opener! crazy how Blair has hopped back the scene now after all the damage his government caused back in the 2000s!

I live in an urban area and I notice that there are dwellings going up in back gardens without planning permission and big properties are being converted into multiple occupancy. People are being exploited by expensive rents for small rooms.

There are so many flats being built or new houses with no infrastructure or road capacity.

I agree with Tony Blair having a lot to answer for. Too much mass movement not just from the EU in the late 90s early 00s.