To think that most people voted to leave the EU to stop freedom of movement?

[Moomin8]

The proposed new rules the government have supposedly set out that are designed to keep out 'low skilled' workers seem to me like social cleansing. Most recently , when people moan about 'immigrants' they are always talking about people from Eastern Europe in my experience.

What really annoys me is that almost all leaver voters deny repeatedly that their vote had anything to do with the fact they wanted freedom of movement stopped.

Sorry if this has been done to death. But why won't people just be honest?

Raa “ mean look at Uber drivers or the poor sods delivering takeaways on their bikes in the rain - if people weren’t prepared to do these jobs, then these company’s wouldn’t be able to offer these services in the same way- but would this be bad for workers?”

I wonder this too.

For those of you who voted leave because of immigration from Eastern Europe and ‘paying for them’, I recall Dispatches: An Inconvenient Truth demonstrating that Eastern European’s were one of the least likely immigrant groups to claim social services support (on a par with Germans and Americans). The most likely EU group were Portuguese and they were most often than not Brazilians who held a Portuguese passport through their grandparents. The most common immigrant claimants were from South East Asian and Africa but it’s not politically correct... so it’s Eastern Europe who take the bullet. They did the tv programme in Ely where the locals all claimed the Eastern European’s had the jobs... so they lined them up the same jobs that the Eastern European’s did. Quite a few didn’t make it to the first day, and I don’t think any locals made it full week.

Most British are blessed with the same work ethic as the Eastern European’s - hardworking, motivated, dedicated. There’s a small sector of British who genuinely cannot work because they’re disabled or are caring for disabled / ill family members. But there’s a significant group who want a free ride forever and pinning it on EU immigration gives them an excuse. Part of me wishes those reckless bastards will be forced to take the roles they turn their noses up at... but as many of those roles involve caring for vulnerable children, disabled and elderly, I’m afraid for the patients. I only wish the funds that are spent on the feckless could be redirected to those who genuinely struggling due to circumstances (like family carers).

These are tinsel jobs designed to serve others. They are not “good jobs”. What difference is it going to make if there are not immigrants here to do them?

lex sorry, which jobs are tinsel jobs? Great phrase btw.

Sorry that got mixed up - I mean Uber and takeaway services

Wages are driven down by businesses choosing to pay low wages because they want to make more money. For themselves.
No one put a gun to their head and made them do it.

Why are people acting as if business owners are passive victims. Seriously, WTF

@silverysurfer apparently 5% of our prisoners are EU citizens. That's 5 in 100 which does not seem like a huge amount to me. And does not suggest more criminal behaviour in EU citizens than that of U.K. nationals.

Did the mean immigrants walk into the interviews demanding low wages?

No of course they didn’t.

It’s completely backwards to think that immigrants are the reason for low wages.

No, it’s capitalism and globalism that has done this. Businesses move where the wages are cheapest. They actively want to drive down costs, including wages so that the rich get richer.

They’ve pulled a neat trick making people blame freedom of movement.

Freedom of movement is always talked about as immigrants coming here. We've lost rights to move too.

Exactly. But if you tell a leave voter they will no longer be able to retire in Spain so easily they're like huh?!!!

Apparently they're above having the same rules applied to them

They can't GET benefits of any kind without Leave To Remain status. To get that, you have to prove you have a job.

This is true. My friend couldn't get income support when her British ex dh left her with 2 children to bring up and never having paid a penny in child support!

Lex - I see. “ What difference is it going to make if there are not immigrants here to do them?”

Getting into dangerous territory here, but what the hell....I’m with you. I think a lot of ordinary places have become deeply unpleasant because of this aspect of the economy. I also don’t see how we can have any sustainable approach with so much overpopulation and over commercialisation.

If we didn’t have freedom of movement, ithink the takeaway/delivery market would be much smaller and I don’t see that as a bad thing. Quality of life isn’t measured by GDP.

The evidence suggests that whilst young men from EU are slightly more likely than U.K. nationals to be convicted of theft, they are much less likely to be convicted of violent crimes, sexual assaults or drug offences.
They are underrepresented in prison populations compared to U.K. nationals. It is young BAME males who are over represented - but the reasons for that are a whole different can of worms.

The reason Polish workers work hard is because they earn four times as much here. Quadruple my salary and I’ll be conscientious too! Meanwhile British people struggle to accept temp work like fruit picking etc because they have the hassle of getting off benefits and getting back on them afterwards, plus the conditions are poor and the salary isn’t good enough for them to put up with it.

Oh, come on. British people on minimum wage can claim decent amounts of working tax credits. It's disingenuous to suggest that Polish people only work hard because they earn comparatively more.

There are too many people in the UK schools are oversubscribed, hospitals are overcrowded and you can never get a doctors appointment. It's not just about paying tax and national insurance contributions. There is only so much water a glass can hold until it spills over and I feel personally that we have reached that limit. We need to restrict numbers and it makes sense to start with unskilled people first no matter how unfair it is. I just couldn't get a visa for the USA or Australia without a skill but that's life.

The reason Polish workers work hard is because they earn four times as much here. Quadruple my salary and I’ll be conscientious too! Meanwhile British people struggle to accept temp work like fruit picking etc because they have the hassle of getting off benefits and getting back on them afterwards, plus the conditions are poor and the salary isn’t good enough for them to put up with it
What a croc of shit. Polish people work hard because they have a good work ethic, no job = no stamps = no benefits or government pension. Their benefit system is not a life choice ever, I think it is one year of pittance then find a job or starve, their government set up childcare settings so few parents need to stay at home, if you don't put the years in working you're fecked.
Infact any of the polish people I know live very frugal cook from scratch, save little, pay large rents on minimum wage, invest in their DC's activities, very few rely on benefit's if work is available.

Are you suggesting that a person earning minimum wage is as motivated as a person earning four times that? Because I can tell you for sure they’re not. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen low paid colleagues shrug at problems and say “they don’t pay me enough to care”.

And it’s not so much the wage but the temporary nature of the work. It’s not realistic to hop on and off benefits when you actually have a life and children and rent etc to pay. It’s not possible to do that sort of work long term. We absolutely need the transitory workers who do these jobs for a few years then move on, because it’s not realistic to expect anyone to make a career out of it. People need stability and employment benefits.

@Aureum I really can't understand your point. Someone living and working here still has to pay our rents, our taxes, our food prices, bloody extortionate petrol etc.... how exactly can someone be 4 times better off when they still have the same cost of living to negotiate as everyone?

Because they do the job short term and live frugally in circumstances that would be unrealistic for the long term. Shared accommodation with several people to a room, no car, no luxuries, no hobbies, basic food - to save as much as possible then go home. It’s feasible for a few months or even a couple of years but not for a lifetime.

All the EU immigrants I know (mostly women) are married to British men and live here full time and have British children. I don't think the situation you describe is common.

Im thinking of the EU migrants I know. Most married, often to another EU migrant, with children. Settled and working. In my team I have a Portuguese chap, a German chap, a second generation French woman and two Irish women. They would be a huge lost to the country.

I don't think the situation you describe is common
It is for temp work like fruit picking. It’s not a long term stable career - it’s a transitory short term job for people who generally have no commitments.

Just a post to say those in social housing cant live away to work
They would lose their social flat as it would be classed as abandoned. And no doubt it would be the same Tory voters castigating them for not taking these jobs who would be the first to phone the HA to report said flat as empty.

Turkey was threatening to join the EU at the time of the vote, so they would have flooded in to the UK, and there were thousands of economic migrants trying to force their way in too. Media coverage of the way these migrants were behaving in mainland Europe triggered widespread opposition to letting them into the UK

Turkey was and is nowhere NEAR to being even considered as an EU member state, a simple Google would have told anybody that.
And the economic migrants were coming from Africa and Asia, nothing to do with the EU at all. People chose to believe click bate headlines rather than type a few words into google. Unbelievable.

I think this government and its people are going to make this country such a crap.place to live soon that we won't have any trouble with too many immigrants as very few people will want to live here anyway.

I work mainly with Eastern European’s. All married women and married to other Eastern European’s. I work in retail but on the twilight shift when the store is closed. Most work this shift as they have young children so their husbands work during the day and they work twilights so no child care cost. Out of all the women I work with only one is planing to go home to Poland and that is not because of brexit as they always planned to return once all their children were school aged. They plan to remain for about another year.

I also have two Eastern European women who are in long term relationships with close family members. One has settled status as she has been here for about 6 years and the other has interim settled status and will apply for full settled status in due course.

The one who has been here for six years was bought over by a British agency to do care work. We exploited her. She was placed in a job with no training, minimum wage and working all hours to pay for a provided bedsit. She was trapped as she couldn’t leave the job as she had to pay for her accommodation and living costs plus the agency had fronted the cost of flights which needed to be repaid. She only managed to get out of this situation as she met my family member who helped her.
She still works in the care industry but now work s in a well run home with a proper contract, employment rights and her wages are a lot better. In fact since the tailing off of Eastern European’s arriving her wages have increased even more as the home has to pay more to attract decent staff and as the care home charge £1600 per week for their residents I think they can afford to pay their careers a few pound an hour over minimum wage.
The village she comes from in the rural part of her country has lost most of its youth to working in Western Europe and it is the same for most villages. There is plenty of work there but the wages are poor. Very few earn more than a couple of hundred pound a month. A skilled builder or other trade would be doing well to earn £400 per month and yet food is more expensive than the uk and anything imported is around 3 times as much as we would pay. Housing is expensive when compared to wages so it is common to be overcrowded or in homes we would think are not really suitable to live in. Money is sent home to support ageing parents and those without relatives working in mainlyGermany, Italy or the uk are the poorest in the villages.
If you haven’t been to rural Eastern Europe then you have no real idea of what poverty is.