To think Brexit has robbed us of so much?

[elzober]

A friend of mine from America recently obtained citizenship of an EU country due to family links. She's now ready to look for a job and open to anything as she doesn't have a degree but worked in the family agricultural business back home. She's fluent in English.

A few years ago I would have been able to invite her to stay with me here in the UK, help her get established and set her up to apply for one of the many jobs over here. But now I can't do any of that.

The ridiculous part is I know local businesses that are really struggling to recruit, can't find people locally and have struggled with the lack of EU workers since Brexit. Particularly in hospitality, agriculture and travel.

Why did we close the door to people who filled these vacancies and contributed to society and paid taxes?

She would have been a decent tax payer, nice member of the community but she's not allowed in.

She's probably going to Ireland now as apparently there's lots more opportunities there since we became an isolated island.

I will never forgive the Conservatives for this shambles. Don't get me started on the fact that a British passport is now worthless and we've lost our right to live in 27 countries. Madness.

We had to prioritise EU members first.

@Florenz Ha ha! pity brexitiers kept going on about EU membership 43 years after we voted to Remain...

Shame you lot always want to stop free speech when it doesn't suit.

No we didn't thats crap

I wonder if the "you can still work in the EU, it's just requires you to fill in a bit more paperwork"-crowd have actually tried it.

I guarantee they haven't. And if they did they would likely fail.... the odds against anyone needing a monolingual is astronomical. British people really have nothing special to offer when pitted against every other non-EU applicant in the world.

As a non-EU immigrant who was living temporarily in England during the campaign I must admit I chuckled all the way up to the final outcome. I thought there was no way a sane European country would commit suicide in such a ridiculous and embarrassing way. Had none of the Leave voters ever asked a non-EU citizen what it's like? It fucking stinks, that's what it's like.

Odds are astronimical, not is astronomical, sorry

It hasn't really negatively affected my life. I'm a HCP and I'm much more likely to emigrate to a Anglosphere country as opposed to EU, they also pay better wages. The thing is unskilled workers didn't benefit from cheaper labour coming in wages were depressed. Some EU workers were also claiming in work benefit top ups.
Yes it's poo but I understand why some of the poor and disenfranchised voted the way they did. Wages are rising at the moment as they can't even hire enough workers.

Dutch1e, you've left the UK now then? Just popped on to sneer?

If, as you say, the British have nothing to offer then they won't be offered the opportunities, will they? So that should please you.

Also the thing is the poor and disenfranchised aren't bothered about being able to take a gap year in France. Many British people do not speak a second language nor can be bothered to learn one.

@andreac74 it was quoted on this thread. The EU have to prove they advertised/couldn't recruit successfully within the EU before they can seek outside of it. The same rule would have applied to the UK when we were EU members.

I don’t believe anything is Uni-factoral. It normally takes a minimum of a couple of data points or experiences for someone to generalise and form an opinion. So you have to look at the long term experiences that turned people off, especially the WCs. We need to learn from this. If we just drag those people making for the ride when we go back in, without addressing the concerns, we will create another set of problems. I suspect long term poverty and hopelessness lies behind a lot of it. I would like to hear the workings out, thought

I am completely unconvinced by people who insist that the referendum campaigns had a huge influence too. I think the majority of voters has made their mind up before the referendum was ever announced. It was almost tribal.

The campaigns might have helped swing the IDKs, but it didn’t change the opinions of most people. I just don’t believe that. There’s only so much you can blame in the bus and the campaign. You have to look back further than that.

I’ve still not, after however many years, heard this openly discussed IRL. Both sides are very guarded.

Misleading. You can generally work in another EU country if you have a profession that they specify a need for or if you’ve been recruited to fill a specific role that couldn’t be filled locally (depends on the rules of the country in question). Not otherwise, no matter how much paperwork you do. (I’ve been looking into this for DS who was hoping to work in an EU country for his gap year. The best he will be able to do is 3 months unpaid work experience.).

It’s a completely different arrangement to what we had previously and for most people makes working in the EU impossible, not just a question of paperwork. I think people are missing how much has been lost simply because they don’t understand it.

I don't know which poster it was that linked Brexit to an anti racist position - seriously??

You've made a huge mistake and were lied to by Boris and the press. Why can't you accept that yet?

Tell her to go to Austria and get a job in hospitality/gastronomy. They are crying out for staff everywhere. Since the pandemic so many people retrained as they didn't want the risk of the constant lockdowns and being out of work. And the Eastern Europeans who used to work here never came back after the pandemic. Wages are rising in those countries so they seem to be staying at home.
Lots of restaurants in Austria are having to close or have very restricted opening hours because they simply can't get the staff.

Nope, all the company has to to is advertise the job within their own country NOT the whole of the EU.

How would anyone be able to do this?

You'd also have to explain why the UK was recruiting so many AHPs etc from outside the EU, when the EU, pre pandemic, had a surplus.

However, one issue was that qualifications had to recognised by the host country with the non EU country i.e Accountancy qualifications from say, Chile, accepted in UK... where as the EU had a process to enable this.

blog.v-hr.com/blog/how-to-work-in-the-eu-if-youre-not-from-an-eu-country

I don't think that I'd vote to re-join in the future and I don't think I'm on my own there. We shouldn't have left but now that we have, we have to re-build on our terms

I think it’s way too early to make such predictions. Besides any vote to rejoin, whatever form that may take, is decades away. We’re only a year or two into this and forecasts for our economy aren’t looking good, certainly wrt growth and productivity. Inflation highest with a pound continuing to fall making imports more expensive. Exports are fubar’d now aren’t they.

Looking at the direction of travel this govt is on I personally think things will get a lot worse compared to the EU. Sick man of Europe v2.0 here we come.

Those who say Brexit has had no impact on them are quite wrong.

The damage done to the UK's economy by Brexit is ongoing and impacts us all.

See:

https://www.newstatesman.com/chart-of-the-day/2022/06/uk-economy-fallen-behind-eu-since-brexit

for example.

You're the one who's not getting it. You're comparing apples with oranges, trying to have an entirely different conversation to the one the other poster is having.

That other poster offered their opinions on why they're for Brexit. They're not talking about the EU workers overall contribution to the economy and whether it's positive or negative. They're talking about lived personal experience of wages being driven down

Again, this makes no sense. It is idiotic to base any kind of national policy choices on heresay that doesn't match the data collected over a long period. EU citizens working here made a net contribution to society economically (as well as in many other ways - culturally, practically, filling skills shortages etc). Even if we ignore all of those extras and focus only on the economics of it, they were making society better off, not worse. They were funding a lot of the services and benefits that UK citizens rely on. It is manifestly false to argue that their presence made people worse off, the data very clearly shows the opposite. Hence the so called "Brexit benefits" have never appeared, because they never existed. Even the "Minister for Brexit Opportunities" when pressed has conceded that if any appear at all, it won't be for 50 years.

Personal experience in day to day reality of trying to survive, not the overall economy of the UK.

And you see no connection between these issues?? What do you think is causing the cost of living crisis? The structure, health amd regulation of the economy is what creates the day to day lived reality. 🤦🏻‍♀️

@stayinghometoday I agree. And this that you wrote:

like not wanting to be a net contributor

shows the economic illiteracy behind the whole thing that I've been banging my head on a wall about trying to get certain posters on this thread to comprehend. We were only ever a "net contributor" to the EU if you looked only at our contributions and not at the benefits. Hence the 4% hole in GDP that we will suffer as a result of Brexit indefinitely until we have a Government competent enough to at least eat some humble pie and rejoin the single market.

I agree. And again, that is UK Government policy that needs fixing. Nothing to do with the EU and never was.

I forgot the £350 million Bus @HinchcliffeandMurgatroyd. It was a blunt tool and an effective one for some of the population. However Leave Campaign were the first to really utilise SM algorithms and target individuals.

Remain / Leave tribes existed in political parties, but not to any extent in the general populace. Dominic Cummings created the Leave tribe.

We'll get over it when the damage done to our rights, opportunities, culture and standard of living is fixed and we all receive our sunny uplands and rainbow unicorns. We have waited very patiently. When is it happening?

Apparently we need (well Nigel Farage needs) "Brexit 2.0"

I look forward to the referendum campaign with interest.

Oh they have done for years.

I did bar work during uni 25 years or more ago and eurosceptics vs euro enthusiasts were always arguing away in the pub then.