To think Europen governments need to respond to immigration?

[Finlesswonder]

So the Netherlands is going to have a far right government.
Sweden has moved to the right.
Finland has shut its borders.
Countries that have traditionally been liberal are hardening and irrespective of the many issues listed its to do with immigration.

Ireland has seen violent protests last night following a series of stabbings.
In the UK we obviously had Brexit.

I think governments need to start responding to voters feelings on immigration as if they don't we will continue to see a general slide to the right in Europe, when actually these countries aren't right wing: it feels like a single issue is distorting the entire political landscape?

It's madness what Europe has allowed since the turn of the century. The population of EU and UK is over half a billion people and it doesn't cover that big a land mass. Russia itself is way bigger.

Merkel did exacerbate it. Then you have Putin pushing people movement for destabilising opportunities

Madness really, no wonder we’re seeing strain

This is first hand experience. I'm a LL. Last year I had a 2 bed flat to rent. I received > 70 enquiries. Half being from people from Africa who had been invited here as hospital workers/nurses/carers.

They arrive here with job offers but with no credit history and no deposit. so finding a place to rent is very difficult. I think if we are going to invite workers here the Government should provide accommodation for at least for 6 months. Also care homes should provide accommodation too for the workers they recruit from abroad same with other employers who need workers from abroad. Employers want the cheap labour but don't want to help them with accommodation. They need to do more.

You may say well there is no accommodation. The flat is in a university town and the amount of uni accommodation that's been built in the last 10 - 15 years is phenomenal- so it can be done.

I was reading pp about the Dubai situation, if you get a job there as an engineer your employer usually gives you a housing allowance, or used to and you use private schools for the children if you bring them over. Hence not impacting the local schools.

However if you are a male Indian worker you are probably given accommodation - I imagine it'll be hideous but not impacting the locals and your family stays in India because they only want the worker and not the family. However I do know people whose dp worked in UAE whilst the family stayed in the UK.

I don't know the answers and I'm not advocating the Dubai way but as need more immigrants the government needs to decide do we just want the worker ie family get left behind or do we want them to bring their families and thus impacting schools and other services.

All I know is that they need to start providing accommodation for them. Expecting them to come here with no support on finding accommodation is inhumane and doesn't exactly say welcome to Britain. Securing accommodation is huge, harsh, expensive hurdle before they even start work.

Also first hand - African nurse brought over shocked at cost of accommodation obviously not explained to her beforehand - then bring partner and children then get pregnant. How does this contribute to our NHS.

The average house price is £291 k, that’s how. Plus if you want a family of your own, you also need to pay for the childcare that enables both of you to keep earning that wage (remembering that was the wage for both partners working full time, not one).

@Notanevillandlord if you provide accommodation for foreigners coming here while continuing to restrict the lives and opportunities of local people you will have big problems very quickly. Many of those ‘lazy uneducated boys’ who ‘don’t contribute’ referred to by pp already understand that only crime and drugs earns them a decent living in the U.K.

The growth of SEND is in part due to improved accessibility to diagnostic services though in recent years that is becoming harder. In my day, there was limited understanding of the autism spectrum or ADHD for example but we still had people with SEND; we just didn't know about them. We should be proud that we have developed our understanding of these issues and that people can now have a better understanding of themselves. In the long run this can help prevent more serious problems developing. Unfortunately our education system is a one-size fits all and it fails many people particularly those who learn differently and in a non-academic way. And this fails us as a society. We need all types of people to function healthily and that's not happening. We're leaving too many people behind particularly those with SEND and disabilities and that causes us problems and extra costs as we try and deal with the inevitable mental health problems and social isolation that can result. The uncomfortable truth is the Britain is an ableist nation that does not give a stuff about its disabled citizens and in so doing deprives itself of a wide range of unique talent that could enhance our nation.

@RosaGallica yes I agree. It really is a double edged sword. People are saying we need more workers but this impacts housing/schools for the people already living here. But if we offer accommodation, not free, then yes it looks grossly unfair.

I don't think British people are lazy at all. I just wonder if they've lost out in the job market at the lower end of the scale due to not being able to/not wanting to work the required hours.

For eg.another real life one. I have a tenant from an EU country - not Eastern Europe - who works as a security guard. It's night work - so unsociable hours. My tenant lives here alone and their grown up family lives in their country of origin.

Most of my Polish and Romanian tenants have done really well for themselves here and have all bought their own properties. Not many of my 75 enquiries were from E Europe.

One thing UK people don't take into consideration is that some of the EU who have done well here don't want more arriving. My Polish tenant, who was a builder, wanted Brexit because they were already cheesed off that the Romanians were undercutting them and didn't want any more competition.

Immigration is a very complex issue.

presumably she goes back to work after maternity like many mum's do?

Was she supposed to come, work her bones off, not have any more children and then be sent back at the age of retirement or at the hint of 'too many foreigners?. Not too far from slavery that scenario

The numbers are too high coming in but they're also too low going out. A lot more used to emigrate, Brexit has made that harder and we no longer have freedom of movement. That's what Brexiters thought would just mean low immigration.

Add to the fact that people live a lot longer now (and many of the millions who've poured in over recent decades will now be ageing themselves/no loner working) and it's a perfect storm. There's far too many in the UK as it is. Where does it stop? 80 million? 90 million? 100? We can't just concrete over the countryside indefinitely to build more housing estates or new towns.

@Winter2020 You speak a lot of sense.

Employers, and the NHS, have all got drunk on cheap EU labour and rather than pay employees a decent living wage they're just importing people from 3rd world countries paying them a minimum wage which is too low for some jobs where evening work, shift work, weekend work etc is involved.

I have mixed feelings about minimum wage. On the one hand it ensures people aren't being paid "slave" wages but on the other hand employers don't want to pay more than the minimum wage.

I was looking on Indeed at jobs and employers are paying MW to retail staff, bar staff, care home staff, office work, warehouse staff. How come all these jobs pay the same hourly rate? There's no variation.

Anyway I digress. Greedy employers have a lot to answer for.

That was the after tax income quoted for 2 care workers working full time.

Recent publicity about national insurance quoted the average British wage as £35,400. I think that was pre-tax but safe to say a care worker (working full time) earns no where near an average wage.

I know it’s been said time and time again, but the simple answer is that the UK cannot accommodate any more immigrants. No housing - we having waiting lists of 2, 3, 4 years and more for people already living here. NHS on its knees - our health system cannot cope with the people we already have - it’s broken, absolutely crap. Schools - too many children, and not enough school places - class sizes having to be increased, where we then have one teacher teaching a class of 40. No wonder so many children are being failed by the current education system. The only area where we are lacking is in the job market - low skilled vacancies not being filled, but that’s because the Government are too slack with getting people into jobs - many are happy to stay on benefits indefinitely.

There are other problems. A lot of people of working age are not in employment. The number one reason is long term sickness, then caring responsibilities and looking after family.

Something like 10 percent of the working age population of the U.K. are not working. And they are dominantly UK citizens, not immigrants.

There is a lot going on with this. The caring responsibilities issue is something that we have never really addressed with the rise over the past 50 years of women in the workforce. The fact is that all those women who left work when they married were not sitting home doing nothing, they were doing work that needs to be done. Childcare obviously, eldercare, community work, all that now has to be managed some other way. And some can't easily be monetized, evenif we want. Anyone with elder family members knows that even if they are in a good care placement, there are all kinds of time consuming things that require help. Banking, dealing with medical decisions, and also really just companionship.

And the issue of shit wages is real.

At the same time - I know people hate it when someone says there is a poor work ethic for local people, but unfortunately I think there is some truth to it. Poeple who come in to work from elsewhere often deal with conditions they shouldn't have to. But there are also things like like shared accommodations, or working shifts that aren't very nice, or jobs that involve a somewhat itinerant lifestyle. A lot more people used to work in these kinds of jobs, and now simply wont. Many people used to continue to work with health issues which they now take leave for.

Like a lot of things, you want protections for people who need it, but you also get this culture of entitlement that grows up. A lot of young people don't work, for example. My sister hires a lot of university grads, many have never had a job before! And it isn't that there are no jobs for young people where I live - they struggle to get indigenous students into jobs, places like MacDonalds seem to be staffed largely by immigrant teenagers. (And these jobs don't pay badly either, for a teenager or student situation. My library clerks, who are grown adults, make the same or even a bit less.)

Can we stop going on about "indigenous". There is no such thing in the UK and it implies we are being invaded or pushed out.

The McDonalds where I live is almost exclusively staffed by the local teens, it pays well and is flexible so attracts a lot of them.

What word would you use? And why do you think it suggests invasion?

It's not a word that means that the people there were necessarily always there, didn't move around, or maybe even replace others. There's always a certain amount of fudge because unless you come from some pretty specific parts of Africa. no one's ancestors came from where their descendants are now. (And even if you do come from that part of Africa it is highly unlikely your people didn't move around.)

Google definition (bolding mine):
)of people) inhabiting or existing in a land from the earliest times or from before the arrival of colonists.
"she wants the territorial government to speak with Indigenous people before implementing a programme"

I would use the word British, or local.

I was listening to a large group at a nearby table in the pub last night and they blamed Angela Merkel's open door immigration policy, said it sent a dog whistle to the world to come to Europe and they have no border controls

Well, they are talking rubbish.
The wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria caused migration into Europe i.e wars we caused and even started!!
Merkel had a one off policy of allowing in 1m migrants to reduce pressures in Turkey and Greece, they were heading towards Europe regardless.

The bombing of Libya, turning it into a failed criminal state, is an open gateway to the Europe, a war stated by the British (Cameron) and the French, Gadaffi was a nasty piece of work but what has replaced him is far worse both for the Libyans and for Europe.

The vast majority of displaced people stay near their own areas & in any case, the EU does have a strong external border, as the queues we see in Dover or Turkey or Finland etc proves.

The majority of migrants now cross into Italy, should poor old Italy be the only European country to deal with these numbers?

Agree with posters re: the ack of integration. There are immigrants employed at my local train/bus stations and they all stand speaking foreign languages together. It doesn't make them very approachable imo. There's a block of council houses filled with African/Asian immigrants that has just been built across from my house and we've sold up because of the unbearable noise - dozens of children screaming in the street and playing in the road. I'm not saying they're bad people but there are obviously some cultural differences. I want to run away to the countryside for some peace and quiet.

Oh English children don't play on the roads? Very interesting.

That’s interesting, I was desperate to move out of an estate I lived in because the white kids kept jamming fireworks through the doors of the black people that lived there and the unbearable noise of a bloody car being set alight behind my flat, they also spoke in the most incomprehensible babble. I guess it’s just different cultures…

On a serious note I am worried about hoe many people are put of work in the UK and what happens if we do start adopting more AI. People who have moved to fill low skilled jobs may struggle. I know the driverless cabs thing is very very far away but what happens to a bunch of people whos jobs were to drive cabs. We need to move towards higher skilled higher paid work. The reality is easy labour supply discourages business from investing in technology to become more efficient and productive. UK productivity is shit because there is no need to make the effort to find an alternative to cheap labour.

@lljkk I hear what you are saying about older people not leaving their family houses, but where would you like us to move?

I am not going to move into a one bed rabbit hutch or a two bed retirement complex with difficult re-sale prospects, because I have £750k from the sale of my family home and I want a home with social and outdoor space in the location of my choice.

I also have enough in my pension to have freedom of choice, so I am actually quite impossible to boss around.

I can leave the UK totally and pay my tax to another country, even within the EU. Retirement and non-lucrative visas are fairly universal, plus health insurance. All completely legally, on legally earned money, taxes paid.

long thread I don't want to search... fine, Papy, fine, really, do as you please,, just don't complain about "immigrants causing a housing shortage!" when you're one of the people with an excessive amount of house for your needs.

I'm not old but have "more house than I need".
My partner and I bought a 3 bedroom house a few years ago while TTC. Hoped to have at least one child. But after a few years and a few failed rounds of IVF it's looking like it isn't going to happen for us. So what now? Should we sell the house we only bought 3 years ago and have spent thousands doing up and move back to a small flat? We love our house. We love having a garden now and no noise from people stomping on our celling. Why should we move out of it (and lose thousands in the process) because we have been unlucky enough to be infertile?
By moving out of our small flat, we allowed a younger couple to get on the property ladder. So if all older/infertile/single people move into the small flats how on earth is anyone young going to get on the property ladder in the first place?
All these people with more house than they need will eventually die/ go into care and these houses will become available then.