Immigrants but legal ones?

[Tiktakmam]

I’ve been living in the UK for 16 years, have two children, and work full-time. I consider myself integrated, living according to British values, and respecting this country. I look after myself and my home, and I try to contribute positively to the community.

Yet, many of us — especially from Eastern Europe — don’t feel entirely safe with the ongoing issues around illegal migrant boats. Even though we are legal residents, I’ve noticed growing dissatisfaction from some neighbours. When I mention that I’m from Eastern Europe, I often hear comments like, “Of course you are…” — basically implying I’m not British.

This makes me feel like I’ve somehow “brought these boats” here, as if I’m just another part of the immigrant problem. Seeing flags and attitudes that suggest “immigrants go home” is disheartening.

I also feel somewhat less confident around British people, especially in areas with mostly locals and fewer immigrants. For example, when I travel to campsites or smaller towns, I sometimes feel looked at as untrustworthy. Luckily, in London I feel much less like this.

Post-Brexit, it feels like the country has changed in ways that make life less secure, not just for immigrants but for everyone. It’s heartbreaking that all migrants, legal or not, are often dropped into one pot and judged as a single group.

I keep wondering — after so many years of people from other countries contributing to making the UK a brighter, more vibrant place, why does it feel like the country has been going downhill over time?

I feel so heartbroken, because I understand that the UK will never truly be my home, as I was not born here. Yet it hurts to realize that, with every passing year, it feels more and more like I will never be fully welcome.

Why has it gone so wrong on a broader scale? How can we have a healthier, safer society for everyone, while respecting the law and supporting integration?

I hope we can have a conversation about this that goes beyond fear and politics, and focuses on community, fairness, and safety for all residents.
Im just curious, in this era of migrant boats and heightened tension around immigration, how do you perceive or feel about other immigrants, even those who are legal residents? Does this climate affect the way you interact with them or how you feel about other immigrants, especially in less multicultural towns? What does your family of friends say?

Well exactly that’s my point; we want the best people in the UK.

Democracies have to allow their citizens to leave. Only autocracies restrict them from leaving. If you let your citizens leave and you are a rich country by international standards (and let us not forget we are in the top 5% worldwide amongst all human beings), then we have an obligation to take our fair share of refugees. Legal migration is a question of what our system wants to encourage and frankly, we have benefited over many centuries from the labour of persons born abroad.

Well it sounds like you contribute a lot, thank you. However we cannot extrapolate from that fact that every immigrant contributes significantly to the country. Should we not be allowed to discuss it without being called racist?

If we were still in the EU you could’ve given it a go.

For EU/EFTA Citizens

• No Visa Needed for Entry: You can enter Switzerland without a visa for short stays.
• Job Search: You can look for a job for up to three months without a work permit.
• Residence Permit Required: For stays longer than three months, you must register with the local authorities and obtain a residence permit.

But if you look at our demographic pyramid, we can't afford to be that picky. UK birth rate is far, far below replacement. Who is going to do the scut work when there aren't enough young people to do it?

The thing with immigration is that it is complex. The people currently painting roundabouts don't understand that.

If you want to fill jobs with your own people (and we do), then a lot of change needs to happen - and all of it will be expensive.

1. Reform of the UK education system so that it places equal value on vocational and skills-based education as it does on academia. We need to identify those youngsters whose aptitudes and interest aren't in Shakepeare and trigonometry but in building, carpentry, electrical engineering, cars. And we need to make them feel deeply valued for choosing that career path, and train them up well.

2. We need to make work pay. If you look back at the 1960s/70s and assess the pay multiples between a company's chief exec and their lowest paid worker, you will find those multiples much smaller than they are now. They need to be brought back down - and that means the really wealthy will need to give up having so much money that it becomes meaningless. This could be done with a mixture of carrot and stick: invest in your staff, train up school leavers, plough your huge earnings back into your (British) company - but if you offshore your wealth, expect to be hammered by tax. It has to be financially worthwhile for people to invest in their own country. I am left wing, but I have zero objection to people getting rich. What I do object to is people getting rich whilst their employees who actually do all the work end up still needing benefits in order to make ends meet. That is not acceptable.

3. Jobs like care work, harvesting, hospitality work and retail need to be paid better. How that is done is something better brains than mine will have to work on, but these are absolutely key people who keep the economy going, and we treat them like dirt.

A lot of the people on here will scream about the above, call it socialism, say it can't happen - but what's the alternative? And of course the problem is that getting all of that in place will take time, and what do we do in the interim? We used to be in the EU - people would come here, work for a while and then go back. Then we did the stupid thing that was Leave, and replaced our immigrants with those for whom the stakes are very much higher, people for whom going back was much less attractive. Look at Poland - it's about to overtake the UK as an economic power. We threw our options away.

So why do you have an issue with people who move here and… support themselves?

I'm still hopeful that it is a minority of angry people, outweighed by decent people.

Where have I said that I have an issue with this? This is my whole point shouldn’t we be able to have a discussion without immediately being labelled racist?

We could go and live almost anywhere in Europe before Brexit.

I haven’t called you a racist so I don’t know what you’re talking about.

In an earlier comment to a different user you implied that if someone moves here for a better standard of living then they’re taking something. That makes no sense.
People retire to nicer, sunnier countries for a better standard of living too, which by your logic means then they’re taking something. However you seem to be okay with one side taking something (funnily enough… the British elderly side).

I don’t know if you’re racist or not, nor do I care, but all your comments do seem to paint you as a bit a narrow.

Well if you came 16 years ago you must by absolute no fault of your own came on the Blair wave ? Ie they the then government predicted 13 thousand eastern europeans would come here.

I think 13 Thousand came to one London borough in a very short space of time
Again 95 plumbers were predicted to come ,there were 95 registered in London alone.

Unfortunately the country was not prepared in any way shape or form and infamously in Slough on a panorama investigation program meals on wheels had to be pulled from the elderly to go to translators in primary schools. Schools ,hospitals were all totally overwhelmed and many children came alone ,sent alone etc.

It was a crime against the British people ,benefits were going to children in Poland who had never set foot here !

Then Blair and brown gas lit us all saying it was good for us ?

That was the foundation of Brexit. My bill is polish but here 25 years ago and said to me, your governent is crazy why wouldn't they want to come you've got such high numbers it magnifies the less desirable people and we didn't know who was coming here then and it was reported many criminals did come.

I agree , it's a no brainer wouldnt we all do it.
I don't blame anyone for coming here then it was not on them that Blair cocked up numbers !!

It was blairs job to protect us and he failed.

Before that immigration was never the burning issue it's become now but the trust in government has gone.

Things seemed to have levelled out from blairs catasrphohe ,those years the birth rate shot up and in subsequent years classes had bulge ,playgrounds lost to class rooms and now the birth rate is falling again.
Like yourself op your established here now ,in a community assimilated but still polish.

However I do believe if blairs blunder had never been made we would have had a steadier trickle of immigrants easier to absorb and less immigration ansgt today.

Lol, apologies! 😂

Read the post before you comment. Do you think racists are rational?

Does the country have the resources to offer that chance to unlimited amounts of people?
This last sentence perfectly highlights what anti-immigration folk don't get.

With the exception of asylum seekers (who are a tiny percentage of overall immigration) we accept large numbers of immigrants because they are a resource, and we need them.

That shouldn't have to be the case but, with our birth rate having been lower than the replacement rate for over 50 years now, if we want to keep things like a state pension or the NHS, we need sufficient working age people.

Immigration is categorically not the long term answer but it would make a tonne of sense to try and find a longer term solution before we take off the temporary sticking plaster one (which is why Reform, if elected, likely will be the next in a long line of parties that talk tough on cutting net immigration, then don't do anything about it once they get into power).

No country has managed to solve the fertility crisis but I don't think many have been radical enough. At this point, I don't think its enough to make having 2+ kids simply "less unaffordable" but people should be financially incentivized to have kids.

Until we figure that our, we should be grateful for every immigrant that comes here to work, because they'll help us keep the lights on for a little longer.

The birth rate meaningfully recovered under Blair/Brown, then collapsed following the 2010 financial crisis and has never recovered, which is probably why the Conservatives allowed immigration to go through-the-roof.

And, tbh, I think most anti-immigration anxiety today is associated with Islamaphobia, and little to do with Blair at all.

Problem is, almost every single developed nation needs immigrants, and many may be far more attractive places to live (to many immigrants) than the UK is.

What makes you think "the best people" all want to come to the UK?

Germany, with a similar ageing population, is recruiting 90,000 Indian workers this year. Skilled ones to be sure. So it's not true that all developed countries are slashing immigration, or even that they are only allowing people from their own cultures. https://asia.nikkei.com/spotlight/immigration/germany-aims-to-draw-90-000-skilled-indians-annually-to-fill-jobs I expect this to happen in other countries too, when they run out of workers.

Some of the posts on this thread are seriously outdated.

Another link. The EU commissioner acknowledges that Europe is in a global race for skilled migrants with the UK, US, Australia and Canada, but has the special issue of an ageing population. EU competes with US and Australia in the global race for skilled migrants.

So many posts on here think "migrant" means a person on a small boat. That's a tiny portion of migration. The real issue seems to me that we don't have enough taxpayers, and it's getting worse.

Yeah and German politics and society aren't veering to the right at all, are they?

One of the most unfortunate effects that poorly managed immigration and bad immigration policies has is that it makes people feel negative towards immigration in general. Even if people don't hold that against individual immigrants, the frustration with the situation will tend to come through in their interactions.

This is even more the case where you have bad policy materially affecting certain people, for example by suppressing wages, and also a government, and media in many cases, and many members of the pmc, who deny these effects, and deride those who experience them. All while being insulated from the problems themselves, or even benefiting from the situation.

The people who have caused this kind of resentment to grow with their bad policies have a lot to answer for.

And at one time members of the Commonwealth could move to all kinds of other countries like England of Scotland, a right stripped to create closer ties with Europe.

Right to go to other countries are limited by what they want to allow.

First post nails it. We don’t all think like that. In fact I think probably most people don’t. Please don’t feel undeserving of being here.

Honestly if I were you OP I would go home. Get British passports for all your family to keep options to return open first then pack up and go. You are very lucky to have the freedom to leave and Eastern Europe is booming. I think you and your children can have a much better life and standard of living there, assuming you're not working in the city and making mega bucks that is. And even if you are making loads of money here you and your kids still have to listen to racist shite.

I disagree with this. Don't let them win.
I don't think it will be easy for OPs kids to be uprooted either.

Legal migration has helped this Country thrive for many, many years. Unfortunately illegal migration is seriously damaging the country & is causing lots of hatred.
Some people are just too stupid to see the difference between the two and they are an embarrassment to the rest of us.
I do feel our government are to blame through for the increasing frustration and unrest at the moment.

I am sorry to hear you are struggling though, things will calm down.