To think that, in general, some of the hardest working people in the world are migrants?

[TheMellowExpert]

I’ve noticed that in many industries - healthcare, hospitality, construction, delivery, cleaning, you name it, it’s often migrant workers doing the hardest jobs, with the longest hours and the least recognition. Whether they’ve moved for better opportunities, are supporting family back home or just trying to build a new life, their work ethic is honestly on another level. I know it’s not everyone and of course there are hardworking people from all backgrounds but AIBU to think migrants, as a group, are often doing the work others won’t and getting little thanks for it?

Yes there are some very hard working migrants at the hospital where I work, there are also hard working people from this country

There are people in this country who don’t work hard or contribute to society from both migrant and non migrant groups and expect to be handed everything in a plate

Yes there is a faint cringe about this thread. It reminds me of David Brent ‘if I had it my way, the place would be full of them…’

I think that this is how we get polarised - this constant comparison of migrants to locals - immigrants = hardworking and worthy and non immigrants = lazy and ungrateful. My father was an immigrant who did the jobs many English wouldn’t do but some still did and these were difficult manual labour jobs. I ( born here and English) have worked with people who are working harder than necessary because they don’t understand systems put in place to help them and won’t change their behaviour, people who are making work harder for themselves than necessary and a lot of people who just don’t recognise that some roles require different degrees of effort and are paid to compensate that ( not all esp teaching and caring roles).

I completely agree with you

I never employ British tradesmen if I need anything done and I would never have a British cleaner, so yes anecdotally for me they are harder workers who produce better results.

I work with quite a lot of migrants.

I wouldn't say they are intrinsically harder working.

However, they do perceive the "reward" of work in the UK to be "worth" more effort. If you've grown up in a poor country lacking things like basic sanitation, doctors & good schools, your motivation and frame of reference are so different. You might think you've absolutely made it if your family of 5 are living in a clean, spacious two bedroom council apartment, with good schools nearby and nhs healthcare on tap. The £30 you remit home each month might be buying ALL your elderly parents food. It's worth more to you.

I think the criticism of remittances is misplaced - mostly immigrants are trying to make their money go as far as possible as they know how much it is worth at home - so they pay tax, VAT, and the normal costs here and send what might be savings home to family or work extra to have extra. It’s not a loss to this country as it wouldn’t have necessarily have been spent ( would have been saved or not earned).

Quite often they are single young men who are able to share a house with others and so can take the low paid jobs. The reason that Brits don't want these jobs is because they are too low paid and if someone has a family to support they are better off claiming benefits than working for a pittance. Also farmers often want fruit pickers to live on site which Brits can't do if they are in social housing.

How racist.

Well, yes, of course. Legal migrants are typically young and able bodied with enough resilience to build a new life in a new country without the safety net of family around them. By necessity, you are ruling out a lot of people who cannot work hard. But by the same token, they are no more or less hardworking than natives with those same advantages and qualities who stay put for whatever reason.

My dh is a manager (newish to his company) and his workplace is majority migrants, here legally but on short term visas (lots of Sudanese). These people are doing lower skilled (tech/ engineering) jobs but through chatting to them he’s found out that they are highly educated and most have masters degrees. He says they are much harder working than the local people that work there.

Back in around 2005, I worked for this textbook upper-middle-class bloke in his early 60s — very Home Counties type. His company was full of immigrants (myself included, though admittedly of the paler variety). One night after work, we all went to the pub and he got absolutely shitfaced then proudly announced he liked hiring foreigners because “they work harder and never complain.”
Charming, really.

I mean in some cases I'm sure they are, but not all. My DGP had carers for the last few years of their life, and DGM later moved into a care home. They had wonderful carers, some UK born, some not, but many of them were being squeezed out of the job by the appalling rates of pay. I'm talking about carers being expected to do 4 15-minute visits in the space of an hour, with no allowance for travel time, and having to supply their own cars. Similarly, in the care home, they just stopped paying extra for night shifts and instead people were told they had to cover one a week.

The council signed off on a visa scheme to bring over immigrant care workers rather than pay the existing carers a living wage, or even looked at the workability of what they were asking from the carers. There were significant problems with the new workers (who incidentally were all male), and we had to intervene a number of times after my DGM was very upset, and we actually raised official complaints about neglect from the overnight staff in the end.

Personally I would much rather the council had paid an extra couple of quid an hour to the wonderful carers who actually did the job properly and cared about their clients, rather than bringing over people who would work for poverty wages. In any other context it would have been seen as a form of union busting.

The cleaning company we use has had Eastern European employees for years. They’re great, work really hard and do a great job. Most of them are just here to earn money though, they intend to go home. The girl that comes to me at the moment has left her kids with her mum and DH, she’s here to earn money to build a house - she’s shown me pictures, it looks lovely. She’s hoping another 9mths or so and she can pack up and go home. Good luck to her!