Should we guarantee the rights of eu citzens to remain unilaterally

[ReallyTired]

I think we should. They came here with the belief that they could live here.

I suppose the argument is that Spain and France may not show compassion to British citizens who have emigrated. Certainly Spain may well be tempted to use it as leverage to gain sovernity of Gibraltar. I think the chances of the French being vindictive is less.

If Scotland leaves the uk and joins the EU could there be an arrangement where ex pats become Scottish citizens? (Even if they are 100% English or Welsh) in the event of British citizens being sent back?

I really don't like the idea that one should somehow "deserve" citizenship.

nobody is suggesting going that far in that direction
However there is something seriously wrong when the bar is set so high for immigrants that your average citizen couldn't meet it if they tried!

Adulting I don't agree that a state should not set a higher theshold for non-citizens. The obvious example being that a non-British Citizen who commits a crime is liable for deportation, whilst a Brit Cit (even one with dual citizenship) is not required to leave the country. The challenge for policy makers is to set the bar at the right level to achieve the policy ambition (ensuring the NHS does not become a draw to the UK in and of itself, for example) but without breaching the principles of natural justice and fairness, which the courts can be asked to review.

This thread has been an interesting illumination for me on how many Remainers and Leavers just do not grasp the others' points of view. At all. Even when they have tried to explain, both sides have been batted away.

My perspective of citizenship has been very much coloured by living in the US: I knew that generally Americans have a sense of national pride that Brits culturally do not, but I've been genuinely taken aback by how ingrained into every day life it is. Eg:

Every civic building has a US flag, but many other buildings (banks, shops, malls) do too
Once a week students recite the oath of allegiance
Every sports match starts with the anthem (not just international matches, everything from college level up). Some sports also include other songs - eg God Bless America - during the game
The national holidays are intrinsically linked to the foundation and development of the country
People wear clothes with the US flag on. People drive cars with US flags on their bumper stickers. People display flags or other Stars and Stripes decorations outside their home.

It's incredible and not necessarily a model I would recommend (though I would love for us to be a bit less modest and self-effacing about being British). But some of the ideas on this thread (like having rights of citizenship going back generations don't give you any entitlements over those who arrived yesterday) wouldn't even get off the ground at a Bernie Saunders rally

Also, to discuss migration as losing skilled people and gaining unskilled is totally wrong .
You could however class a big part of it as losing the economically inactive and gaining the economically active.

You havent got a shred of evidence for that claim have you Smallfox?

There is a very high level of unemployment among NON EU immigrants for example.

Many emigrees are young graduates going to work overseas for a few years, either in technical occupations (British doctors for example), or as
ESOL teachers. British families who go to work in 'white Commonwealth' countries are all skilled else they dont gain admission. Those who emigrate to the EU are usually setting up their own business, skilled tradesmen, or B&Bs and similar. Even the economically inactive (retired) are self sufficient and not dependent on benefits.

OlennasWimple

That example does not relate to what I am talking about
Not getting deported is achievable - your average citizen is capable of not being a criminal, so it's a fair expectation on immigrants
However, what we expect from our (at the moment) non EU citizens is beyond what most citizens on the street could do themselves!
Most people I know would love to earn £35k but its beyond them no matter how hard they work

The previous threshold was more reasonable, because it was what a British person could expect to earn if they had a profession, so not an unreasonable ask for immigrants, it was very doable!

New rules are not so doable for normal average useful immigrants
Most British people I know couldn't achieve the new rules for PR either!

Setting the bar too high won't get us skilled workers ready to beaver away, it'll just mean that the rich can come. The rich aren't necessarily the most beneficial to our society

adulting imagine a crammed boat that you want to be on to survive. You need to prove that you are more valuable than someone already on there and you will oust them. That is how I see immigration to the UK. We don't need more people.

Werkz

That is a very long post and shows you haven't read the entire thread. I have NOTHING against citizenship. For me, it's only citizenship that counts. I do have something against people who talk about 'races' though.

Well, for a start, we're not "full", there's plenty of space, it's just that the torn sail is being blamed on the people who came in last rather than the captain and bosun who made a bad decision and got it ripped!

And again... Werkz

I really don't like the idea that one should somehow "deserve" citizenship. For fear of invoking Godwin, I don't want to mention that a certain ideological movement in Germany did not believe some people deserved German citizenship, even though they had been born in the country and so had their ancestors going back generations.

I think you'll find that the people I WAS talking about are the people who don't want what you just said above. I mean... seriously. Read before you post.

Hmm, not sure I like the crammed boat analogy, not least because I don't think the UK is actually at maximum population capacity.

Adulting I don't disagree that the current bar is high: maybe too high, I don't know the analysis behind it. But remember the policy objective is to reduce net migration, so it is intended to be difficult and out of the reach of many.

'Not full'? Don't be ridiculous. I bet you live in a lovely detached home away from reality?

if you haven't kept up, some people on this thread have insinuated that they are indigenous and sort of "pure" Brits and proud of it

AS the person who first used the word 'indigenous' on this thread I was at pains to point out that as all ethnic groups have some admix it is NOT necessary to be 'pure' since time immemorial to be considered indigenous.
This suggestion of 'purity' is a strawman put up by those who hate Brits and other European ethnic groups to deny us the right to our homelands and to be acknowledged as indigenous peoples, even though ALL European countries have native indigenous peoples.

This is part of the agenda of hardcore pro Europeans who want to see the destruction fo European diversity and the melding into a unitary state.

Nor incidentally was there any discussion of 'pride' .

angelos02
'Not full'? Don't be ridiculous. I bet you live in a lovely detached home away from reality?

I'll bet she does too! And Snowy, another hardcore pro immigrationist, has been boasting of being in the "top 5% of earners".
As she is also German I think her view is more than a little biased!

Aerfen

Where does your household fit in here? www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/

You'll realise your friend angelos02 who has disclosed her household income to be only 70k (her own words) is actually in the top 10%. AND she thinks it's not enough for her to be able to afford kids.

P.S.: Not sure whether the 70k is net or gross, but if that was net rather than gross, she'd well be in the top 5%, too.

I don't think the UK is "full" and until very recently I lived in Zone 3 London

Hmm, not sure I like the crammed boat analogy, not least because I don't think the UK is actually at maximum population capacity.

When it's at that level then it's far too late.

The wise thing to do is to not let the boat get filled past a certain point.
That way there are enough seats & space and you will always have capacity for the unexpected passengers who suddenly need to share your boat, because theirs was too dangerous to stay on.

I don't see why people are so worried about this. We have agreements with
individual EU members re who can live where. We can in theory keep these
agreements ? Nothing to do with EU

concertplayer have you even looked at the home office pages recently - WE'VE changed a lot of the rules since joining the EU, how are people still thinking it'll just go back to how it was before we or other countries joined the EU, when our home office has moved the goal posts so much since then?

Aerfen:

More of the Brits going abroad do so to retire than there are retired EU residents here. In fact there are 600,000 people who are EU immigrants who are defined as inactive, 30% of that total are pensioners, so 180,000 EU citizens are "retired" here, that means in Spain alone there are more than double that amount of people who retired from the UK. BTW about 2.5% of the Brits living in the EU claim out of work benefits, about the same percentage as EU nationals living here. So it works out that more of those coming to this country are economically active than those leaving.

But please tell me again that I can't back up my argument with data. That's your strategy.

Its funny how further up thread you rejected people being able to come here because they hadn't contributed to infrastructure but the Brits abroad won't have done that either but you class them as "self sufficient".

Hypocrite.

Oh as a Londoner, I can say too that London isn't full and only 65% of my borough is classified as British born, and we voted to remain.

Also Angelos, why is a lovely detached home make you away from reality?

Your arguments suggest that it is you that has the tenuous grip.

Small fox

I would like to know your source for those figures, on which you have incidentally put an interesting 'spin'.

The government’s November 2015 estimate of ‘about 40%’ of recently arrived EEA migrants supported by benefits
" about 2.5% of the Brits living in the EU claim out of work benefits, about the same percentage as EU nationals living here" LOL

I realise all these figures are just the official guesstimates but your figure doenst seem to even be that! Where does it come from? The Guardian?

I note too you fail to mention that the Government estimate of recently arrived EEA immigrants on benefit is a shocking 40%! That of course is mostly generous 'in work ' benefits.

Do you have estimates of Brits on 'in work' benefits in other countries? I doubt it, since most other countries give very little by way of in work benefits.

Your accusation of hypocrisy in my saying most Brits are self sufficient is utterly dishonest. Of course Brits are using infrastructure too, but here we are talking about benefits, not infrastructure! Bear in mind too that the countries Brits are going to are in the main NOT suffering a strain on their infrastructure because their overall immigration levels are lower. The recent influx of refugees could of course change that in Germany, and the Costas are also sufferring strain on their health facilities, but its a regional problem not across the whole country. Brits in France for example often settle in rural areas which are depopulated, and have reinvigorated otherwise dying villages..

The Government estimate has been proved to have been wrong on several occasions. My figures come from the OUMO, DWP data, independent sites like Full Fact, not the Guardian.

But just to make sure that you understand my points about benefits, which you and I have discussed before. I will use the Government's own data from Feb 2016 paper Statitics on Migrants and benefits.,

What proportion of benefit claimants are non-UK nationals?

"In February 2015, 371,220 working-age claimants of DWP benefits
(7.2% of total claimants) were non-UK nationals when they first
registered for a National Insurance Number (NINo). 113,960 of these
were EU nationals, 30.7% of non-UK claimants and 2.2% of total
claimants"

There are about 3 million EU immigrants in the UK. 113,960 claiming DWP benefits would means that it is 3.7% of EU immigrants.

Job Seekers allowance claimants:

"of these 91,700 were EU (excl. UK) nationals, 2.4% of
total claimants"

The data from January showed that only about 65,000 EU migrants were claiming JSA but we'll go with your 91,700 claiming JSA and to be even fairer we'll take from the 1.9 who are thought to be economically active in the UK, so that's 4.8% of economically active EU workers are on JSA, and as they make up 2.4% of the total claimants, but EU workers make up 5.7% of the UK workforce it means that they are under represented.

Tax Credits:

"317,800 of these claimants were EU nationals, 43% of total non-UK claimants and 6.8% of total claimants."

So again, EU immigrants living in the EU are 3 million, so 10.5 % of the total. Not 40%.

Take it down to the 1.9 million in the workforce then it only goes up to 16%.

Child benefit.

The figure available accounts for all immigration and isn't available for just EU, but it works out at 12.5% of the total, which again is lower than the level of total immigration.

The 40% figure quoted was actually for EU migrants in the first four years, and was an amalgamation of all benefits. It also has been heavily criticised because when including household benefits such as Child benefit and tax credits it includes those where one memeber of the household was an EU immigrant on being granted an NI number.

Also the figure given was an "estimate, they reckoned on between 37% and 46% of these very vaguely gathered figures, the OUMO using government data found even with the very broad range for estimating benefits usage that the figure was lower and probably about 27%.

This doesn't mean that the way you are using the figures is correct though, because this figure as stated is all benefits usage, applies to households not individual EU immigrants and doesn't account for length of time that benefits were claimed for, just gives the "first four years" so an immigrant employed for 3 years and paying tax who is made redundant and claims JSA for a month before getting another is included.

Its too woolly and vague a figure and Cameron's use of "reliant" on benefits

It also fails to take into consideration the wider context of things, from the Governments own paper again it is displayed that immigrants accounted for 2.5% of benefits the DWP administered in 2014 - mostly out-of-work benefits - in 2014, and 7% of tax credits, based on the HMRC definition discussed above. Again as EU immigrants make up 5.7% of the workforce this is broadly in line with what is to be expected for WTCs and shows that they are under represented in terms of unemployment benefits.

The DWP analysis says EU migrants on “in-work” benefits cost the taxpayer £530m in 2013 representing a modest 1.6% of the year’s total tax credit bill, again as they make up 5.7% of the workforce this shows that they are under represented here in terms of spending.

Studies broadly show that EU immigrants contribute more than they have taken out in any fiscal spending, EU 8 countries by £1.12 for every £1 spent and EU 14 £1.64, this is fromm looking at a range of different surveys. HMRC data shows that the EU immigrants who arrived in the financial year 2013/2014 contributed £2.5 bn more to the exchequer than they took out in benefits.

On Brits abroad? Studies of Expat communities in Spain have found that retired UK nationals are twice as likely to be hospitalised than their Spanish counterparts of the same age. So they are having an impact. Interestingly EU citizens are less likely to use health services than their British counterparts because of what is called the healthy migrant effect, and Oxford University found than increases in immigration caused lower A and E waiting times and lower elective treatments waiting times in almost all areas, except very deprived ones outside of London, and only then between 2004 and 2008 when this trend ceased.

Your arguments are crap and stand up to no scrutiny, and even your use of data is deeply flawed.

Studies broadly show that EU immigrants contribute more than they have taken out in any fiscal spending, EU 8 countries by £1.12 for every £1 spent and EU 14 £1.64, this is fromm looking at a range of different surveys. HMRC data shows that the EU immigrants who arrived in the financial year 2013/2014 contributed £2.5 bn more to the exchequer than they took out in benefits.

You need to try to understand why these studies give a very incomplete picture. The well known and much criticised House of Lords survey was one, and I would bet my bottom dollar the other studies you have looked at are from sources positive to mass immigration, such as the IPPR which produced the much criticized 'study' claiming mendaciously 'Half of all Poles may have gone back'! lol Yes a quarter 'may' have or perhaps three quarters! Dustmann has been ttrying to sell immigration as a 'benefit' for years.

But that aside (I know you like to claim academic studies in the social sciences are objective and not politically motivated ), there are several other influences.

EU immigrants are on average younger than the native population, even the general working age population.
They include a high proportion of singles, and men who have left their families in Poland (temporarily).
We are still at the early stage of immigration when the above factors operate most strongly, although now we see a start of a demographic transition as wives and families join the men who came first, and even grandparents do too, and of course later again these immigrants will age, and their demographic begins to match that of the indigenous population.
In fact age matched, immigrants do NOT contribute more than the natives.

These studies do NOT factor in all the other costs they impose right now even, health and education in particular, its a simple tax paid, benefits taken sum, so a very limited and misleading picture.

One economic factor we can be sure of is that immigrant add to the total GDP, but that of itself is no benefit to anyone> Its GDP per head that need to increase to even begin to gain an economic benefit. This would have to be very substantial indeed to outweigh all the negative social costs, the damage to our environment, and the cost of their use of the established infrastructure. To cover their use of the infrastructure not including housing, it has been calculated that each immigrant needs to contribute £30K on arrival, and another £30K to cover the cost of the child that most of them will produce soon after coming.(Musgrave 2008) Then a further cost they impose is remittances, a loss to the exchequer for which we get no return!

Its no wonder the Eastern European countries are upset that Britain is leaving , they have been sucking at the British (and German) tit since they joined!

Incidentally its no surprise that the A10 immigrants have amore impressive contribution rate than the A8. This is because Cameron has prevented them receiving benefits for the first three months on arrival, while the A8 have mainly been here longer so are entitled to claim all the benefits that British citizens can. The new arrivals are forced to take whatever work they can get, hence we now have the ironic situation where Polish builders are complaining about Romanians undercutting them! What goes around comes around!

Um Britain's net contribution to the EU is under £8 billion when you take into account private sector payments, about £7.6bn. 1.14 of Poland's GDP.

Hardly suckling at the tit.

"These studies do NOT factor in all the other costs they impose right now even, health and education in particular, its a simple tax paid, benefits taken sum, so a very limited and misleading picture."

No they do. Your analysis yet again is flawed. The HMRC statistics are net contributions - benefits. The UCL, LSE, OUMU and other previous studies data takes into account all net fiscal spend.

But thanks for confirming that you don't know what you are talking about.

Your stuff about "future costs" doesn't take into account previous, current or future contributions, so is easy to disregard.

Guess you might have to spring into action and reply again, but you are currently getting trounced.