Leaves, EU immigration/FOM what is it you actually want?

[fakenamefornow]

Tourist visas?
Working visas?
No visas, just no work?
Maximum length of stay?
Funded how?

I am really clueless about what exactly you want.

User, I gave you an answer up thread.
But tell us, why you want to Leave?

Whatwould - yes I am well aware how the system works thanks and appreciate how very stressful it must be . But to leave the country that trained you and not even to fight for a better way of going on for either yourself as a doctor or your patients, but to bugger off to one of the most racist countries in the world , I despair. What's that got to do with the EU anyway ?

user I used "good thing" in inverted commas because it was a reference to 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates.

The point was that I can respect the judgement of people who have weighed up all the different arguments and the facts and reached the conclusion that a future EU is not going to be a "good thing" because none of us can absolutely know in advance what will happen, it is possible to argue both sides.

By the way I think it is sad that you think that having a job and living in London or presumably New York or Ohio or Beijing or Hull, means that you can't have empathy for the experience of other human beings, it isn't particularly difficult if it is people you grew up with and went to school alongside but part of the reason I went back to university to study was because I wanted to be able to understand the experience of being part of another culture (and it was a bit of a road to Damascus in terms of appreciating my unconscious western perspective ). One thing is for sure life is short and we are all going to end up ten feet under, I don't believe any of us is entitled to live our time on earth in a bubbke of complacency

Peregrine - because I like my little country , for all its crap . I like our sovereignty. I like being English. I do not want to be ruled by the EU ,
I do not want to belong to the United States of Europe. Nothing more nothing less.

The point concerning the EU, was that it was just the pre Brexit indication of the potential for a brain drain. We were doing so well, pre eminent in Science though we only spend 1.7% in GDP compared to 3% in the rest of the G8, we were very effectively exploiting all the benefits of EU collaboration and funding and bringing together all the best brains. Now already collaboration is drying up and people are not coming here. Doctors and Nurses left here because they felt exploited (and incidentally, whilst Australia has some racist politicians and policies it is still a country with vastly greater immigration than us, from all over the world. Last year they took 30000 refugees from the Middle East and Africa compared with our 3000.)

Young people feel betrayed by a vote that they see as damaging their lives, as well a government that has ignored their interests, they do not feel it is their country anymore and they will leave.

Whatwould - I really am not complacent - for heavens sake.
Exactly it would be lovely if the world and every body in it was perfect ,
but it isn't. You have your views and reasons I have mine.
But I am sick of leavers being called thick and "not knowing what they're voting for" and racist , when really I think most remainers only voted remain because they were scared to death to do otherwise , which I don't blame them for. Some remainers have very good intelligent reasons for voting remain . But I couldn't see that the good out weighed leaving.
I have read some of your other threads Whatwould and I think that in real life we would get on pretty OK.
With that I am off to bed.

Hyacinth - The thread was once again goady to Leavers by asking what exactly do Leavers want . Well I am derailing just like remainers do.

Goading and derailing are two quite different things, though you're doing both so I can see how it would confuse you. Incidentally, we haven't heard your thoughts on FOM or indeed second homes, to get this thread back on topic.

User - how could leavers know what they were voting for, if the government giving them that vote clearly has no clue either www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37983948

Nothing patronising about pointing out the mahoosive risks and lack of benefit Brexit poses

Very few people have said exactly what they do want our immigration policy to look like. I'm really not being goady about it, I've just heard from people I know that they want FOM to end, but to be replaced by what?

It is probably safe to assume that they just want the current immigration policy, as applicable to the rest of the world, extended to include Europeans. It's not like there isn't a policy in place. It currently just excludes Europeans.

Good posts at 9.13&9.16

I also think it may be worth pointing out that if so many people didn't feel impacted by the influx of people, to certain areas of the county, by FOM there would have been more willingness to take in refugees i.e. people who actually needed a place to go. It's fine saying Australia took in 30000 refugees but Australia certainly doesn't allow FOM (except with NZ) so has not had the same issues to deal with. I would also say its bigger but understand that that is not a valid poont when one considers the geography.

I also wonder about the impact FOM has on poorer countries.

It's a fair point, and one which Tony Blair spectacularly messed up on, because he could have delayed the influx of E Europeans and chose not to.

But, if we discourage EU citizens, what will we do instead? Go back to what we did before, I would imagine, and take Commonwealth Health care staff away from their countries (e.g. India, Ghana, Nigeria), who can least afford to lose them.

I think the experience of working in another country for say a year is great. If an Indian or Ghana nurse worked in the NHS for a period then he/ she would learn new ideas and be a better nurse for the experience. Conversely a British nurse who works abroad will gain useful experience as well.

There is a difference between personal coming to the uk short term and the uk robbing the third world of its doctors and nurses. It would be better to have an exchange of staff rather than wealthy countries taking nursing staff from developing countries permanently.

does it have a negative impact on their own economy?

It's a vicious cycle: They leave because the economy's bad, which in turn makes it worse. The sad thing is that lots of Europeans living and working here would rather be in their home countries but economics mean that's not a viable option.

Oh, and if our fifty million a day was being pumped into poorer member states' economies rather than being stolen and mismanaged by EU officials and hangers-on... I'd be a Remainer.

Greece is in dire straits with the refugee crisis. I don't mind the uk providing Greeks with money to help with the refugee crisis. Possibly it would make more sense to help Turkey or lebanon which is the first country that most syrian refugees enter.

Bekksy There is a lot of misunderstanding about the Australian system which is actually a pro immigration policy. The points system is to encourage the skills they need but many more come to Australia under other types of visa. They also appear to be more proactive about having strategies for settling refugees. I was in Australia before the referendum in an industrial port and the people I spoke to were proud to have welcomed refugees from Somalia and Syria, even if they had rather more traditional Conservative views on women for instance and there was an arts festival where every one of the many cultures and ethnicities were represented. May be that was one enlightened Mayor and administration. The horrific detention centres in the north and the rhetoric of some politicians obviously shows differently but the fact is that Australia does have a faster growing and more diverse population than the UK. It is certainly now beginning to the overtake us as a destination for overseas students from countries like India and China to study there.

Ouriana I do not think you are technically incorrect in saying it ought to be possible to put in place the negotiated arrangements as part of Brexit that continued the collaboration that has enabled Science to thrive without FOM (assuming visas were made available) if the EU would even concede the point but I think you are not taking into account the issue of morale. There is FOM for now but EU Scientists and other academics (including my own world class Professor) are leaving, others are not taking up jobs here and many Scientists feel very bleak about the prospects for U.K. Science at the moment and see their future as lying elsewhere, to an extent they were always mobile but now they just don't see themselves coming back to the country the U.K. Is becoming, as you rightly say many countries will accept them as a result of their skills.

Those are all just suppositions though bekksy. We know that Leavers take a wide variety of positions on immigration, everything from closed borders entirely to an increase in numbers, and some of them are actually happy with current FOM but voted Leave due to other concerns. Equally, if your claim about asylum seekers were true, we would expect to see evidence of greater receptiveness to asylum seekers in areas with limited EU migration. And yet we know there wasn't a correlation between the actual number of EU migrants in an area and the Leave vote. Areas with both high and low numbers voted Leave.

Locally we have been supporting an initiative to settle a couple of asylum seeking families. The 'welcome' is such that the location of the housing chosen is being kept secret to protect them.

I agree with Ouriana in the sense that I think immigration policies generally, not just EU FOM, cannot just boil down to targets, points and paperwork (and both industry and the academic world have been pointing out for a long time that the targets, points and paperwork that are imposed on non EU migrants are a deterrent and are acting as a brake economically.) Theresa May above all only sees it in those dimensions (along with employing the border agency and dodgy legal criteria that are subsequently found to be complete bollocks by the courts to intimidate and deport legitimate overseas students who are spending thousands of pounds to come and study here, some in our most prestigious universities, indeed vital to sustaining them long term 😡)

There is benefit in EU movement in terms of both economic growth and the taxes paid and that should flow into the resources needed to integrate new arrivals and make sure communities have the necessary resources . The issue is that as Peregrina has said the shortage of resources actually have other root causes, not just austerity but a long term failure to plan for the infrastructure of the UK economy and welfare system including the NHS. Even if every doctor and nurse we trained returned from Australia (or indeed from the other occupations in the U.K. where they felt the working conditions were preferable (even if that is as a PIP assessor) there would still be a shortage.

I also do not think you can disentangle FOM from the benefits of EU membership for the economy, if the EU follows through on its insistence on the four freedoms.

I would like to streamline and make fit for purpose non EU immigration which is a bureaucratic mess as a result of being a target for reduction instead of focusing on the best interests and indeed the humanitarian values of our country . I would accept EU FOM as part of retaining the benefit of EU membership but make full use of the possibility of brakes, and the arrangements David Cameron agreed prior to the referendum to manage the impact it has on communities.

I'd like FOM to be ended and if that means a hard Brexit, so be it. I don't want to see a woolly Brexit where we're in any danger of getting sucked back into the EU, and believe a clean break is better.

In place of FOM I would like Britain to continue to accept genuine refugees and asylum seekers, as well as workers we need for the NHS and other essential services.

I certainly didn't trust David Cameron's "emergency brake" idea, or feel it was anything more than a token gesture, because of course it would just have defaulted back to total FOM in the not-too-distant future.

The main thing is (with all post-Brexit arrangements) that as our government will be sovereign, the policy can be adapted to whatever circumstances our country finds itself in at any time in the future. So while it should be as good as possible, it isn't necessary for it to be perfect immediately.

I also wonder about the impact FOM has on poorer countries.

Yes, this is a real problem, e.g. in what have become the Polish ghost towns.