Why work when you can get a good salary on benefits?

[Orwellian]

Sorry to come over all DM but I just can't believe the amount that is given out in benefits. I just read this story; www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2087857/Romanian-Big-Issue-seller-given-legal-right-claim-housing-benefit.html
and this lady is getting over £25k a year tax free (and will get housing benefit to boot soon) as well as her nice little earner from selling the Big Issue (isn't that supposed to be for homeless people, not those on £25k per annum?).

Anyway, it just got me thinking. What is the point in getting into debt at university to achieve a high career (which will take years to climb the career ladder), when you can simply achieve the same income by having several children. I did a calculation on the Turn2us website and there is actually not much difference (especially when all the extra benefits such as free school meals are included) in a family with one higher rate taxpayer and a similar family where nobody is working once everything is taken in to account.

I never see my husband because he works so many hours. Maybe I should suggest he gives up work as we would only be slightly worse off on benefits but he would be around to help me with the children.

I was not commenting on your use of the word. I was commenting on the media's use of the word.

Does anyone in public life, in economics uses the word 'dole' now?

They dont refer to Child Benefit as 'mother's allowance' or talk about 'paying your stamp'

But when they want to ramp up a bit of frothing and xenaphobia out comes 'dole'

It is pathetic.

But hasn't the Romanian woman come here to get more money? I dont think she personally has done anything wrong in doing that, but the 25k would have done much more good going to Somalia etc. Helped far more people who are starving. I doubt she was starving in Romania. So it is valid to discuss if she should get the money.

And of the 370000 only 2% are claiming fraudulently. It is a bit like me losing my job in Brussels. I would be able to claim unemployment benefit. I would be on the "foreign nationals" statistics. I am very far from being a scrounger.

AARGH. I expect better really from the Telegraph. Articles like this simply mislead and distort the reality.

So they used national insurance data. By the article's own admission, "Just over half have subsequently become British citizens."

So basically I was born outside the EEA. I came to this country 30+ years ago. I've been working continously since I graduated Uni and paying HRT for the last 10+ years. Yet under this criteria, I'd be an "immigrant" if I was made redundant sponging off your taxes.

My fiancee came to UK from another EU country about 7 years ago. She's also working now and paying her taxes. Yet she'd also be an 'immigrant' in these figures if she lost her job too.

Yet when she left her ex-H 3.5 years ago and needed help from the state, she was refused any benefits at all because she failed the habitual residence test. Why? Because she'd taken 3 months out to move home to have her baby. My point is that getting benefits already is incredibly hard for immigrants.

Her cousin has recently come over too. He's a degree qualified aeronautical engineer. He's come over to start in the UK because our economy is better. Is he sponging? No. He's working in a distribution warehouse for a supermarket on minimum wage. Oh he's stolen someone's job right? No....UK people dont want the job. They get paid more on erm......benefits. Oh the irony!

I hate HATE HATE articles like this which portray immigrants arriving on masse to our shores and living off our welfare system. They don't. They arrive almost without fail expecting to work their arses off from the bottom. Doing the jobs we dont want to do. Most don't even know what they are entitled to.

TheRealTillyMinto Fri 20-Jan-12 08:35:49
"But hasn't the Romanian woman come here to get more money?"

As other people have explained, she won't have been able to claim benefits straight away, so she won't have come for that, anyway. She will have had some kind of job and/or dh lined up at that time.

When I was still in Sweden I had several British colleagues. Of course they had come there to "get more money"- i.e. to get a better job. Was anyone shocked? No. Would anyone have blamed them if they had later been made redundant/had had a child with severe SN and then gone on benefits? Hardly.

What i find truly terrifying about the articles that are linked to in threads like these, are the comments at the end. The sheer hatred, resentment and ignorance in the comments just goes to show how effective papers like the Mail are in fuelling the bitterness of so many people out there. This whole idea that there are a mass of benefit scroungers, fakers claiming dla and immigrants all making our lives harder and the country poorer makes this country feel like a dangerous place to be.

It's interesting that the places people in the uk are likely to go to for work don't have any form of benefit system in place for the non indigenous population.

The Far East/Middle east, Australia, America are perfectly happy to boot you out when your work visa expires. There is no such thing as staying on just because you like the country, the lifestyle or the healthcare system.

America barely takes care of their own poor population, much less the immigrant population. (and before anyone kicks off about that comment, please note, born and raised American, living in the UK for years now, and so am an immigrant here as well)

I also find the hateful and vile comments after these articles particularly concerning.

Sorry I think individual countries should be responsible for their own needy. There should be something in the EU that stipulates this,shocked there isn't really.So in theory you could get a huge influx if what one country provided was better than the other. It's bonkers.I don't think it does other countries any good. They're not going to strive to provide for their own if it's better for the needy to travel abroad within Europe.

Come over to work yes but if you can't manage without benefits sorry it's time to return.It's common sense otherwise what little we have is going to get overstretched and our own needy are going to loose out. Quite clearly this is already happening.

Not entirely sure why this can't be questioned without hysteria and insults to be frank.

exactly Mrs H. It is just a case of resources and they are not unlimited.

This does seem like a loophole in the law. Don't blame the woman for trying to do the best she can for her children, I guess most people would, and it is technically legal so she isn't doing anything wrong in that sense. But maybe this legislation needs to be revisited, if people are taking advantage of it in ways that were not envisaged when it was first written.

I'm not sure what the best answer is, but I agree with MrsH, alemci etc - it should be possible to question and discuss this sort of thing, without being automatically called 'hateful' and 'ignorant', or have it implied that you're racist/xenophobic/hate the disabled etc.

It is indeed a question of limited resources, and there's a debate to be had on how they'd be best distributed.

But that's already the case MrsH. If you or I decided to move to France to claim benefits, you'll find you can't. And vice versa.

The issue is how do you define as "your own".

So for example my finacee is from another EU country. For the last few years, she's lived here, worked here and paid taxes here. Are you saying therefore that if she were made redundant tomorrow that it should be her birth country which supports her?

I don't think Mrs H is saying that. Your fiancee is an asset to GB as she is paying taxes etc.

Unfortunately the women we are discussing isn't really as she is taking from the public purse in lots of benefits, not paying any tax or NI and I think it is unlikely that she has made any contribution to the treasury.

I think she is quite canny and also it helps that she got free legal aid etc

No because she's married to somebody from the UK.As a UK citizen it's our duty to provide for you,you will in turn provide for your dp.I guess the problem would be if you split up and she was on her own.Not sure why there can't be allowances for this and when people have been here x amount of years ie contributed in tax or become a citizen. If we don't pay enough NI it effects our pension so not entirely sure why non UK citizens get money regardless.

Also us providing for said UK citizens means we're saving their own country rather a lot of money to do as they wish-building on growth for a start.

We have to pay more which we could be spending on growth/jobs etc.As there is no money to splash about we also take from our own needy by making cuts.

As I posted further up thread: "According to this (UK Borders website)workers from Romania have to apply for permission to work and then work for at least 12 months continously before their family can apply for residence status. Methinks there is a big part of the story missing from the DM account.So in reality, the woman in the OP/or her partner must have applied for a work permit, moved here and worked for 1 year before being entitled to anything at all. I am sure they never gave a work permit for selling the big issue. So what is the truth did the DM leave out here?"

You CANNOT just turn up and claim benefits. 54% of the 370k people mentioned in today's story are now UK citizens - they just happened to be born somewhere else. The Borders website makes it quite clear that you are free to travel into the UK, to set up a company, or find a job, but that if you do NOT work, you must support yourself. The same if you move to Belgium or France or Spain.....

Out of the other 46%, (170,000 people) how many of those have been working here for donkey's years, or are married to UK citizens who pay tax? It doesn't say does it?

Of the 9000 non -EEA originating claimants, all but 2% (180 people) had legal claims. So 180 (non UK) people are making illegal claims. How many UK people are?

To put in more perspective: There are about 50 odd million people in the UK? 170,000 foreign claimants. Belgium has 10 million inhabitants and 100,000 expats living and working in the Brussels region alone (10% of Brussels population) Some of these will be on foreign contracts - but many won't - and would therefore be entitled to benefits if they needed them.

So you only have to work for a year before benefit entitlements,is that what you mean?

You have to work for a year before your family is even entitled to apply for residency status. The DM is missing a big part of the back story out here. No way did she just turn up, declare herself self-employed and get benefits. Unless we know what happened before that, how can we possibly judge?

Interesting look at benefit claims by immigrants here

Article about the same story here

I think the word "entitlement" needs debating.I don't know the exact rules re immigration/benefits from the EU and nobody has actually outlined them on here.

If after a year on a minimum wage you are "entitled" to benefits that is wrong.We can't afford it to put it bluntly.Surely anybody could rock up,muddle through for a year then claim their "entitlement".

Dp and I would love to work in the US,we're going to have to search for jobs which supports a Visa which could be terminated at any time,if the job ends we'll be quite rightly be out.I'd never expect a country I'd only been in for 1 or 2 years to bail me out and support my family.

Sorry until the exact rules re this issue(length of stay,amount of tax payed etc) are outlined it's nigh on impossible to discuss the issue.

I fully support supporting the genuine needy in my own country but my children's future kind of stops my support there ie it doesn't extend to supporting the needy for Europe-that is for individual countries to deal with.If as a country we were loaded and had plenty of money to splash about then maybe but we're quite clearly not.

MrsH, i don't think it's based solely on a fixed time but more proving you are genuinely living here. So things like are your kids in school here. Do you have family here. And of course, how long have you lived here.

Habitual residence & right to reside Page 9 seems to imply that a person should have been living in UK for 3 years and working for the last 12 months. I haven't read it all, it's not exactly a thrilling read. Housing benefit I think is two years. Certainly I know my fiancee was refused benefits because she went back to her 'home' country to give birth for a few months and this broke the continuous living criteria when 18 months later, she left her (ex)H.

I think we do need to discuss immigration in a reasoned way. The problem right now is that the media print stories like above where the headline says one thing yet for those who actually read the story the facts say something completely different.

This leads a lot of people to blame immigrants for our woes when in reality they are hardly a big problem. The elephant in the room is that we have a benefits system which encourages UK people not to work and we can no longer afford.

But niceguy this story was in the Times which is where I read it and it did say more or less the same thing.

I still agree with Mrs H. A point system like Australia would be better.

I think immigration is problematical. I live in Greater London and was listening to BBC London. The phone is was about young people not being able to get jobs which was quite depressing.

I agree the benefits system is unaffordable but surely the lady in the discussion is just adding to it.