Have we got immigrant paranoia?

[Jac1978]

David Cameron is vowing to end benefits for EU migrants after six months. Around half a million migrants come into the UK every year, one in five from the EU but half return home every year. Only 6% of benefits claimants are foreign born - is Cameron wrongly targetting a minority and just responding to media paranoia about immigrants or is it a real problem and is he right to make things harder for them? Are we blind to the benefits of immigration? Are Brits who emigrate abroad any better?

RaluhcaV, I think that SellingInMyBlood is supporting you in showing that the Czechs were against the Nazis and fought against them.

Claig,

thanks. I'm probably too tired

Has anyone here read a book called Orderly and Humane? About how we, good old us, forced the Sudeten Germans out of the CZ lands and into Germany, reusing some old rolling freight cars from the Auschwitz route?

Also, it's been shown that immigrants collect hardly any benefits, and are mostly honest taxpayers.

sieglinde

Has anyone here read a book called Orderly and Humane? About how we, good old us, forced the Sudeten Germans out of the CZ lands and into Germany, reusing some old rolling freight cars from the Auschwitz route?

I haven't read the book but given what happened to everyone else under Stalin's forced relocation policy, it's probably best for the Sudeten Germans that they were moved by the Western Allies. All the Prussians were moved, too. Poles were shoved westward. In 1939 Stalin had all the people he deemed politically unreliable, such as Finns, deported to Siberia. He shoved people around according to whim, and millions were killed as a consequence.

A brutal time and I don't think anyone comes out of it well.

Also, it's been shown that immigrants collect hardly any benefits, and are mostly honest taxpayers.

No need to cite any sources, we'll just take your word for it. Open the gates (wider), Sieglinde's solved the problem.

I am a liberal in most things But Boston (lincolnshire) has had a rough time with immigration

soapandhorny again Singapore isn't a very good comparison to the UK. It has a very low birth rate of 1.15, and it will be shrinking without massive immigration. It has a target to increase its population by migration with a very liberal visa policy. (It seems to be failing to get its native to breed. Maybe we can teach them a thing or two). This has led to protests against immigrants.

Singapore is probably more like Oz in its aim to population numbers. Those in charge wants to increase it while th e people is against newcomers.

Iirc Singapore govt actually plans to increase the population by 30%. And a lot of the migrants accepted are low skilled labourers too. Along with the highly educated and skilled ofc.

MsAverage
I have all my passports here on my desk, going back to before I moved to this country.
No visa anywhere. Just ILR granted one time when I came back into the country.
And despite the fact that the rules have changed, it was never retrospective - my ILR still stands.
As do millions of other unrecorded ones.

The REAL POINT is that Cameroon is demonising foreigners to make the Brits pull together and not notice how much he is ripping off the poor to help the RICH LIKE HIM

Here is a link www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2013/mar/25/cameron-immigration-speech-live-blog

There's a Romanian Big Issue seller standing out in my street today. She stands out there from before 9 AM to after 5 PM, all days, even when it's minus degrees like today. She's wearing open-toe sandals with woolly socks underneath despite the snow and layers of jumpers. I know for a fact she has three children back in Romania who she sends money to, and that some days all she will get for standing outside all day is under £5. If I was this woman, I would be howling, crying, I think, but even at 5 PM she is polite: "Big Issue?"

I am in favour of totally open borders and no immigration control. Injustice such as this (who would CHOOSE to do what this lady does if they weren't facing worse alternatives?) would not happen. We would all have to share with those people in the world who have less.

Oh, a link to the Guardian. A link to the website which represents the only subset of the UK population to either benefit from mass immigration or be largely unaffected by it. The Guardian - the Daily Mail for people who think they're too good to read the Daily Mail.

They benefit from it through access to cheap unskilled and semi-skilled labour, and they're largely unaffected by it because they're public sector workers, whose salary is not reduced as a result of the influx of workers with similar skills. In the private sector incomes have been forced down due to the arrival of migrant workers.

It's not actually evidence for your claim, is it? It's a link to Britain's least popular broadsheet.

I suppose the figures on the BBC are just Biased too ....
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21921089

soapandhorny these people are residents of the UK. You can claim benefit in many countries once you are a resident. I think you are confusing people in this category against those who have no residency rights.

MorphsMum - I remembered reading that some Romanians become Big Issue sellers not because they are homeless, but because it is a way to become registered for jobs/benefits etc. It's like a loophole, so presumably if Romanians get full EU rights, the number of Romanian Big Issue sellers will drop, because they won't need to do that anymore, as they will have those rights anyway? www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/8527950/Romanian-families-use-Big-Issue-loophole.html

soapandhorny, you need to understand about the EU before you can understand what's being debated here.

If you are from Singapore, US, Australia, China, Japan - anywhere outside the EU - then no, you can't come to the UK without a job and claim benefits.

The EU is a special case because of agreements that people within that area can move without restriction and that governments agree to treat other EU citizens the same as their own. It's exactly the same for UK citizens who travel to Germany, France, Italy, Spain etc etc.

It's important to keep the two groups distinct, not least because we have made various committments to the EU and are restricted in our abilities to renage on these without other consequences. It's not as simple as "closing the borders".

The Guardian and the BBC are just as guilty of distracting from the fact the poor are being screwed over as Cameron is.

Their obsession with equality as something divided along the lines of race, religion or sexuality is just a distraction from the fact that in ways that actually matter such as in financial equality and equality of opportunity almost EVERYBODY is getting worse off regardless of their class or race.

Immigration has been the left wings way of getting the turkeys to vote for Christmas. The left has become so obsessed with race and immigration that it has lost site of all the important issues It's a smokescreen which covers up the fact they're doing nothing about real inequality.

I don't trust the BBC or Guardian any more than I trust Cameron, they both represent a wealthy elite, just a slightly different kind.

So do you not accept the figures produced by the Institute for Fiscal studies ....
www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctpb21/Cpapers/DustmannFrattiniHalls2010.pdf

I like data, its always better than "belief"

Talkinpeace, those figures may show that immigrants are less likely to claim benefits but it doesn't say why that is.

Has it not occurred to you that this is often because immigrants can work here for a short period of time and live in horrible conditions but go back to their native country with a nice lump sum of money which will enable them to live a decent life?

If you are a native person and you take these jobs it won't be for a few months or years until you return where you came from, it will be forever. Forever in a horrible, boring, grinding low paid job that doesn't afford you a better living than you would have on benefits? I don't blame the natives for not taking the jobs in those circumstances.

It may give figures but it doesn't give the reason why. And if it's because the locals refuse to work for poverty wages I don't blame them.

And if it's because the locals refuse to work for poverty wages I don't blame them

Then either be happy for the job not to be done, or accept that immigrants will do them - as has been the case for hundreds of years.
And if those jobs are not done, say goodbye to carrots, potatoes, cabbage, cheap meat and many other parts of the food chain that rely on immigrant labour.

America is going through EXACTLY the same problem with (illegal) immigrant labour being essential for their food crops ...

It's often impossible for locals to work for the wages that short term work pays, especially if they have families.

This is partially because of the slow response times and inflexibility of the benefits system which punishes people who have unpredictable work patterns (often agriculture picking, packing and processing works on a just-in-time basis and won't guarantee any particular level of work).

If the immigrants aren't there then the work will not get done because quite rightly, you can't risk losing your house for the possibility of zero hours a week. I don't blame them either, but it's a fact of life and always has been, that agriculture relies on an unusually flexible and seasonal workforce, whether that's immigrants, or a hundred years ago (or less) people coming out from the London slums to do potato picking.

It's the same with tourism in other parts of the country. A hell of a lot of Aussies working in hotels in the Highlands and living in dorms because you can't raise a family on a few weeks work a year.

Immigration is fine but it a) undercuts labour costs keeping them artificially low.

and b) many immigrants don't think of the UK as 'home' and any investment they make will go abroad and will not settle here. And c) they don't put down roots and build communities here alongside the permanent residents.

But there are other kinds of immigration where families build in the UK, stay here, become part of the wider fabric of the nation (I am one of them). They think of the UK as home and as their future. They set down roots and build communities.

So if any politician wants to think of a bright idea it would be to get immigrants to show their commitment to the UK by ensuring they keep their money in the country and not taking it out. If they don't want to do that then they can go elsewhere.

Sleepyhead that is so true, my uncle is a farm worker the farm he works in is 20 miles from where he lives and there are no buses so he has to have a car. His car is due it's MOT and he knows it will fail, he has 3 children and works for min wage and has to pay rent and bills etc he cannot afford to save up for a new car. Thats means when he loses his car he wont be able to get to work.

On the hand almost all the other workers are immigrants they work for an agency and they get BUSSED in every day - they live in shared housing and pay very little rent.

Every time a local worker leaves the farm they are automatically replaced by an agency worker the agency advertises for workers, not locally but in Poland and other Eastern European counties.

So when my uncle loses his job and ends up on the dole he will be classed as another lazy Brit who wont do the jobs that immigrants are happy to do when the fact is he wants to work but he is not going to be able to.

I suspect they'll get their accommodation and their transport taken directly from their wages by the agency. They'll likely be working for less than minimum wage - these agencies know what they're doing, and although UKBA keep an eye on them there's a lot of illegal activity going on that they get away with.

We have minimum wage so it shouldn't be possible for employers to pay less, and yet many get away with it. That's a legislative issue and not to do with immigration - it could equally end up being northerners coming south to look for work if things get really bad.

And while many immigrants may well take money out of the country, that pales into insignificance when you look at the profits pouring out by foreign owned businesses, many of whom pay minimal tax and who, if they pay their workers minimum wage, may well be being subsidised by the taxpayer through the tax credits system.

It's all a mess.