OK - Britain is a small country

[friskyfox]

So why are we taking in more immigrants? We now have an influx of Romanians and Bulgarians coming here. Before anyone calls me racist or the like, I am 100% not. It just annoys me because we are a tiny country. Why are countries like Australia, NZ, USA, and Canada more selective and Britain is not.
thelink

My cleaner is Moroccan but settled here with her young family and husband. They are a lovely family. I have never had such respect, mutual appreciation, religious values and kindness from any English cleaner I have ever had. She is also beautiful, hard working and 100% reliable. She and I always work even when ill. I find much more similarity between her and me than any English born cleaner or housekeeper I have ever had. It's the gratitude for the job, the hard work etc that works well.

We had an English born Indian nany once but her family came from Keyna and had lots of servants there so not quite the same but even so a hard work ethic as all immgrants have, even the English when they go abroad. You're forging a new life in another country so that makes a difference.

noelallie - it's not bollocks. i think its great that i can get building work cheaper - should i want to. isn't that what capitalism is all about?

i remember when lidl sold things cheap. forcing supermarkets to do things like 8p beans.

fabulous for the ordinary family.

Well then you enter the whole area of how cheap can things really be without costing someone something somewhere. I work for a food manufacturer that sells to the supermarkets - we are an SME and doing OK, but even so the supermarkets screws us down to the last penny forcing cost cutting measures - ie making people redundant usually. They tell us what they are prepared to pay which doesn't always relate to what the thing costs to produce. But we get by. Imagine the same thing happening to a farmer in a developing country or even a small producer in the UK. Cheap beans are only cheap to the consumer 'cos some poor bugger has paid for it somewhere along the line.

And how can you possibly say that builders charge 'extortionate' rates unless you know what it costs them to do the job. In order to make a job cheap enough for some clients, there will be no proft or very little.

I agree with Custardo. The bus companies here have to go to Poland to recruit drivers as British people will not do the job - presumably its beneath them. British car mechanics and builders have a dreadful reputation for ripping people off. In fact we've been ripped off a couple of times. On the other hand the Polish guys who did our bathroom charged us £100 per. day - for TWO workers - and did a perfect job. I would use them any day.

I don't see how you can critise people for doing a hard day's good quality work and not ripping customers off. Before the Polish it was the Irish, Caribbeans, Jewish etc - and good luck to them

FFS harktheherald who's critising for anyone doing a good days work and not ripping people off? I'm not! But the point is that not all british builders are cowboys - DH works really hard! He usually goes the extra mile to give the client more than they expect. But he can't work for less than he already gets.

Erm you can't have threads complaining about lack of midwives/nurses/NHS staff and THEN complain about immigrants, who the NHS RELIES on for Doctors/Midwives etc.

noelallie - you are making many assumptions and inferences about my text.

my son is a builder.

i never mentioned cowboys. and i didn't say that your dh doesn't work hard. neither did i imply it.

i dont disagree with you on the multinational/global forces screwing the little man.

however,
as far as i can see people are mixing up racism/immigration/ refugees etc.

i am simply injecting politics into the mix.

after all if i were polish and realised i had the skills and could get paid lots of money ( to them) to come and work here, and the english govt encouraged it then i could help my lifestyle back home and my family - i think i would.

its not the people its not the little man - who works hard. its not the eastern europeans.

its the politics. its the govt. its your leaders.

its not that this country is too small.
its not that they can claim benefits
its not that they can get housing before anyone else.

Noelalie there are lots of good builders out there, of course there are- My Dad was one for many ayear (still is for familya nd friends). But there ARE cowboys out there too- regardless of nationality of immigrant satus I suspect. My neighbour has buildres in, every day he leaves, they sit in the garden on their mobiles. he knows, but silly billy paid up front and doesn't want the hassle. I have no idea what nationality they are though, several of them so mixed I expect. And the chap who did our exhaust two weeks ago and wrote the car off in the process.......

But MIL's job (a vcanteen chef in a factory) was aved by an influx of Portugese workers taking jobs that the English wouldn't take, so ther are some industries it happens in. On the news today theys aid immigrants rom the new Eu members were allowed for agricultural work and food processing, and everything else was subject to application, regulation and control which sounds sensible to me. If its sustainable, evry body is happy surely?

I wonder if the xenophobes know the number of British people working overseas? If British people can migrate for economic reasons, what's wrong with foreign nationals coming here to work legally?

I bet the original poster does not complain about the large number of white Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Americans, Canadians, French, Germans, Swedish, Finnish etc who work here!

As for the inference that this country is too small and overcrowded, I think the original poster needs to educate herself with regard to the percentage of the land that is actually populated by people. It never fails to amaze me how uninformed posters of this ilk are.

Did the OP actually come back with anything resembling a coherent argument?

As I mentioned Peachy I have no problem with immigrants - if DH loses work due to them so be it, that's life. You know it might even force him to go back to teaching..... But I objected to the frequently repeated rather lazy assertion that builders are all cowboys who don't do a good job for the huge amounts of money they get paid...I wish People don't tell you stories about the wonderful builders that finished their extension on time, did a good job, were friendly and polite and never asked for coffee. But there are plenty out there. You just need to make sure you get the right ones and don't neccssarily get the cheapest quote. And it seems to me that the people being ripped off in your neighbours case are the company employing the subbies - the work will get done and the cost won't go up so if anyone's losing money it isn't your neighbours!

custardo - I totally agree. It isn't the same issue at all. Anything and everything is dragged into the argument about immigration.

NOELallie - sorry I didn't come back to you yesterday, my internet connection died

I can really understand your point that its difficult for decent home grown builders, who have a family and mortgage to support etc to compete with migrants who are living ten to a room and therefore working for less, as their outgoings are lower. I think its a shame your DH is probably suffering from the bad reputation of a lot of British workers (not just confined to builders, lots of British workers have a reputation for being lazy and rude me thinks)- mind you I don't think the current position is sustainable for the migrants either.

Even the leader of the BNP, that Tindall guy, used Polish builders on his house LOL!

A similar arguement could be used about using overseas call centres. I find it frustrating sometimes talking to someone in India who can't solve my PC problem - but on the whole they are much politer than the English call centre people and of course increase the profits for large companies.

My DH's friend who has a building company uses Polish workers, so he's adapting to survive so to speak.

This was in yesterday's Indie - thought it was illuminating:

"Mr Reid's approach contrasts sharply with the Home Office's attitude in 2004, when it adopted an open door policy, predicting that the numbers coming in from countries like Poland and Hungary would be low. Officials expected 5,000 to 13,000, but in fact, 447,000 registered for work in the first two years, including nearly 265,000 from Poland. The overall total of people who found work in the UK, including the self-employed, could be around 600,000, although many were here temporarily and have returned home.

The familiar sight of the Polish plumber, or the Lithuanian student serving in a fast food restaurant, has led to complaints that they are adding to the unemployment level of young Britons. The number of jobless in the UK rose during 2006, at the same time that record numbers were in work.

However, the biggest concentrations of east European migrants are in areas where employment levels are high, such as East Anglia, and the Home Office turned out to be correct in predicting that most would be young and keen to work.

Eighty per cent were under 34, and fewer than 1 per cent applied for unemployment benefit, of whom only 768 were deemed eligible. Fears that they would drive up waiting times for council housing have not been borne out. In two years, just 110 council homes have been let to east Europeans.

Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, claimed yesterday: "The accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union will lead to another wave of mass migration and a time when the UK can ill afford it."

[quote] By UCM on Sat 30-Dec-06 16:30:54
But aren't those countries huge, with room for development in them. UK is tiny and cannot properly house everyone here as it is.[/quote]

If a land cannot support more people, immigrants won't come, period.

[quote] By friskyfox on Sat 30-Dec-06 16:33:55
Britain is just too small. Australia is huge as is the USA, Canada.[/quote]

Australia is huge, but most of it is desert. Canada is huge, but most of it is frozen.

At least the immigrants from Eastern Europe are not going to make war on the natives, and reduce them to pitiful numbers as happened to the Red Indians in North America and the aborigines in Australia. All by immigrants mostly from the UK and surroundings.

'Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, claimed yesterday: "The accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union will lead to another wave of mass migration and a time when the UK can ill afford it." ' no axe to gring there of course, Mr farage? I personally perefer my quotes a little more unbiased (not a crit of the poster byw, more the Indie for not balancing it out).

Peacedove, you are quite right the Native Americans were decimated by immigration, although that largely occurred at a less enlightened time, pre-Wilberforce et al, when slavery (as an example of the extremes of behaviour) was rife and people believed non-whites to be worth less than themselves. A terrible, terrible view but at the same time, comtemporary with their lives. Also, Spain was successful in establishing the first permanent settlement at St. Augustine, Florida in 1565, whereas it took the Uk a few dacdes longer and the Dutch also were significant immigrants: your post makes it sound solely the fault of the UK emigrants.

My brother has a Bulgarian girlfriend who works 3 jobs, teaches English to new migrants and has funded herself through a psych degree at uni.
Why?
Because she wanted a better life, because her family in Bulgaria are dirt poor and too ill to work now and she also supports them.
Quite frankly her attitude to work and life, outstrips that of most people I know - my brother included.
She has faced such hostility (she has been here 6 years) that she fears so much another backlash with the anti Bulgarian/Romanian accession press.
We have such wealth in this country
But then I also came here for a better life so I would say that.

Very true sallystrawberry. I have just qualified as a nurse but cannot get a job. It has taken me 4 years in all to train, with doing an open university health course prior to the nursing course. I will have to sign on the dole or work for minimum wage in a nursing home. Its not fair.

To think 10 years ago this country was desparate for nurses hence the influx of phillipinos and indians. I hope you get a job soon sallystrawberry. its so frustrating and I totally sympathise with you. Good luck.

Nope Sally - you make some really good points and I sympathise with your situation. Totally agree that it's government policy that's at fault here, not individuals.

Message withdrawn

Peacy, I am sorry if it came out as anti-UK. You are right, the colonisers and decimaters (if such a word can be coined) were from many countries, and those were different times.