So explain to me how you & I benefit from the rise in immigration

[contentiouscat]

Please explain to me who except the already rich employers (and translators) are benefitting - im not trying to be contentious I would just like to understand.

They are cheap labour therefore why should a british employer pay a decent wage i.e enough for you and I to pay our mortgage when they can get an immigrant willing to live 20 to a house in substandard conditions. So wages will go down.

They dont pay much tax because they are on minimum wage plus are sending a lot of their wages out of the country.

They are entitled to healthcare and as this report says are costing the police money.
news.uk.msn.com/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=6167846

I also read yesterday that european immigrants are entitled to tax credits for their children who still live abroad (wtf), hospitals, police, school have to employ translators - of course this is all coming out of the piggy bank you and I have paid into for years and will continue to.

I just dont get it - SORRY!

Upwind, it's not a case of wanting to encourage immigration, it is a case of accepting that it has become necessary and finding a way of dealing with it. If I want carrots in the supermarket then I need someone to go and pick them - consumers have demanded that supermarkets drop their prices so low that farmers can't afford to paty more than the minimum. Your posts prove my point - conditions in much of Eastern Europe are so awful that living in substandard accomodation here, for little money, is preferable, whereas to British born people that is unacceptable b/c we expect better standards of living, and, if we are honest, nice jobs. My family lived the sort of lives that we now regard as unacceptable until my mum worked her way out. I saw a very interesting segment on Newsnight about the racial tension on an estate in Glasgow, and the point was made that at least part of it is b/c the immigrant families were working hard, often having two jobs, and getting their kids into university, whereas the local population had given up b/c they'd become apathetic due to Govt. handouts and a culture that people from the estate never improve themselves.

Ruty is right, there are some jobs that people born here have become conditioned not to do. Dh's farmer mate rears geese and chickens for Christmas, and he relies on migrant labour to prepare the birds. Another mate actually did a season with him, and said he earned more doing that than he did working in a bar. The fact is that most people here don't want to do farm work - it is hard, and most people prefer to stay on benefits.

Dh's family live in Romford, and you are right that the BNP will find rich pickings there. The latest story circulating is that the Eastern European (mostly Bosnian) women are trying to snatch babies.

Ahh surprised to find this is still going, not surprised to find that the PC brigade have started throwing out the "racism" chant as usual.

My query was genuine, ok we did eventually get off the subject but thats how conversations go in real life isnt it?

We live in a very small and beautiful green island it cannot cope with immgration at the current rate - I really dont want to see it totally covered in houses.

Eventually the benefits system needs to be adjusted where it isnt either you get all these benefits or if you work you lose them and get less - it should be possible to take a minimum wage job and still pay the bills.

SORRY but I do think those of you who think is OK to pay an immigrant less than us are EXPLOITING them...so they are grateful for it - its still not big or right. If they are earning the same as us, then if they are filling gaps in the market then FINE. If they are earning vastly less, living in sub-standard conditions, putting strains on our public services then it is WRONG WRONG WRONG.

IVE NEVER READ THE DAILY MAIL IN MY LIFE SO WTF was THAT about.

I took ds to hospital a few weeks ago. He was seen by a black doctor and referred to a Chinese specialist. They were fantastic.

Yes, well, of my three sections two were performed by immigrant doctors, except the first which was a crash performed by a British Muslim, who saved my dd1.

contentiouscat, I can only assume you never shop at Tesco, nor Gap, Asda, in fact never buy anything made in the Far East if you want to avoid exploitation. Take a look at worker conditions and pay in China - at least legal immigrants in this country get our minimum wage and Health & Safety laws as to working conditions.

I agree about the pressure of developement on the green spaces and countryside, but immigration is only a part of the problem - far more damaging is second home ownership, family breakdown and the fact that many family-sized homes are occupied by singles and couples, b/c they have the income to pay for them (or are retired).

And most farmers cannot afford to pay anyone more than they do, immigrants or British-born.

Startouchedtrinity - thanks for the response. I do agree with you but think that supermarket collusion and exploitation of farmers is a bigger issue, and government should have intervened long before now.

People would gladly do any job if compensated enough for it. I don't buy the notion that immigrants are needed to do unpleasant work.

I agree that immigration is almost being made into a scapegoat for the housing crisis. It is definitely a factor but probably nothing like as important as our planning system preventing us from building our own homes, poorly regulated buy-to-let making renting a nightmare, the selling off of social housing, greedy second home owners, cheap credit etc...

Most of all the people affected by the housing crisis are those who are not well-established here whether because they are poor, young, or immigrants themselves. So there is no real political will to tackle the issue. Lots of people feel rich because their home is suddenly "worth" more, meaning it would be impossible for a similar, but younger, family to afford. There is a lot of bitterness brewing and I really hope that we don't descend into real xenophobia as a result.

There is a report on the front page of the Guardian today about the closure of a pork handling factory in Thetford that has outraged me today.

The Tulip factory apparantly made 130 employees redundant in 2003 - and immediately replaced them with agency staff, many of them migrants, and on much lower terms and conditions. There were no pay rises for 3 years.

Now the factory has relocated most of it's work to a transnational Danish co in Cornwall and nearly 700 people regularly working for Tulip in Norfolk will now be unemployed. Tulip was the biggest employer in Thetford snce the Thermos factory closed and shifted to...China.

Now, my understanding of redundancy is that you cannot make a job redundant and then e-advertise that work - the whole point of redundancy is that the JOB no longer exists. How on earth were Tulip allowed to kick out 130 employees and then immediately replace the missing workers?

Tulip apparantly slice and pack bacon for Tesco and M&S...competitive pricing and no workers rights really do nhot benefit anyone. Not eben the migrants who acepted the exploitative work, in the end.

But none of that is the 'fault' of migration - it is the fault of the big supermarkets, the government in allowing that to happen, the greedy shareholders and Fat cat CEOs.

When I was young people used to complain about women taking mens jobs because employers paid women less. But that wasn't the fault of women - and hasn't helped women, still struggling to make up the pay gap 30 years or so after the equal pay act.

"Mr Reid said he wanted to change the culture of the debate and end the "daft, so-called politically correct notion that anybody who talks about immigration is somehow a racist".

politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,1838664,00.html

www.migrationwatchuk.org/papers/p_scotsman_23may06.asp

www.migrationwatchuk.org/outline_of_the_problem.asp

Agree Blu.

And again for goodness sake it is racist to generalize about an entire group of people in derogatory terms, eg saying they do shoddy work, they take council houses, etc. This does not mean immigration does not have problems and cannot be discussed. Blimey.

But Ruty maybe the points system is structured so that immigrants do take a large proportion of the council houses?

Why on Earth is it racist to suggest that?

Can I just check, because this always intrigues me on this subject - when all these folk like me who emigrated for economic reasons (aka to get a good job) decide to come home do we have to write and ask first? wouldn't want to disrupt things over there after all.

Like it or not Britain is part of the world, it sells services and products abroad, sends troops abroad, gets involved in political matters from Myanmar to Bahrain. If you want to be part of that kind of country, the kind that plays on a global stage, then you need to accept that you also need insight, labour, and intelligence from around the world.

The shame is that the UK is treating economic immigrants with the same disdain the Gulf states treat the so called lower caste nationalities.

Do you know that for certain Upwind? I don't think it is true. And I think just saying it without knowing the facts must have an odd motive.

There is also another side to migration for work.

Thanks to the EU which is responsible for the immigrants people seem to be talking about on this thread, the whole of Europe is now open for UK workers to move to, work in, buy up cheap property in etc etc!

Though I appreciate that the people who feel they are losing out because of migration TO the UK do not seem to be the same people benefitting from new opportinities outside the UK.

I didn't say immigrants do jobs that British people consider beneath them! Employers - like the factory Blu mentioned - exploit immigration so they can pay below a living wage. The poor bloody immigrants end up living 20 to a room or even in garden sheds (that really happened, in Slough). And British workers are out of a job.

Yes i think we can all agree that is not good. Raising wages would be a good thing. How you ensure immigrants don't get the jobs however, is a different thing entirely. As is trying to recruit British young people for jobs like fruit picking and cleaning, even if they were better paid.

Upwind - Custy knows more about housing than you and I and said it is given out to those most needy. Any Brits at the back of the list are there cos they are less needy -not cos they are Brits.

Personally I am a bit pissed off with this tendency to brand anyone who disagrees with the op as being a member of the PC Brigade. I don't label anyone who has a different opinion to me as being racist (though I think some posters on here have dubious views) yet it's ok for them to sling mud

I have no objections to anyone disageeing with me, if they do it in an intelligent and non confrontational way which most people on here have

I do take umbrage though when people start saying just asking the question is racism while we still live in a democracy I am afraid no one can tell me what I can and cannot discuss.

Re the ethical shopping question - I would love to forgoe the superstores to shop at my local butchers, greengrocers and corner store, unfortuntely I have to get in a car if I want to buy anything

I echo the sentiments expressed in the first sentence of your most recent post.

When i was growing up there were three of us living in a one bedroom flat above a butchers shop. My mother was on the council housing list for 7 years and still never got anywhere. I realise we weren't top of the priority list but it was appauling that the list for a house was so long that we had to suffer in a tiny one bedroom flat. I also realise that not everyone on that list were immigrants but i am sure there were some so why should someone who has come here from another country for whatever reason get priority over a suffering family who are English?

I'm sorry but i think if you want to come and live in this Country that's fine but i think you should be able to prove that you can support yourself for at least 5 years like you have to in Australia. While i agree immigrants do good for this country in many ways, we are screwing ourselves over because as it stands at the moment we cannot support everybody like we are trying to.

You do not have to prove you can support yourself in Australia at all. I arrived with £800 and a job to go to but when it all went wrong, the job that is I would have been given financial support. Luckily I didn't ever need it as I got another job but don't look to Oz as an example they put mothers and children in detention centre's surely that isn't right.
Frankly there are enough dead beat "brits" i wouldn't mind swapping for hard working eastern europeans.
In my opinion you should get a max of 5 years benefits and if you haven't got your shit together in that time then there really is no place for you in modern society.

All i am saying is if i went to live in another country i would want to be able to support myself. If things went seriously tits up i would probably come back to Britain and let the country that i have paid thousands of pounds in taxes etc to help me while i found my feet again.

Yes but you are comparing choosing to migrate from one rich country to another, it just isn't a fair comparrison. A chicken and a donkey might support me in one country but i'd find it inadequet in central london.
Most immigrants come to better themselves and if they give the natives a kick up the arse then good for them.

A kick up the ass how?

Backtobasics - you think that immigrants are less worthy of support regardless of their circumstances?