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!

what's wrong with people having translators to help them??

If it wasn't for SAWS (seasonal agriculture workers scheme) most of the fruit grown in the 'Garden of England' (Kent) would remain on the tree/bush to rot - in fact round here it often does, it's heartbreaking to see.

We are importing fruit and can't pick our own due to lack of workers. Although now with the expansion of the EU SAWS are not so common.

Do you know any 16 yr old who would work 8am - 4 or 5 pm with 30 mins lunch for around £4 per hour, no food/accom/transport or protective clothing provided?

That's the problem, though, Alycat, that manual labour no longer pays a living wage. So we have to bring in migrant labourers. Which makes the problem worse because the rate for the job keeps falling. Madness. Fruit picking was never a secure job that would keep you in the lap of luxury, but the fact that now it can only be done by someone in shared accommodation who has only very basic living expenses is surely wrong, wrong, wrong?

But we are all to blame for this, if we only ate seasonal, locally produced items and were prepared to pay a fair price for them - and the shops pay the producer well in turn - we would not have quite this dire situation.

Market forces (ie you and me) demand cheap foods and the result of which is farmers making a loss - but that's a whole new thread.

The takeaway was just one end of the spectrum I used as an example. The other was a large tourist attraction that brings people into the area(owner also part owns a lap dancing club but that's another story!!!)but he lets school PTA have said water park for free hire for fundraising.

Sorry I never got back to this as I had to go and help with reading at school

The article on MSN triggered the question but Saturday night I was talking to a close friend of hubbys - he works for a large national company with good profits during the week he had a conversation with his manager who said "why would I employ a brit with their wage expectations when I can get a pole for a fraction of the cost"

Now unless we are going to go back living in the kind of conditions where the whole family lived in one room - you and I with £165,000 mortgages around our necks cannot survive on "£4 per hour, no food/accom/transport or protective clothing provided"

Arent these profitable companies well able to pay a decent wage for a good days work, isnt it just greed and exploitation that they dont, should we live in a country where this is acceptable?

This question wasnt about "race" it was about the long term health of the country.

I do feel though that to remain in the UK there should be a requirement that you at least speak English - the majority who came during the 60 & 70s and have made a success of living here managed to, this whole translator fiasco is ridiculous.

I think something defonitly needs to change. Immogrants are actually dare i say it, helping this Country. They are taking on the jobs that able bodied Englishmen consider benieth them and as long as the government carry on paying out stupid benefits like 'job seekers allowance' (which should only be paided out for a maximam of 1 month imo) the lazy gits will continue to do nothing and still get money for it.

So immogrants will do any job because they are not fussy and the employer will continue to pay minimum wage so the immogrants and the employers are happy. We cannot blame immogrants for the mess we have gotten ourselves into, we can blame the lazy English people who just wanna sponge and do nothing and we can blame the government for allowing the lazy English people to sponge and do nothing.

Since we got miass inflix of Poles in Bath, the buses are running oin time

IcingOnTheCake so how does a bloke with 30 yrs expierence in a trade get a job when they have all been taken by imigrants...
not always a case of being lazy when you are on job seekers. and have you any idea how little money you get on job seekers?

Dont get me wrong im not saying the immigrants are in the wrong - I thinks its wrong that the rich and fat are getting richer & fatter off of their hard work. But there is a certain wage below which you cannot survive if you own your own home - what are those Brits who do work and are now being undercut by cheaper labour meant to do, lose the house and move into a bedit with the family?

2 shoes gets where I am coming from, there are now British workers who are working for a fraction of what they were earning even 3 years ago but their outgoings havent gone down, if anything they have gone up.

Spot on, cat!

And it's not just those who own their own home. Rents are not exactly cheap here, socialised housing with subsidised rents are very very scarce in most areas.

If I were a fat cat we could employ a group of Polish workers pay them the £30 a day, instead of £100 for a Brit

Maybe im a mug but my conscience wouldnt let me do it - although there are plenty around here who do and are taking hubbys trade.

I dont know Fio - how would you feel if you were struggling to pay your mortgage because of it?

fio yes as he has trained to be a laywer. I do wonder howmay people now working on building sites who can't speak english can kepp to H&s

CC - the answer to that is that the Polish workers should be paid more by the people who employ them - not that they should not be here, isn't it?

Ah, but what happened to the Unions...that would be Thatcher, wouldn't it?

Blu you have a point if they were paid the same as thier british counterparts then it would be fairer on them and give the brits a chance. so it would be down to skill not price.

Exactly, Blu!

A fat cat shouldn't be allowed to pay that Polish worker £70 less than he pays the British person, forcing that Pole to live away from his/her family in cramped accommodations eating ramen noodles from Lidl.

I have no problems with people coming here to work if they are playing on an even field with us but they are not and pretty soon you will have qualified tradesmen without jobs because the general public would rather get a cheaper job done by an unqualified Pole.

Because they are getting away with it, CC. The government isn't stopping them from doing so because NuLabour sits a shade to the left of Thatcherism.

Hardly a week goes by here without some blurb in the news about a rogue landlord who had 15+ Polish workers living all cramped up in some tiny flat and charging them all not exactly cheap rent.

A lot of times these tenants have little grasp of English and are being taken advantage of and don't realise the conditions they are living under are illegal.

Many are too frightened to complain.

Did anyone see all those people living in garden sheds in Slough? Completely unaware that their landlord is acting illegally?

I don't think it's entirely fare to blame these people. Many have made a heart-breaking decision to leave behind their families in order to try to improve that family's life.

CC - I speak as someone who has ahd a cheaper - though not cheap - job done by very skilled and qualified Poles who turned up when they said they would, stayed until the job was finished and did the job properley so that there were no subesquent leaks, cracks and fuck-ups.

Sorry - but a lot of the eagerness to use some new-citizen tradespeople is because in many trades workers have been very highly paid (because of demand outstripping supply - perhaps because so many, once in their 40s seem to eff off to Spain and live a life of luxury on huge savings), hard to come by and a high ration turn out to be cowboys. I sympathise with your situation, and hope it all turns out well for your DH - but while one popular theory derides imigrant workers, the Long Suffering british Client has another (perhaps stereotyped and overgeneralised) picture in their head.

blu what a shame you were just talking sense then you came out with that. strange how all hhs contacts bar one are still working in this country.