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!

Blu - im very pleased for you but for every story like yours I could tell you 5 or 6 where they do a crap job, leave halfway through and DH ends up picking up the pieces.

Oh and Blu lets hope you dont have a problem with the job in a couple of years because they will probably have effed off back to Poland and wont be about to sort it out.

contentiouscat do you mean back to thier job in IT?

"because the general public would rather get a cheaper job done by an unqualified Pole."

why are you so sure they're "unqualified"???

my DH could (if he felt had the desire to) start his own carpentry business - he's excellent at it - and came very close to starting his own business in his home country because he's qualified to (he even taught Woodwork when he was a teacher). Just because they're foreign doesn't mean they're not qualified.......

Some of the jobs are jobs that the indigenous population is not willing to undertake or do not have the skills to undertake. So we benefit from that IMMEDIATELY. Examples include the NHS, cleaning, plumbing etc

Our pensioners benefit NOW because the tax and national insurance pays for pensions. The UK has a pay-as-you-go system for pensions. We have a demographic problem in that there are a lot of elderly people (with the proportion set to INCREASE) and we need to fund their pensions. Immigrants are helping to do that and without them, pensioner poverty would be a lot worse.

There are benefits to us from being a liberal open nation. We can all go to other states and do the same, and many do.

Finally there are benefits to those of us who stay at home, because our culture is enriched by diversity.

If you want to see what happens when countries put the barriers up - look at Burma and Korea. Their economies falter and fail, the population is very poor etc

I suppose I could say it more concisely by saying economic growth is not a zero sum game. So by having conditions that are right for economic growth - yes the immigrants benefit but they do not benefit at our expense. They enrich us too.

the pensions one is interesting - as while migrants workers are paying taxes - and therefore funding pensions - a very large number will never benefit from a pension here as they'll have long since returned to their home country

QoQ - I see we are arguing the same line, again!

two points

1. the benefits of immigration to indigenous workers are often hidden while the costs are all too apparent. We can see that it is harder to get a job in X place or that there is larger demand for housing but we don't notice the benefits (pensions, lower prices etc.) so much.

2. while on average uk is better off with the rise in immigration, there is no doubt that some people may be worse off. Some of this may be a fault of policy (not dispersing money across regions for services etc.) and some may be because migrant labour is concentrated in a few industries. Answer- increase taxes and redistribute money NOT stop immigration

I was chatting to the caretaker of a school we hire in the holidays. They have had problems with their cleaners for years. Contract cleaners not turning up, shoddy workmanship, basically not caring whether the job was done or not. Two Poles went to work for the cleaning company (at the same wages as their British counterparts) now the school is gleaming. They were so impressed that they have employed these two people directly.

Not the Poles fault if pride in their work has deprived two British cleaners of jobs and the 800 or so children who attend that school now have much cleaner facilities.

well contentious cat my immigrant husband is doing well in his business because people know they can trust him and his colleagues to do the job well and safely - unlike a lot of the British born people around him who either take the money and run or do half hearted shoddy work. And believe me they are quite a lot of British cowboys out there, my dh is often having to pick up the pieces after them. So can't agree with your generalisation.

I know people who have used Polish builders and were stunned by the speed and quality of their work, they were so used to being ripped off by British builders.

Ruty as i know a lot of builders who do not rip people of I cannot agree with your generalisation.

we could keep going round and round.........

"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?"

Well i wasn't talking about a bloke who has 30 years experience in a trade. I was talking about the immogrants who come here and are willing to take on any job that alot of English people consider benieth them like cleaning toilets etc. It seems the older generation are willing to get stuck in but the younger 'have it all now' generation are leaving school and not filtering into work life.

Also i stand by my opinion that you should only be able to claim job seekers allowance for up to 1 month because no, it isn't always a case of being lazy, but if you are trually deperate for a job then you will take on any job, even the shittiest ones, and even if it is just tempery while you carry on looking for a better job. I have taken many on many crap jobs while still looking for something better.

oh good for you 2shoes you better let me know who you are si I can recommend them to all my jaded friends who have been ripped off by British builders.

who they are

presumably no one wants curbs on British people working abroad?

Just to add to that, today i am stuck indoors to answer the phone because we have a job advert in the paper. So far i have had a very unenthusiastic girl who sounded like she was just going through the motions, a lady in her 50s who sounded lovely and really made the effort to sell herself to me, two guys who sounded equally miserable as the first girl. Then a couple of foriegn women who sounded eger and willing.

By the end of today i will probably have wanted to slam my head in a door. The younger generation don't seem to make any effort to sell themselves to a could be future employer, i don't know why? They don't even bother to sound polite on the telephone.

One call today:

I have just explained the job

ME: Would you like to come in for an interview?

X: Yeah alright

ME: Ok. The interviews are taking place on Saturday.

X: Oh, i don't do Saturdays, can't i come in next week?

ME: No because we are doing them Saturday to hopefully get a Monday start.

X: How about today then?

ME: I'm afraid they are being done on Saturday because he (dp) is very busy between now and then.

X: Oh alright then.

Puts phone down.

When your applying for a job you do what the employer asks when coming for an interview or you leave it. You don't try and get them to fit around you. Makes me wanna scream!!!

Good point, ruty!

What are all those 'Places in the Sun' people going to do when no one wants them as immigrants?

I don't think English people think of themselves as being immogrants when they go abroad.

Well on my planet, house prices have long since had anything to do with salaries whether you an immigrant or not. Meanwhile, the department that I work in (pretty run of the mill accounts department) wouldn't be able to function if it couldn't recruit people who weren't born in the UK - this isn't for minimum wage jobs, its for qualified middle management level. As far as I know, these people are all paying taxes and none of them are living 20 to a house.

I obviously don't live on your planet, so I can't comment on what things are like there.

is that Spain MP? Why is there a shortage of Spanish people at middle management level then?

Oh and my Dh was on JSA for 6 months and applied for 300 jobs, attended 100 interviews but it was so clear that he was ill (Dr wouldn't vertify him) that no employer in their right mind was going to emply him- couldn't have tried harder though. Duringt hat time I gave birth, so no JSA and we've had been stuffed.

A mild language disorder? So she appled for a job envolving telephone work