Immigration - A few thoughts

[KeyboardJockey]

I am not too sure why economic immigrants need to be defended in the way they are sometimes. Refugees, yes. Asylum seekers, yes. But economic immigrants? It seems slightly wrong-headed to me to defend people that move to gain an economic upperhand, to take advantage of strong exchange rates, so they can get ahead in their own country, to be defended the same way as one would a tortured Iranian dissident.

In many ways, EU8ers are just the same as Aussies or South Africans. They are not vulnerable, imo; the more vulnerable people in the equation are the British workers that depend upon trades or manual labour for their living. The EU8ers have made a choice to come to Britain to make money. Yes, unemployment can be severe in EU8 countries, running at about 18%, I think, in Poland, but the UK also has employment-deficient zones where people do not have the finance nor education to move abroad and take a manual job for a good wage.

The lack of ability to regenerate areas and educate people in vulnerable UK communities so they can find 'living wage' work is our problem. It exists here, we have allowed it to come to pass, it is within our political remit, and, in some ways, we are part of a nation that has allowed it to happen. The economic circumstances of Poles, Slovakians, et al is not our problem in the same way.

I do feel that questions over immigration pass the buck of responsibility for the legacy of unemployment in some UK areas. It is as though we are defending the rights of nice (culturally middle-class, many Polish migrants would be viewed this way in British socio-terms) people with good educations from another political system, and a forethought for making a quick buck, to screw the workers in our own society.

Oh shit. I used the word 'workers'.

Fuck me just as I was about to abandon the thread along comes a juggernaut full of common sense.

 

[kyser_soze]

Fuck it, people should be allowed to work where they want to work. My beef with your attitude is that it's got fuck all to do with supporting fugees and everything to do with little Englandism.

You talk about reducing economic migration, are you about to try and stop the half million brits who up sticks and leave every year to be economic migrants elsewhere, usually taking full advantage of the strong £ in order to buy properties outright, or are you only concerned about poor economic migrants coming to the UK and doing jobs that locals can't be fucked to learn? Before anyone screams at me for that, if there is so much determination to work in the ranks of the UKs unemployed, why are there thousands of Phillipino, Thai, African and EU8 workers at ALL levels, from porters to Consultants, in the UKs biggest employer, the NHS?

Why take on someone in dire need as opposed to someone who is relatively skilled or wealthy? Fuck the refugees, bring on the economically active.

 

[Spion]

Weren't you talking about emigrating?

I thought KBJ was going to live in Israel, no? That well known refuge from violence and racism

 

[SpookyFrank]

It seems slightly wrong-headed to me to defend people that move to gain an economic upperhand

Wasn't so long ago that Britain was conquering large parts of the world to gain an economic upper hand. A bunch of people moving house seems like pretty small beer in comparison. It's the economic system we invented and the legacy of our colonial ambitions and those of the rest of Europe which created the global economic imbalance we see today, an imbalance which migration will naturally act to counter in some small way as surely as water flows downhill.

Just a thought like.

 

[Spion]

Your problem KBJ is that you want to create a utopia. Literally something that is not possible given the way society and economy is fundamentally organised. You base your vision on a golden age drawn from a relatively short post war period when protectionism and Britishness and social cohesion were very much a product of the time, and it's not unlike the BNP's vision, but without the red, white and blue and racist tinges.

 

[KeyboardJockey]

I thought KBJ was going to live in Israel, no? That well known refuge from violence and racism

Aha but I would be going there to help it become less violent and racist. It could be argued that the violence and the racism is a reaction to the insecure situation the state of Israel is viz a viz their neighbours.

What is scary is I'm seeing people here becoming less tolerant because they feel that they are under threat or under pressure from incomers. This does have a negative effect on the way that those fleeing persecution are percieved.

As a side issue if we are going to restrict economic migration more in the future then we should really a) make more room for refugees and b) make the process for naturalisation for those migrants we do accept less onerous.

 

[KeyboardJockey]

Your problem KBJ is that you want to create a utopia. Literally something that is not possible given the way society and economy is fundamentally organised. You base your vision on a golden age drawn from a relatively short post war period when protectionism and Britishness and social cohesion were very much a product of the time, and it's not unlike the BNP's vision, but without the red, white and blue and racist tinges.

Then maybe what we need is a United British Democratic Party (I'm deliberately avoiding the term New Party )that will tackle these issues without the racism that the bnp have managed to taint talk of immigration control with.

I don't care if someong is black white green brown yellow or whatever just as long as they are not taking the work from the hands of a British worker.

 

[tarannau]

At what point in Britain's past do you believe that people were more tolerant of foreign immigrants then?

40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s?

 

[KeyboardJockey]

At what point in Britain's past do you believe that people were more tolerant of foreign immigrants then?

40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s?

You can't pin tolerance onto a particular decade it has waxed and waned according to the circumstances that the immigrants have come into the uk in, the general economic situation, how willing the people are to listen to extremists, peoples general feeling of security and foriegn policy issues.

People have been welcoming and unwelcoming at different times for different reasons.

 

[kyser_soze]

I don't care if someong is black white green brown yellow or whatever just as long as they are not taking the work from the hands of a British worker.

Don't you see the contradiction inherent in this statement?

 

[Spion]

Aha but I would be going there to help it become less violent and racist. It could be argued that the violence and the racism is a reaction to the insecure situation the state of Israel is viz a viz their neighbours.

It's no surprise thief should feel insecure with regard to the people whose homes and property it stole (but that's another thread). Moving there would be frying pan to fire, IMO, and based on no less a utopian vision than you have for Britain

 

[audiotech]

A reasonably intelligent Brit (plasterer and therefore worker ) I know went off to Spain about two years ago. A friend of his family was earning a nice £10,000 commission on every house sold through an agent. Sold up and went off to seek his fortune Dick Whittington stylee.

Twelve months later, after a free-fall of the housing market there, he's stuck in a place he doesn't want to be and can't sell without losing a wodge of loot in the process.

He wants to get away from all the moaning Brits (KJ, why not pick this complex in Spain, you'll like it there ) and buy a house in the local village to integrate into Spanish culture, but he can't. He's scrabbling about for work and along with his partner relying on their savings, which are dwindling fast.

There are others who are in an even worse situation, with people's houses being demolished, because of illegal builds and corruption all around.

Good this emigrating lark innit.

 

[KeyboardJockey]

A reasonably intelligent Brit (plasterer and therefore worker ) I know went off to Spain about two years ago. A friend of his family was earning a nice £10,000 commission on every house sold through an agent. Sold up and went off to seek his fortune Dick Whittington stylee.

Twelve months later, after a free-fall of the housing market there, he's stuck in a place he doesn't want to be and can't sell without losing a wodge of loot in the process.

He wants to get away from all the moaning Brits (KJ, why not pick this complex in Spain, you'll like it there ) and buy a house in the local village to integrate into Spanish culture, but he can't. He's scrabbling about for work and along with his partner relying on their savings, which are dwindling fast.

There are others who are in an even worse situation, with people's houses being demolished, because of illegal builds and corruption all around.

Good this emigrating lark innit.

Got ex pat and Spanish friends who are saying that there are problems there with housing / work etc etc

Fuck met Brits over there who moan far worse than I do.

 

[Spion]

Then maybe what we need is a United British Democratic Party (I'm deliberately avoiding the term New Party )that will tackle these issues without the racism that the bnp have managed to taint talk of immigration control with.

I wonder if it's possible at all to have a party that's trongly based on immigration controls and for it not to be racist. It seems to me that if you make a big deal about it that's the kind of people you'll attract.

So, who would this new part be based on? The most powerful social force in this society which supports the major parties is large scale capital and it doesn't want to control immigration right now. When it has done it has tended to encourage racism as well.

What about the middling and poorer mass of people? They tend to be either racist by default or sort of against it, which means you get either the BNP or the Lib Dems (tho I'm sure the latter are funded by large capital to some extent)

 

[audiotech]

Then maybe what we need is a United British Democratic Party (I'm deliberately avoiding the term New Party )that will tackle these issues without the racism that the bnp have managed to taint talk of immigration control with.

I don't care if someong is black white green brown yellow or whatever just as long as they are not taking the work from the hands of a British worker.

Membership of the 'Voice of Change', the split from the BNP, might be more up your street KJ?

 

[KeyboardJockey]

Membership of the 'Voice of Change', the split from the BNP, might be more up your street KJ?

Nope and neither the League of Empire Loyalists either. I know my fash

 

[Dissident Junk]

You talk about reducing economic migration, are you about to try and stop the half million brits who up sticks and leave every year to be economic migrants elsewhere, usually taking full advantage of the strong £ in order to buy properties outright

Personally, I think there is an issue here. The flood of British expats into parts of Greece has pushed the price of housing so high that locals can no longer afford to buy or even rent. When your salary equates to £600 a month, and a two bed flat is the equivalent of £110K because Brits have sold their homes after a period of gross house price inflation and paid over the odds for houses in your home town, then it isn't exactly all sweets and candy. And this is one reason, as well as others, why Brit expats are loathed -- yes, loathed -- in some parts of Greece and Cyprus.

or are you only concerned about poor economic migrants coming to the UK and doing jobs that locals can't be fucked to learn? Before anyone screams at me for that, if there is so much determination to work in the ranks of the UKs unemployed, why are there thousands of Phillipino, Thai, African and EU8 workers at ALL levels, from porters to Consultants, in the UKs biggest employer, the NHS?

Why do you immediately assume economic migrants are 'poor'? Was the Aussie marketing executive at my old workplace poor? Is the Jordanian doctor working in the NHS poor? Is the Pole with a degree in engineering who has come over to pick spuds for double his salary back home poor? Or does he just want to buy a flat outside Krakov?

A lot of this issue is about economic disparity in currency values and social disparity in educational attainment. If I can earn £10 an hour working as a doctor in my home town, but £40 a hour working three hours away as a waitress, which one do I choose? If I am young and carefree, I choose the £40 per hour.

The problem is that here I am assuming there are no barriers to choosing the £40, say, such as language fluency. If I come from a system where I have been educated to speak three languages, I am fine. No barriers. If I do not, as is much the case in the UK, I do not have the same equality of access.

Globalisation has torn down geographical barriers, but cemented others, namely, educational. And the UK has consistently failed to prepare its citizens for this new paradigm. We are still arguing about mixed ability, setting, streaming, grammars, comprehensives -- ie. the circumstances in which we educate -- rather than concentrating on preparing young people to operate effectively in this new no-borders Europe.

The NHS situation is interesting. There is curently a re-evaluation of foreign doctors' qualifications going as *ahem* there is some evidence that there are rather a few blaggers, and some qualifications have been bought. They have also tightened the foreign doctors scheme, as we now have lots of newly trained British doctors hanging around whining.

The nursing thing is unusual, and it would be a tricky one to unpick. There seems to be some odd misunderstandings somewhere along the line: I recall on a Channel 4 Dispatches, the head of a medical organisation, could have been the BMA, saying that Britain needed migrants to work as nurses because nursing was "so poorly paid. It pays only about £24K a year" (I fell off my chair at this point; that's six grand more than the average full-time female salary in the UK).

I think there could be confusion over what is now paid to public sector staff in some areas, and this dilutes employment capture. Some public sector wages are now higher than comparable jobs in the private sector, but I know many in my generation and my parent's generation still assume public sector wages are low, like they were in the 80s.

I do admit that we have a significant number of hopeless cases in the UK though -- people who are utterly unemployable. The trick is to make sure their children don't end up the same way.

Why take on someone in dire need as opposed to someone who is relatively skilled or wealthy? Fuck the refugees, bring on the economically active.

I can't believe you just said fuck the refugees, Ky. Do you really mean that? I mean, really?

 

[Spion]

Nope and neither the League of Empire Loyalists either. I know my fash

My grandad was BUF too, BTW - and one of Mosley's bodyguard according to family legend. Luckily the old cunt died way before he had chance to see how I turned out, tho one of his sons once castigated my mother for bringing me into the world

 

[northernhord]

Bolton has taken on a large amount of migrant workers and asylum seekers/refugees during the last five years and is currently taking in asylum seekers from Burma and Korea, this has had an effect, Bolton had its first BNP bloke standing in 2007, he managed a good few hundred votes in the local elections.

There is much inter-ethnic animosity going down here, Polish and other Eastern European workers do not like Bolton's Pakistani Muslims, they are seen as Lazy cos many of the men will only work as Taxi drivers so that their religious life can be fully accomodated.

Somalian migrants arent so keen on Pakistani Muslims either, its coming to something when Bolton Police ran an anti-racist football competition in which Bangladeshi, somalian and local Muslims played against each other, one of the local old bill commented that it wasnt white lads in Bolton who werent getting on with people from different countries.
Since the football tournament there has been two racist killings of Pakistani lads and one killing that has been linked to Racism.

I think the the mismanagment of migration hastened by greedy companies wanting cheap Labour is having a detremental effect on all communities, the shit will hit the fan big time as we crawl into recession.

 

[Dissident Junk]

Northernhord, I second your post.

I think what one of the worrying things about the left, and I include myself in that, is that it tends to operate on systems of understanding that are becoming out of date very quickly: namely, that the problem with cultural faultlines lies between the English and everyone else. But that is really no longer the whole picture.

 

[Blagsta]

Nope and neither the League of Empire Loyalists either. I know my fash

You seem to be turning into one.

 

[becky p]

Northernhord, I second your post.

I think what one of the worrying things about the left, and I include myself in that, is that it tends to operate on systems of understanding that are becoming out of date very quickly: namely, that the problem with cultural faultlines lies between the English and everyone else. But that is really no longer the whole picture.

A lot of older people in their 30s 40s and 50s, really do seem to be stuck in the past.
Drawing parralells between very different waves of immigration seems at best misplaced and at worse,wilfully ignorant.

 

[Spion]

I think what one of the worrying things about the left, and I include myself in that, is that it tends to operate on systems of understanding that are becoming out of date very quickly: namely, that the problem with cultural faultlines lies between the English and everyone else. But that is really no longer the whole picture.

A lot of older people in their 30s 40s and 50s, really do seem to be stuck in the past.
Drawing parralells between very different waves of immigration seems at best misplaced and at worse,wilfully ignorant.

What does the left think?

And why is it wrong/wilfully ignorant?

It's all very well complaining 'things are different now' but how are they different and what should be the response?

 

[Spion]

There is much inter-ethnic animosity going down here, Polish and other Eastern European workers do not like Bolton's Pakistani Muslims, they are seen as Lazy cos many of the men will only work as Taxi drivers so that their religious life can be fully accomodated.

Somalian migrants arent so keen on Pakistani Muslims either

Is this really that different from the ways things have always been? There was always some AfroCarib-Asian animosity as well as inter-communal rivalries within the Asian communities.

its coming to something when Bolton Police ran an anti-racist football competition in which Bangladeshi, somalian and local Muslims played against each other, one of the local old bill commented that it wasnt white lads in Bolton who werent getting on with people from different countries.

Do you believe that?

Since the football tournament there has been two racist killings of Pakistani lads and one killing that has been linked to Racism.

Who's suspected/what circumstances?

I think the the mismanagment of migration hastened by greedy companies wanting cheap Labour is having a detremental effect on all communities

And it was always the case. The point is to make the bosses pay more. The more we complain about immigration without demanding the bosses pay for services for ALL the more we let the rich off the hook

 

[travellerlife]

A lot of this issue is about economic disparity in currency values and social disparity in educational attainment. If I can earn £10 an hour working as a doctor in my home town, but £40 a hour working three hours away as a waitress, which one do I choose? If I am young and carefree, I choose the £40 per hour.

The problem is that here I am assuming there are no barriers to choosing the £40, say, such as language fluency. If I come from a system where I have been educated to speak three languages, I am fine. No barriers. If I do not, as is much the case in the UK, I do not have the same equality of access.

Globalisation has torn down geographical barriers, but cemented others, namely, educational. And the UK has consistently failed to prepare its citizens for this new paradigm. We are still arguing about mixed ability, setting, streaming, grammars, comprehensives -- ie. the circumstances in which we educate -- rather than concentrating on preparing young people to operate effectively in this new no-borders Europe.

Those are three excellent paragraphs, agree wholeheartedly.... good post.

 

[northernhord]

Is this really that different from the ways things have always been? There was always some AfroCarib-Asian animosity as well as inter-communal rivalries within the Asian communities.

True, but its more intenstified now as the community is far more diverse than a decade ago, Bolton isnt a weathy town by any stretch and a lot of people are really struggling here, people from all communities

Do you believe that?

Who's suspected/what circumstances?
Not sure about the circumstances, I,ll keep on Bolton Evening news for Info

And it was always the case. The point is to make the bosses pay more. The more we complain about immigration without demanding the bosses pay for services for ALL the more we let the rich off the hook

Exactly, Ive always argued that its big business and industry that are benefiting from economic migration

 

[ViolentPanda]

No far far from it.


The only bile I'm seeing on here is coming from the pro immigration mob. You can want to be an economic migrant whilst still being able to see the problems it can cause in some circumstances.

Who's "the pro-immigration mob"?

 

[ViolentPanda]

I am not too sure why economic immigrants need to be defended in the way they are sometimes. Refugees, yes. Asylum seekers, yes. But economic immigrants? It seems slightly wrong-headed to me to defend people that move to gain an economic upperhand, to take advantage of strong exchange rates, so they can get ahead in their own country, to be defended the same way as one would a tortured Iranian dissident.

It's my experience that many people who should know better tend to conflate all types of immigrants, economic, Commonwealth and refugees, into a homogeneous mass, applying criticisms they pick up of one type of immigrant onto all immigrants. This can be quite dangerous, as we're already seeing some victimisation of eastern and central Europeans for "stealing jobs", "claiming benefits" and other such ill-informed bollocks.

 

[KeyboardJockey]

My grandad was BUF too, BTW - and one of Mosley's bodyguard according to family legend. Luckily the old cunt died way before he had chance to see how I turned out, tho one of his sons once castigated my mother for bringing me into the world

Dagenham will never want for electricity. My grandad must be spinning in his grave to see me now. The times I had to sit and listen to his warped lectures on what great hero Rudolf Hess was

 

[KeyboardJockey]

It's my experience that many people who should know better tend to conflate all types of immigrants, economic, Commonwealth and refugees, into a homogeneous mass, applying criticisms they pick up of one type of immigrant onto all immigrants. This can be quite dangerous, as we're already seeing some victimisation of eastern and central Europeans for "stealing jobs", "claiming benefits" and other such ill-informed bollocks.

I wholeheartedly agree about the conflation of all types of migrants. Its wrong and dangerous. Thats why we need to prioritise those fleeing oppression and get our own unwaged and forgotten people doing the jobs that are currently being done by economic migrants.