The immigrants aren't going home, they're signing on.

[lightng]

Even when migrants do a good job, and I think most Poles/Czechs do, it is a way to duck real problems we have, like forcing some of the welfare dependent back into employment.

I do think you're onto something there!

[Rantor]

Well we have much lower unemployment than the rest of the EU and importing workers was a huge benefit to our economy.

Actually, I'm not that bothered about the immigrant good/bad thing, its more the whole EU thing. We keep shooting ourselves in the foot by arguing for exceptions and then doing everything that we sign up to whereas the other countries play a subtler game to protect their own interests.

[Solidec]

Why don't governments implement state funded apprenticeships to skill up the benefit scroungers. Why do we need eastern european construction workers? The pay is good, we have plenty of layabouts on benefits in this country. Pay them to train instead of paying them to sit on their sofa playing console games and we may require less skilled and unskilled labour from overseas.

WHY ARE POLITICIANS SO DARNED USELESS! AARAAAAAARRRRGGHHHHHH!

[DieScum]

We keep shooting ourselves in the foot by arguing for exceptions and then doing everything that we sign up to whereas the other countries play a subtler game to protect their own interests.

I think it's more that allowing immigration for EE was/is in our best interests. They say it added 1% to GDP or something.

I can think of a few exceptions - eurozone, schengen, in the past the social charter. The UK even gets that huge rebate from the budget which, in the expanded EU, is a massive budgetary exception.

You argument doesn't stand up to any scrutiny.

[Rantor]

I think it's more that allowing immigration for EE was/is in our best interests. They say it added 1% to GDP or something.

I can think of a few exceptions - eurozone, schengen, in the past the social charter. The UK even gets that huge rebate from the budget which, in the expanded EU, is a massive budgetary exception.

You argument doesn't stand up to any scrutiny.

I'm not talking about immigration and you have just listed some of the things I was refering to. I would concur that the rebate is a good thing but not half as good as the CAP is to others.

My point is that Britain is, and always will be, marginalised and embroiled in confrontation while the other nations play a different game. FFS, Britain actually complies with the directives/laws we have sign up to - this is not the norm from what I have experienced.

[Cyberman]

I can think of a few exceptions - eurozone, schengen, in the past the social charter. The UK even gets that huge rebate from the budget which, in the expanded EU, is a massive budgetary exception.

Please inform how huge this 'huge rebate' is since Blair handed a sizeable annual chunk back just before he left office in order to try to win concessions on the CAP(incidentally, he failed!) ? I don't think it is as huge as you think it is bearing in mind our annual membership is estimated to soon be 55 Billion pounds !!

[MrMark]

We didn`t, Labour did.

I believe it was the Tory party who were particularly keen on expanding the EU (as a misguided attempt to dilute the French/German alliance). For some reason no-one in the UK seemed interested in implementing the slow transition policy that had been carried out when Spain, Greece etc joined the EU. Maybe it was someone in the Labour Party who forced through a policy of immediate access to UK jobs market, or maybe it was the outgoing Tory regime. I certainly can't remember a UK politician of any note at the time objecting to it. It was all "Britain needs skilled immigrants to do the jobs the local people don't want to do..."

[DieScum]

Please inform how huge this 'huge rebate' is since Blair handed a sizeable annual chunk back just before he left office in order to try to win concessions on the CAP(incidentally, he failed!) ? I don't think it is as huge as you think it is bearing in mind our annual membership is estimated to soon be 55 Billion pounds !!

No he didn't. The rebate is currently 3 billion which is calculated as 2/3 of the difference between the mount contributed to the EU budget and the amount received from it.

It's a relic of history and unjustifiable in the scope of an enlarged community, which the UK massively benefits from. Of course the CAP is rubbish as well.

Britain actually complies with the directives/laws we have sign up to - this is not the norm from what I have experienced.

So it's not so much the the UK has opted in to things which others nations have not. It's rather that other nations haven't done what they were supposed to do when applying the EU policies that they signed up for?

Maybe, got any examples you are thinking of?

They have certainly adopted the euro, set up their borders according to Schengen. Those are the really visible things. What do other countries not do that the UK does?

[PM-Junkie]

Do you think "DieScum" is really an appropriate moniker, or are you a 12 year old?

Frankly I am amazed anyone answers you.

[mailric]

Anyone watched the TV programme called border patrol?

They spot illegal immigrants entering the UK. They ask them to prove who they are and if they are legally in UK.

One week they stopped a guy who they had no record of being legally able to enter the UK. He had no ID, no passport, couldn't speak much english, had no address and couldn't even remember his date of birth. He was visiting relatives but couldnt remember where they lived.

So once they had tired of asking him to prove he was legal, they then had prove he was not illegal, if they were to be able to send him back where he come from.

So... guess how they went about this?

They sent him on his way and asked him to come back a week later with proof he was legally able to be here.

Priceless.

Do you think anyone has ever gone back and said "sorry, I can't find proof, your right i'm here illegally. You'll have to send me back. Besides, I don't like it here after all. Your weather's shlt"