Recent immigrants to UK 'make net contribution'

[vetran]

Of course not, but when it comes to migration I try to see opportunities.

OK yes there are benefits and opportunities for those placed to take advantage of them.There is a real difference between us working with highly professional experts from around the world on top money and undercutting cleaners with cheap labour to keep wages down.

Its not about racism, its about numbers and multinational offshored profits.

[Mich the Tester]

OK yes there are benefits and opportunities for those placed to take advantage of them.There is a real difference between us working with highly professional experts from around the world on top money and undercutting cleaners with cheap labour to keep wages down.

Its not about racism, its about numbers and multinational offshored profits.

Yes; YOU can't do anything about migration, neither can I, and governments are generally clumsy and clueless in their attempts, partly because most of the people voting for them don't have the slightest understanding of the complexity of the issues, so personally I don't see any point in complaining about the multitude of languages spoken in the streets of a nearby city. I just grab the opportunities it offers, and maybe you should do the same, although I'd argue it offers opportunities for everyone, it's just that you need the right mindset to get the benefit of those opportunities

[sasguru]

...us working with highly professional experts from around the world on top money ....

Aren't YOU mostly competing with the poorly skilled?
What exactly are the skills you possess that would allow you to work with "highly professional experts from around the world on top money"?

[Dominic Connor]

I'm not sure there can be a "rational" immigration policy

If we take the "good of the country" as some sort of ill defined goal, it seems to me that importing smart, well educated people serve that objective.
It isn't very hard to optimise non-EU immigration to let in a higher % of people who will be net contributors.

I favour an entrance exam, in English, not the artsgrad nonsense that the Blair government put up, that you can only pass if you have marketable skills, pitched roughly at UK MSc level, you do core papers and can elect to take papers in a specialism.

Then you only get residency after you have paid (say) £200k in tax, plus any benefits you have received.

There is a big problem with that approach, it will probably do what I want, but not what the average Daily Mail or Daily Express reader wants. It is tempting but wrong to call their view racist, it is rational self interest.

DM/DE readers are on average really quite badly educated, the media pack the DM sent me some years ago to sell me ads basically said "we target right wing ignorant women who spend their husbands money for them", though to be fair they get a lot of that sort of man as well.

A DM reader can be characterised as lucky, although they lost out in the genetic IQ lottery, they happened to be born white in one of the richest countries in the world, but frequently lacking skills that enable them to compete in the global labour market and of an age where the prospect of gaining modern skills is thin.

That is why there is so much of a "fear agenda" in DM/DE stories, the readers have much to be afraid of, the bulk of their wealth in invested in their homes and most changes in the status quo do not favour them and of course they are of an age where cancer is a clear and present threat, hence the many stories about things that "are linked to cancer". Note the relative lack of stories about heart disease, although this gets a lot of women too, most women (especially the ignorant ones who read the DM/DE) don't really see it as a major threat.

So of course they don't want smart young foreigners coming to the UK, to be sure they vaguely about "benefit tourism" but most see everyone on benefits as scroungers anyway. Improving the quality of incoming workers is scary to them.

Another reason not to characterise the DM/DE readership as racist is that they have a good % who aren't even remotely white, showing that being ignorant and too lazy to learn new skills is a vice of all races.

The UK also has crap demographics, not as a bad as Germany or Japan, but if we are to have a functional economy to pay for DM/DE's old age and people to work in the care homes, we need to import people. That conflicts of course with the DM/DE view that immigrants are bad and thus we must

a) Keep useful people out
b) let in useful people
c) keep the numbers of workers up
d) not get any more workers

Hard to see any government delivering on this.

The EU also makes any UK policy on this almost useless, but what if we left the EU ?

The deal is we can live anywhere in Europe and be treated as if we were citizens of the place we happen to be in and vice versa. Britsa can buy homes, especially retirement homes and Poles can buy semi-permanent digs for working here. That is the ideal, we're not quite there, but it works well enough.

If we quit the EU, we might keep free trade with them (not something the DE/DM like anyway) but if we put up a wall, so will they. Such a move might well be so popular in some countries that they decide to actively screw with UK citizens. Although that will upset a few Brit bankers in Frankfurt, a core audience for the DM/DE is expats in Span, Portugal and increasingly in SE Europe. They really won't like it if they are told they have to sell up to the locals at fire sale prices and pensioners won't like being charged more for healthcare etc.

Imagine how popular a "non-resident" property tax might be in cash strapped Spain, Ireland or Portugal, especiall in the aftermath of Britain being painted by their media as troublemakers.

[vetran]

Aren't YOU mostly competing with the poorly skilled?
What exactly are the skills you possess that would allow you to work with "highly professional experts from around the world on top money"?

well I know you :

A fortune 500 company seems to think I am quite good and keep promoting me, as did the last 4 large companies.

[Mich the Tester]

well I know you :

A fortune 500 company seems to think I am quite good and keep promoting me, as did the last 4 large companies.

So now you're working at Subway, having gained valuable experience at McD's, Burger King, Starbucks and KFC?

[darmstadt]

Germans are so desperate they'll take anyone though

Ah, must explain why you have German clients then...and isn't some of your close, as in via marriage, family also German...

[sasguru]

well I know you :

A fortune 500 company seems to think I am quite good and keep promoting me, as did the last 4 large companies.

And yet you spend all your time on here talking complete bollux?
What exactly were you promoted to? Hardly a high flier are you?

[vetran]

So now you're working at Subway, having gained valuable experience at McD's, Burger King, Starbucks and KFC?

yep and I have 5 gold stars on my Badge to prove it!

[vetran]

And yet you spend all your time on here talking complete bollux?

I want to be like my hero AssGuru who only does personal attacks!