Shocking immigration hysteria

[xoggoth]

Alternatively we could increase the minimum wage (drives up inflation and leaves old people worse off) or reducing benefits to get people to work (leaves beneficiaries worse off).

But higher wages for the British will increase incentive for our own people to try and work, not just at the lowest level but also for people who have to spend years or notch up big debts studying. Ok castigating people as lazy but really, if you are not going to get as much working as on welfare, you would have to be irrational to want to. Low wages, filling every short term gap with migrants destroys incentive.

Before we were in recession the "labour shortage" Blair banged on about was actually 1.3% of total jobs, exactly what one would expect from normal churn, people looking for other jobs, new businesses being set up etc. We never actually had a shortage of nurses that needed filling by foreign nurses, we just had too many of our own qualified nurses that did not see any future in a low paid stressful profession.

We can't possibly compete with third world countries by lowering labour costs as the influx of Asians into our failed cotton factories in Lancashire showed. They still have so much else that is far cheaper. We need to innovate and find higher tech, higher quality products.

We owe it to our own people to share the prosperity our nation has achieved, not cast them aside and treat them with contempt because they are not prepared to settle for the wages and conditions that those in poor countries are used to. That sure isn't socialism, ask Polly Toynbee.

If you want to curb immigration, pay workers a living wage | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian

Think her and Bob Crow are among the only prominent real socialists we have in the UK. Too many white collar armchair socialists, like some others on here, have a palpable contempt for the ordinary man.

[darmstadt]

A lot of what xoggoth says makes sense, will sadly never work nor never be put into practice. Similarly you could argue the case for true Socialism which has never really been put into practice. Imagine where everyone is equal, no wages, no money, no material substance yet everyone cares for everyone else (some stone age cultures came very close to this.) In other words it doesn't matter what you say or what you do, someone is going to find fault...


BTW, I'm a migrant worker

[vetran]

BTW, I'm a migrant worker

yes but are you CHEAP?

[darmstadt]

yes but are you CHEAP?

To put it in pimp terms, I charge market rates Actually I think a lot of us in this industry are paid far too much and I actually charge less, I could add another €10-€15 to my hourly rate and still get it. In fact the only place where I am too expensive is the UK. Each time I talk to agencies in the UK about contracts they balk at my hourly rate and then mumble about being able to get someone local for cheaper (they can't as I've found out in the past.) Even when I was working in Eastern Europe, and this was going back a few years, I could quite easily charge €1000 plus expenses per day.

[NickFitz]

The Romanian Ambassador to the Court of St. James weighs in:

"It seems that a new version of Waiting for Godot is being reinvented by part of the British media who are desperately waiting for the arrival of millions of Romanians after 1 January 2014."

Once he's finished laughing at the idiocy, he makes a lot of good points, with facts and figures aplenty, all of which will doubtless be ignored by the usual suspects as this thread rumbles on to its inevitable lack of any conclusion

[vetran]

The Romanian Ambassador to the Court of St. James weighs in:

"It seems that a new version of Waiting for Godot is being reinvented by part of the British media who are desperately waiting for the arrival of millions of Romanians after 1 January 2014."

Once he's finished laughing at the idiocy, he makes a lot of good points, with facts and figures aplenty, all of which will doubtless be ignored by the usual suspects as this thread rumbles on to its inevitable lack of any conclusion

which good points?

Romanian average wages are a <1/4 of ours?
Unemployment there is high? Which is why there are 2 million in Italy & Spain?

To be honest If I could earn £100K in France for cleaning tables I might be tempted.

[vetran]

To put it in pimp terms, I charge market rates Actually I think a lot of us in this industry are paid far too much and I actually charge less, I could add another €10-€15 to my hourly rate and still get it. In fact the only place where I am too expensive is the UK. Each time I talk to agencies in the UK about contracts they balk at my hourly rate and then mumble about being able to get someone local for cheaper (they can't as I've found out in the past.) Even when I was working in Eastern Europe, and this was going back a few years, I could quite easily charge €1000 plus expenses per day.

so if you were suddenly confronted with 200 competent people competing for the same contract who could do your job for £200 a day, what would you do?

[SueEllen]

so if you were suddenly confronted with 200 competent people competing for the same contract who could do your job for £200 a day, what would you do?

You are presuming they are competent and can learn quickly if they don't have the skills.

I've had a couple of contracts now where cheaper contractors have been walked off-site. In one case if the agent allowed the client to hire the more expensive contractor I knew, the work would have been done in a third of the time.

Oh and regarding immigrants arriving from the former British Empire in the 50s, 60s and 70s even if they were not Christian they were taught differently from the Central and Eastern Europeans who arrive today. This is thanks to the British missionaries etc who made their mark on the schooling in countries of the British Empire.

[Wanderer]

Foreigners with no direct blood ties to Switzerland through either birth or marriage must live in the country for at least 12 years before they can apply for citizenship. (Years spent in the country between age ten and 20 count double).

Hmm, so Kim Jong-un could possibly claim Swiss citizenship?

The person must be well integrated, familiar with customs and traditions, law abiding, and pose no threat to internal or external security.

Oh, probably not then...

[xoggoth]

What a lucky bloke to have such power. Who would you have fed to the dogs? Blair would be no 1 on my list.

As for Romania it certainly looks to be a very promising country in general, especially in IT, but that does not alter the fact that we should not have an obligation to accept any who are not an asset to us. Poland (they are the most intelligent in Europe by some accounts) and some others have great potential but there are also real current issues in some, including porous borders, which need to be addressed. These problems should not fall on us. Neither should we have to accept any who are not a real asset to our population. Why should we exactly?

That ambassador reminds me of this:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...s-romanians-uk

Most of The Guardian readers point out how ridiculous it is to denounce fears of high numbers coming as right wing hysteria 1 day after controls are dropped and during a public holiday. I would trust even some CUKers would have a bit more sense and wait a month or two, but I don't count on it.