With the Daily Express urging its readers to get ready for the “Romanian Invasion”, the Daily Mail asks “How many more immigrants can Britain take?”
Immigration is one of those dividing topics, like the Middle East. Sitting with what appears to be a progressive group of people, immigration comes up like an electrical storm. All reason flies away and we are literally poles apart.
On the one side are the selfish sentiments of “they are taking our jobs, our money, our school places, our benefits etc etc.” Not racist but certainly xenophobic… On the other hand some reasoned platitudes about balance and benefits to the community or even the whacky idea of open borders.
This issue strikes to the core of what it is to be human. Who belongs?
Why not open borders? One hundred years ago there were no border controls, people could travel as they pleased. Of course only a few privileged could travel. Now even the most desperate can travel, (if they have money). To be trafficked with an agent and papers costs about £7,000 from the DRC, maybe £5,000 from Iran, a few thousand more for tutorials on the immigration system. For £93.50 you can fly from Bydgoszcz or 65.20 from Gdansk and it’s legal to stay.
What would happen if everyone could stay, work here, bring their family here? What would happen if all borders were free and open... I suppose our schools would get fuller, our hospital queues would get longer. There would be a lot of poor people on the streets, more begging… Some of that poverty and suffering kept out of the way, occasionally seen on the TV, might find its way here.
Aren’t open borders part of free trade? If there is free movement of goods and capital as the free-traders want, shouldn’t there be free movement of labour? Isn’t it quite against the rules of free trade to prevent this? Isn’t immoral when you think about it… Get on your bike... but not a ferry.
Of course it is impossible. The answer to who belongs is the endless political game of who gets a slice of the cake; how do we share the resources. Currently quite unequally, with a billion people on less than a dollar a day. We are not ready to share our wealth to that degree.
So the 600,000 Poles and others from Eastern Europe have contributed to our economy says Tony McNulty; 27,000 have claimed child benefits (they are after all paying taxes!). Interestingly the Daily Mail says that more than 40,000 migrants are claiming benefits… I wonder where they got that figure??? Made it up???
But this is fine from my middle class vantage point, what about those in social housing, where jobs are less available. Again we are poles apart. Theirs is a very different experience. I was told recently, by someone who would know, that pay on building sites is £1.50 an hour. £15 a day for six days is almost three times the weekly allowance for an asylum seeker…
So another facet of immigration, especially the illegal, is the driving down of wages. This is the UK free market finding ways round the minimum wage. What are we doing to regulate this? Is there a local angle? What of the local sweatshops, gang bosses etc…
So where do you stand on this. Is it Poles apart or welcome to the Bulgars and the Romanians?
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