The question is who is an immigrant, I have friends who call themselves immigrants but they have been born in this country and I tell them that they are British, How long do you remain an immigrant? If you have come to this country legally work hard get married raise a family surely they are British. Free movement has got to stop we need to control our borders, who stays and who goes is not cut and dried there are people who work hard and should be allowed to stay but there are also those who are a drain on the country and have no intention of working.
Sorry I have to collect my wife will continue if you reply
That is quite a different view from what I usually hear from Brexit supporters. According to them, the immigrants who are working are the *bigger *problem, because they are competing with Britons on the job market and the housing market and are thus responsible for the fact that many jobs only pay minimum wage and that affordable housing is so hard to come by. You disagree with that view?
Well, no, since there are lots of British people who neither work hard nor marry nor raise a family, and yet they are undoubtedly still British. Conversely, lots of people who work hard, marry and raise a family are definitely not British and would object to being called British.
“British” isn’t a synonym for “economically productive and socially established”; it’s an ethnic and cultural identity.
But these two groups in no way correlate with “British” and “foreign”.
EU law already allows a country to exclude EU nationals who are neither working nor seeking work, and who are unable to support themselves. If that’s all you want, you don’t need Brexit to achieve that (as I’m sure you pointed out while you were “out on the streets talking to ordinary people” during the Brexit campaign). But, as Hiker points out, much of the animus against migrants comes from the fact that they are competing in the jobs market (and so are working hard), taking up places in schools (and so raising families), etc. Those are the ones that you need Brexit to get rid of.
The root of the problem is with a past government who opened the flood gates and said come one come all, and they have, very nice in theory but not in practice. This has created a surplice of labour eg the job that I retired from was paying £8 per hr my replacement an immigrant was paid £6-50 per hour under a new contract. Yes uncontrolled immigration has caused a problem in the job market. I used to be able to get a same day appointment for the doctors I can now wait three weeks, this is down to a surge of immigration into the area, schools have growing class sizes, social housing there is no spare capacity therefore the price of private rentals are high. The truth is we do not have the infrastructure to continue uncontrolled immigration.
I think that it is worth pointing out that Brexit is not a political party and is a mix of political views that goes way beyond leaving the EU, some of the voices you will hear are from the far right and sadly are the only ones reported.
As far as I am concerned British covers UK citizens as it does for English, Scots, Welsh and N, Irish.
There is also the EU human rights act that makes it virtually impossible to deport anyone even to the extent of one person allowed to stay because he had a cat
I have answered Hiker on this one but will add that if we have allowed people to settle here legally we have a moral duty to ensure that they have the opportunity to make a good life for themselves. If they are just wasters, scroungers and criminals they should be removed, sadly I am not allowed to remove British nationals who qualify
I get your point. I usually take care not to throw in all Brexit supporters with the crazies from the far right. I know that this would be entirely unfair.
Yet the points you have reiterated above do not represent an extremist view. they seem to be concerns widespread among Brexit supporters. So the question is: Now that Brexit will happen, what is to be done about these concerns? There are, for example about 800,000 Poles currently living in Britain. They have immigrated legally and - at least as far as I know - the vast majority among them are the kind of hard working people that you said should be welcome to the UK. And yet of course they contribute to the situation you have described: They compete with Britons for jobs, houses, doctor’s appointments and so forth. To be quite clear: I believe that sending these people away would be a huge mistake, and I do not expect that it will be done. But I wonder: Will that not be what many Brexit supporters expect to happen now? How will they react when it does not?
I agree and they are a valued part of our community and if they are here legally they should be allowed to stay. Some people I have spoken to have said send them all back my reply is does that include your friends after a pause they say no and they realise that we are an integrated community. The answer is controlled immigration starting with a very low intake allowing our population to adjust and reducing the strain on our infrastructure. My priority is genuine refugee’s direct from camps on the Syrian border over economic migrants, their need is greater, by taking in teachers and doctors from the camps the children could continue their education in their own language also receive treatment by doctors they trust and understand. It needs to be thought out properly we have had to many badly thought out knee jerk reactions
Contrary to what’s believed, alot of Brexiters don’t mind the current arrivals staying once we’ve left, what they don’t want is it to continue, especially on the same scale. Most EU citizens will become ‘model minorities’ and eventually merge into British culture, hey, it’s not like it’s not happened before.
That’s pretty much completely different from what said in post #201. Just sayin’.
OK, is this the kind of stuff that you were spouting when you were “out on the streets talking to ordinary people” during the Brexit campaign? If so, I hope you were just ignorant rather than deliberately dishonest. In the first place, nobody has been allowed to stay “because he has a cat”; this claim has been long debunked. In the second place, and more to the point, the external constraints on the UK deporting people arise not under “the EU human rights act”, which doesn’t exist, but from the European Convention on Human Rights, which has nothing to do with the EU treaties, implemented by the European Court of Human Rights, which is not an EU institution. The UK’s participation in the Convention and the Court are unrelated to EU membership and will not be affected by Brexit.
If you were setting out to demonstrate that the case for Brexit was sustained by a combination of confusion, ignorance, misunderstanding and deceit you couldn’t be doing a better job, T.M.