Spoken word poet Hollie McNish spells out what's wrong with most of the arguments used against immigration. She cites as her inspiration a book by economist Philippe Legrain called Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them.
Spoken word poet Hollie McNish spells out what’s wrong with most of the arguments used against immigration. She cites as her inspiration a book by economist Philippe Legrain called Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them. (Hat tip: Adam Mordecai)
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85 Responses to “Next time someone claims that immigrants are destroying Britain, show them this”
gavinrider
Robe D – I am fairly careful with my language because it is a sensitive subject. Something negative can be a consequence of excessive migration, but it would be wrong to blame any individual for it. That is why I say I don’t blame immigrants – even though collectively they are responsible for the negative consequences of their presence here in such numbers.
Your point about the EU raises an important issue. The notion of free movement of people is fine as long as everyone does not want to go to just one destination. The Spanish in the south of the country dislike the fact that so many British and Germans go there to retire, because it creates disproportionate pressure on the local resources and has totally changed the character of the area. It’s not Spanish any more.
The same thing is true with EU migration to Britain – we are getting a lot more people wanting to come here because of our (relatively) good economy than wanting to go the other way. That puts disproportionate pressure on the UK and suppresses our standard of living. If the flows each way were perfectly balanced there would be less of a problem, but while the flow is predominantly in one direction, the EU concept of free movement is problematic. I don’t see that we should simply accept that as “fait accompli” – we should seek to change the rules to make things much more equitable.
And since we do not have nearly as many Brits emigrating to the EU as foreigners coming here from the EU, there will be no need to reduce the amount of emigration – the only thing that needs to be reduced to make the situation equitable is to reduce the amount of inward migration.
David McKendrick
http://www.itv.com/news/update/2013-03-25/immigrants-significantly-less-likely-to-claim-benefits/
bookmanwales
So immigrants don’t get sick, don’t require the NHS, don’t have kids who go to school and more importantly never work for less than ,minimum wage ?
Whilst it is easy to believe this pile of crap if you never pick up a newspaper, watch the news on TV or even go on the internet it is inexcusable for anyone posting on here to say “no employer has ever been prosecuted for not paying minimum wage, therefore no one works for less than minimum wage”
There are numerous examples of immigrants being paid far less than the minimum wage published by the majority of newspapers. In fact the ONS itself recently said there were some 200,000 people on less than the minimum wage ?
There are numerous examples of gangmasters exploiting immigrants both in hours worked and wages paid.. again they are rarely prosecuted because no one will give evidence against them.
One school in London is so overcrowded as a result of mass immigration that they now use the buildings roofs as playgrounds and have portacabins as extra classrooms. This same school has over 20 languages spoken by the children and has to hire multi lingual teachers at extra cost.
If immigrant workers are so hard working and reliable why are their own countries economies no better than ours ? Why do they need to do all the crap jobs if they are so skilled and educated to the extent we need to beg them to come ?
They pay more tax than they receive ? Even HMRC has published figures that tax credits are paid for 50,000 children living abroad. On minimum wage you would not even pay back the tax credits never mind contribute to the tax pot of the country.
If you are on minimum wage you are eligible for housing benefit, council tax benefit and tax credits so the argument that they are net tax contributors whilst doing all the minimum wage jobs doesn’t stand up.
Immigrants don’t get sick either ? Again there is plenty of research that shows diseases like TB have increased due to mass immigration.
The reason “Racist” became synonymous with those against immigration was purely those in favour of immigration never had a valid argument…. and still don’t.
Ace feintheart
you can save the country right now if you get them all out somebody just fucking do it already kick em all out!
Shamrock Girl
Hardly anyone brings up 2 points when discussing this going round in circles arguement, apart from the cost, taxes etc., that everyone usually bring up. The first big one in my view is housing, room to move, this country is far too overcrowded&most people live in the towns and cities and that is mostly where immigrants will go. There’s no point going about green space/brownfield sites, I’m talking of now and for last 2 decades or so,almost everywhere you go, shop etc., way too many people. There isn’t&hasn’t been anywhere near enough affordabel housing for people born here or have been here for a long time, so where are all the others going to live? The second point is and it seems no one even allowed to ask this, so I will, if many of the people from abroad are fleeing persecution/war/etc., why don’t they go to their nearest country of safety? They will travel thousands of miles and go through numerous countries to specifically get to UK and now Ireland(good benefits etc), so there is a reason they are prepared to risk anything and often paying(not sure how?)or borrowing money to do so, it must be worth their while to do this? And I don’t believe it’s all becuase they know someone here, if that’s true, it will undoubtable mean, they’ve been told it’ll be worth their while to come here, as opposed to the many other countries they will have had to pass first. I’m aware they also go to certain other European countries, like Sweden&Holland, where they often get European passports, opens the door easier to UK then, I know this as I used to work for DWP.