Get angry, get furious, but get angry at the right people.
Get angry, get furious, but get angry at the right people
Noam Chomsky reminds us that the best way to give the impression of democracy is to limit the debate to a very narrow set of issues, and then allow people free reign within this spectrum.
This beautifully describes current political discourse in this country. We have raging debates about the EU and immigration, yet barely touch the issues that really matter.
The reason the economy crashed in 2008 wasn’t because of us lavishing luxury flat-screen TV’s on the unemployed, or because so many immigrants came to claim benefits- it was because of an unbridled financial sector gambling on all of our futures.
The reason we have a housing ‘shortage’ isn’t because our country is filling up so fast we’re nearly out of space (only 6.8 per cent of the land of this country is built upon), it’s because we have failed for decades to build a suitable amount of housing- regardless of immigration.
We do not have a ‘cost of living crisis’ because of an influx of immigrants – we have stagnating wages because of continued concessions to big business and corporate greed.
This is exactly the same problem that is seen the world-over. We’re constantly told that wages are low because of ‘uncontrolled’ immigration, and any forced rises in the minimum wage will result in higher unemployment. And then no one mentions the gigantic salaries that those at the top of these companies ‘earn’.
Times are not tough for everyone in this country – whilst the average worker has seen a decline in the value of their wages over the last four years under a Tory government, FTSE 100 bosses have seen their earnings soar. This is compounded by outrageous rents charged by landlords, having now to be propped up by housing benefits.
This is the heart of the problem – not additional workers in the market. Additional workers help drive growth of business’, which leads to more job creation.
Immigrants have been proven time and again to put more into the coffers than they take out – they are better net contributors than British citizens are. We have allowed ourselves to be side-tracked and hoodwinked. We’ve forgotten the real enemy.
We need to remember what the real problem is – and it’s exactly the same problem in many of the countries immigrants are coming from – profit consistently being put before people. The immigration debate is a convenient mask, a clever distraction from what really matters.
At a time of widening inequality, when the richest five families in the UK earn the same as the bottom 20 per cent, when the worlds 85 richest own the same wealth as half the globe, that’s where the anger should be directed.
It isn’t racist to question the merits of immigration, but the tone the debate is beginning to take on in this country is decidedly ugly. As we marvel at the latest UKIP scandal or a picture of Farage in the pub we’re also missing the dodgy dealings of Wall Street and the City that are sapping pounds out of our pockets.
Only the Green Party seem to really understand this. This is why we refuse to engage in the negative rhetoric that the other major parties have all succumbed to surrounding immigration – not out of burying-our-heads-in-the-sand dogmatism, or idealistic left-wingery, but because we realise the cause of our problems really do lie elsewhere.
This is why we instead focus on implementing a living wage, on opposing the TTIP and on fair pay ratios in companies.
The rich have gambled on our futures, allowed sating their own ferocious appetites to take precedent over our well-being.
Get angry, get furious, but get angry at the right people.
Bradley Allsop is a student and member of the Green Party
60 Responses to “Don’t blame the immigrants – blame the rich”
LB
Doesn’t state how much tax is needed to break even on a migrant. As such is bogus.
That’s the problem with your approach. You are unwilling or unable to state where the break even is. The reason is that there are lots of economic migrants who don’t come any where near paying enough.
However, lets take your link
Immigrants, in the raw data, are a little more likely than the UK-born to be in social housing
So why are we accepting any migrant that is so poor they need social housing?
Between 1997 and 2013, the numbers working in low-skilled occupations remained roughly the same. A 1.1 million decrease in UK born employment was offset by a 1.1 million increase in migrant employment
So why are we accepting 1.1m low skilled migrants, who will be on low wages. End result is austerity
6% out of work. Of 5.1 million migrants. At 12K per person per year. I trust you can do the maths.
Migrants are optional, under EU law. Lets remove and prevent those that are uneconomical.
LB
But they aren’t based on fact.
Lots of migrants aren’t economical.
Even the average Brit isn’t economic. MIgrants aren’t superhuman. You’re argument that they are and the Brits aren’t by implication is racist.
Isabel
The problem is that people who already live in Britain – regardless of ethnic background – have never voted for, or consented to, the level and rate of immigration imposed on us. There is no democratic mandate. Yet immigration is having a huge impact on employment, wages, housing, the NHS, schools etc. All these services are under enormous pressure – we can’t get appointments with the GP, A&E and maternity services are near crisis point, there’s a massive shortage of housing and school places. Yet ‘austerity’ means no political party will invest in these essentials. Where I live in London, public services I come into contact with are being heavily used by recent immigrants. As a school governor, I see pupil intakes expanding rapidly. Those supporting unlimited immigration don’t seem to have personal experience of the consequences.
Blame the rich? But big business loves high immigration. They want what Marx called ‘the reserve army of labour’ to work for peanuts and displace pesky locals who rightly want a living wage. Unfortunately, too many on the left have lost touch with the realities of working class life.
Anon
>That’s a clear boundary drawn around the economic migrant. What do the bring and what do they take. After all, for economic migrants, even under EU law, the UK can pick and choose.
>Now outside the boundary, there are other effects. More difficult to cost.
Once you expand the boundary to the effect of migrant economic activity to the wider private sector (so you note housing, education, wages etc.), you also need to expand the boundary to include the benefits of economic output. For instance, even though migrant workers do create more demand for housing (which in turn implies that more housing will be supplied over the long term…), they also spend money in other parts of the economy, keeping Brits employed. They work in British companies, contributing skills our economy is starved of, keeping them profitable. They’ll pay their fair share in fuel duty and VAT, etc. etc.
>My view, 11.5K for child. 18K for an adult, in tax.
The net cost for adult migrants is negative or at most functionally nil so long as they are economically active – people generally cost the state money when they are old or children, hence dependants. To argue that they cost the state money requires you to also argue that British children cost the state money, and that we should reduce birth rates in this country because more labour in the economy will increase schooling and housing costs whilst having an effect on low wages.
Anon
>Yet immigration is having a huge impact… the NHS
The other claims are themselves economically spurious (more skilled labour in an economy rarely hurts it), but the idea that the NHS is being put under particular strain by immigration is loony. Anyone who works in the NHS will be able to tell you that without the immigrants who diagnose, care for patients, and keep hospitals running the NHS would have collapsed decades ago.