Practically speaking, they both boil down to “people who aren’t like me need to be oppressed.” We may call that different things depending on the criteria for “not like me,” but they’re all basically the same kind of asshole.
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I am an American who has lived both in England and in Norway. My experience with the Home Office in the former was not worse than that with UDI in the latter.
However, I did find the English dialect in Oslo easier to understand than that in Yorkshire.
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The problem is that for most people the concern of immigration is rooted in racism.
Immigration on the most part is great for the economy, it makes our culture richer and helps diversify our skill-set and value as a nation. Our immigration is VERY restricted, I’m a registered sponsor for work VISA’s so have some experience with the (horrible and expensive) system. Illegal immigration is of course an issue, but the irony is that it’s mostly only an issue because of our heavily restricted immigration policies (which are becoming more restrictive every year anyway). Most migrants want to live legitimately, but if they don’t have the option they’ll likely skirt it. I’m sure the same goes in the US with the southern border. The percentage of illegal/legal migrants is almost solely defined by the number of legal migrants a country will allow - a strict immigration policy doesn’t stop migrants, it turns them into illegals - which loses the country money and has no impact on the total number of migrants in the country. It also puts many at-risk individuals in danger - there are humanitarian aspects to it too, even outside of asylum seeking.
Many that argue against immigration decide that they don’t want foreigners in the country and work from there to justify it. This is, of course, a generalisation, but correlates with my experience. There are a million-and-one problems that rank higher than immigration, yet remarkably it’s the top priority for right-leaning political parties - it doesn’t take a genius to work out why.
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Interesting, but please clarify what you mean.
Greatly reduced immigration is unsustainable socioeconomically due to declining birth rates. Focus should be on addressing integration and skills training for migrants - i.e. get people out of Starbucks. Actual ‘strain on the system’ is more likely driven by large proportions of the current population getting old and retiring, while young migrants represent a pool of labour that can be redirected to support the older generation.
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OK. Makes sense if the tax system functions and people actually pay into it, and the additional funds are used to finance the elderly.
I’m pro immigration for those kinds of reasons.
Basically, Horrid Theresa May is running a bunch of sequential “make life really hard” stories aimed at different communities, trying to tamp down the desire to emigrate to the UK.
so… you’re saying the Belgians should kick them out and send them back to the UK?
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By your logic, then, we should kick out everyone — immigrant and citizen — in the country who pays less tax than £11,500 per year?
If we don’t exile the slackers among the natural-born Britons who aren’t pulling their weight, why should we disallow immigrants?
Not intra-european because we have agree free movement of workers so neither the brits nor the spanish who work here require a visa. For the Indians and Pakistani however (who are also well represented in the IT sector), and other nationalities, I’d sharpen visa requirements.
The problem with that thinking is that the rate of immigration can be greater than the rate at which new jobs are being created, which can actually be negative in a recession (job loss.) So there are more and more people to a job relatively. This will cause problems as the jobless are also given benefits. Currently there are 2.47 million jobless in the UK according to the BBC. It’d make more sense to limit immigration and retrain those jobless where possible to fill outstanding positions rather than to enlarge the active population by immigration.
Because immigrants have never stimulated any economy ever on the planet. Not once.
Oh certainly, UDI are embarrassingly horrible.
The question is: does a person, on average, cost the government more than it takes in?
If the answer is yes, then the government is going to do something about its deficit. If the answer is no, that’s great, the government is running a surplus.
But I fail to see how the person’s country of origin has any bearing at all on that mathematics.
If 20-year-old Starbucks workers cost the government, then they all cost the government. If they grow up to be producing members of society, then they all do, regardless of what country they happened to be in when they emerged from their mother.
Your initial premise, anyway is laughable:
In some Libertarian wetdream, maybe? If you earn between £2,790 and £32,011 you pay 20% after your £6,475 tax allowance. So if that Starbucks employee is making £16,000 a year (just slightly above Starbucks average), then they are paying about £2000 in taxes per year. 20 times what you said!
And that is before we include the fact that they are paying VAT, which is 20% on goods and services – if we assume they spend 1/3rd of their remaining salary on goods and services, that’s another £500 a year.
So your immigrant barista is paying at least £2,500 a year in taxes (not £100), and is probably costing far under the average of £2000 in health care (as many others have noted). So your argument is BS.
References:
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Startling is the cognitive dissonance required, whilst witnessing the modern criminal folly of the Multinationals and Banks, to maintain the belief that the small, mostly poor, immigrant population of the country are to blame for sending all the money offshore.
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Has all the tax calculations you need.
“Starbucks ‘paid just £8.6m UK tax in 14 years’” BBC
For the pay. £12,614 a year.
Total deductions £1,218.72
So total up what they cost. I just used the NHS for starters. 2K a year. Then there are all the other things. Some will have dependents. Some children. You need to add on schooling and their health care. You have to add on the cost of the pension rights they are accruing. You need to put a share of defence, a share of policing and all the common goods. What about the deficit? Don’t they get a share?
Far from laughable. End result, the poor get screwed.
So how does that work? Average government spend per person is 11.5K a year. What do you do about migrants who don’t pay at least that in tax? The net result is that there are no addition funds, but in fact the opposite. Money is going from the elderly to pay for the services consumed by migrants who don’t make the cut.
Not at all. You’re logic is flawed.
Just because migrants are an optional choice, it doesn’t imply that British nationals are optional. Even if May wants that to be the case.
Correct.
Even at the other end, you end up with countries that will look like Detroit now.
