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Three years ago, the town of Boston in Lincolnshire hit the headlines when
locals rioted after England were knocked out of the European football
championships.
Now Boston is getting attention for another reason: it has been officially
identified as a migration hot spot.
At the last census in 2001, 55,750 people were living in Boston with
relatively few migrants. Now, with more than 15,000 migrants, mainly
Portuguese but also a growing population of Poles and other eastern
Europeans, the housing, policing and education services are under intense
pressure.
The town’s council, which believes that the total population could be between
70,000 and 80,000, is – in common with many other local authorities –
demanding “fairer” funding from Whitehall to cope with the influx.
“Local authorities up and down the country are facing pressures and it would
be fair to say that until recently, recognition by government officials of
the scale and growth of economic migrants in many areas has been slow,” said
Mick Gallagher, chief executive of Boston borough council.
Tony Lake, Lincolnshire’s chief constable, has warned that without additional
money his force will not be able to cope. “We are not crying wolf,” he said.
“The situation is very fragile. Without extra funding we will not be able to
provide the service that people rightly expect.”
Duncan Attwood, 34, a supervisor at a local poultry factory, has seen at first
hand the changes brought about by migration. “Ten years ago, when I first
started on the production line, there were no foreign workers at all,” he
said.
“Now they come from all over the world. First it was the Portuguese, now it’s
mainly people from eastern Europe – Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians and
Russians. On the bus in the morning the only language you don’t hear is
English. But I don’t have a problem with it – nowadays I have a lot of
Polish friends.”
Between May 2004 and September 2006, 1,600 foreign workers registered in
Boston for every 10,000 working-age locals, the highest concentration in
Britain. In 2000 about 5% of casual labourers in Boston were said to be
foreign. Now the figure is 75%.
The council is trying to improve community relations by offering language
courses to ensure that more people learn English and can therefore
integrate. Other measures include “myth-busting” leaflets, “welcome packs”
for new arrivals and continental markets celebrating the range of cultures
in the town.
These measures, however, eat up scarce resources and some locals fear they
will be left with the bill for their migrant population if Whitehall refuses
to cough up more funds.
“I would be outraged if council tax went up or services were cut to
accommodate more migrants,” said James White, 35, a Boston property
developer. He was clear where he would lay the blame. “I have no particular
problem with people coming over and working hard – it’s an opportunity for
them,” he said. “It’s the government that is at fault.” LAST week the Local
Government Association (LGA) reflected such concerns when it intervened on
behalf of its members to demand more funds from Whitehall to cope with
increasing migration. Its argument was that government population figures
based on the 2001 census do not reflect the fast-changing reality on the
ground and that public services are coming under pressure.
Simon Milton, the LGA’s chairman, called for a £250m fund from the government
for councils as a “pragmatic and proportionate” response to the crisis.
It would be easy to dismiss the claims as the self-interested whingeing of
councils that had misjudged their budgets. Cynics would also note that the
new funding settlement with central government is set to be fixed in the
coming weeks. But the near-universal nature and similarity of the complaints
make them credible.
In Corby, Northamptonshire, another hotspot identified by the LGA, Chris
Mallender, the council’s chief executive, said he would see a budget
shortfall of £200,000 this year, rising to £400,000 in three years. The
council has already begun selling land to meet the difference, he said, and
warned that council tax bills might have to rise by 8% if more government
funds were not forthcoming.
“This year we received a grant for only 100 extra residents while the figures
show there are about 1,900 extra migrants from the EU accession states,” he
said, pointing out that the electoral roll had increased by nearly 1,500 in
the past two years.
Westminster council in London, which absorbs more than a third of incoming
migrants, complained that nearly 24,000 people were missed by official
statistics. It was a pattern reflected around the country.
In Merthyr Tydfil, with 1,500 new migrants (making it one of the
fastest-growing immigrant populations in Wales), officials warn of “a major
impact on our frontline service delivery particularly in areas such as
housing, council tax and housing benefit”.
But Harvey Jones, the council leader, put a positive gloss on it. “School
rolls are falling and there are plenty of places for immigrant children,” he
said. “As far as we are concerned it isn’t an issue. We have lost more than
10,000 residents in the past two decades and we want to revive and
regenerate the town. Immigrants can be part of the solution.”
Jones’s remarks reflect a widespread belief, both among councils and many
members of the public, that inward migration has been beneficial to Britain
in an economic sense. The councils put a figure of £40 billion on
immigrants’ annual contribution to the economy.
While some economists dispute this analysis, the public seem to agree. An
Ipsos Mori opinion poll published in The Sun newspaper yesterday revealed
that 48% of people believed immigration was good for the country.
However, it remains an issue of concern with many wondering if the government
has control of the speed and extent of migration after a series of
embarrassing mistakes last week. In the same poll, 51% of respondents
thought the government had been dishonest about the scale of immigration and
82% were not confident that public services could cope.
The issue is at the top of the political agenda, with the government on the
back foot. THE week began embarrassingly when Peter Hain, the work and
pensions secretary, was forced to admit that the government had
underestimated the number of migrant workers in Britain, and thus
understated the extent to which they have been taking the jobs created in
Britain under Labour.
Previously published figures suggested that in the past 10 years 800,000 new
jobs had gone to foreign workers, out of a total of 2.7m, just under 30%.
The new figures show that foreigners had taken 1.1m out of 2.1m jobs created
since 1997: more than half.
Worse, the same figures showed that in the past two years – with large numbers
arriving from eastern Europe – the number of UK-born workers in jobs had
dropped by 270,000, while employment among foreign workers had jumped by
540,000.
Later it was further claimed that official statistics put the number of
foreign-born workers at 1.5m. The impression was that nobody had control of
the figures.
There could be more embarrassment to come. Figures obtained by The Sunday
Times from the Office for National Statistics show that even the new figures
are an underestimate and that 80% of new jobs have gone to foreigners under
Labour. In the past five years the number of foreign workers has risen by
1m, while the number of UK-born employees has dropped by 500,000.
The error in the figures, said to have been discovered by a new analysis of
the official Labour Force Survey (LFS) using a “revised methodology”, appears
to have arisen from simple mathematical errors by officials. But it
confirmed the murky nature of all official statistics for immigration.
Karen Dunnell, head of the Office for National Statistics, says all the
figures for the number of foreign workers in Britain should carry a health
warning because they are likely to be understated. Apart from the problem of
illegal foreign workers, the LFS does not cover people living in “communal
establishments”, including hostels, hotels and boarding houses, or in mobile
homes. Many migrant workers live in such accommodation.
There is a wider problem associated with the counting of foreigners in
Britain. Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, has described the
International Passenger Survey, the main method of recording the number of
foreigners coming into and out of Britain, as “hopelessly inadequate”.
About 300,000 people are interviewed each year, arriving and leaving Britain,
roughly one in 500, from which the figures are grossed up. But the sample
includes a relatively small number of migrants and fails to take into
account shifting patterns of migrant arrivals.
The government is commissioning a new system, called “e-borders”, in which all
arrivals and departures will be electronically recorded. But the IT orders
for the new system are being placed only now; even if it is ready on time it
will not be operational until 2014.
The confusion over the figures came at a bad time for Labour, with Downing
Street aides expressing intense irritation at the “cockup” in a week when
David Cameron had decided to highlight the immigration issue.
The Tory leader has repeatedly poured scorn on Gordon Brown’s pledge, made at
his party conference, to provide “British jobs for British workers”, after
Labour has presided over record levels of immigration in the past 10 years.
Polling for The Sunday Times by YouGov shows that even before Cameron’s
decision to raise the temperature on immigration, the Tories enjoyed a
substantial lead of 20 points on the issue.
This is an incredible turn-around for the Tories on an issue that had become
“electorally toxic” for them. Cameron’s predecessor, Michael Howard, had
been accused of pandering to the right and of “little Englander” politics
when he made it a central issue in the run-up to the 2005 election. The
party was roundly defeated.
In his speech, Cameron noted that until the 1980s Britain was a “sending
country”, with net emigration to other parts of the world. Now we had become
a “receiving country”, with immigration “on a speed and scale we have rarely
seen before”.
That would mean, with the Office for National Statistics projecting annual net
migration into the UK of 190,000 a year, coupled with higher birth rates
among the migrant population, that immigration contributed 70% of the
projected rise in the UK’s population from 60.6m now to 65m by 2016 and to
71m by 2031.
Such an increase, more than double the rise in population of the past 20
years, was, said Cameron, “on a different scale” from what had been seen
before. Such a rise in population would, he said, undermine Britain’s
quality of life, its “general wellbeing”, putting pressure on the national
infra-structure, water and energy, as well as increasing the demand for
housing and hard-pressed public services.
A Tory government, he said, would have an explicit population strategy,
directly controlling immigration by setting lower limits for arrivals from
outside the European Union, policed by a new border police force. It would
also act indirectly on immigration by tackling the government’s “social
failure”, the 5m working-age adults who are on benefits, trapped because of
their inability to read, write or offer other skills to employers.
C a m e r o n received praise from an unexpected quarter. Trevor Phillips,
head of the new Equality and Human Rights Commission, said: “For the first
time in my adult life I heard a party leader clearly attempting to
deracialise the issue of immigration and to treat it like any other question
of political and economic management.”
In response, the government has been shifting its stance. Liam Byrne, the
immigration minister, said restrictions on workers from Bulgaria and
Romania, the latest members of the EU, would now remain in place until 2011.
Unlike other new EU members from eastern Europe, notably Poland, officially
permitted economic migrants from Romania and Bulgaria have been limited to
about 20,000.
Brown has adopted Tory proposals for a unified border police force, bringing
together customs and immigration officers. A new Australian-style
points-based system for immigration, giving priority to the highly skilled
and educated and to entrepreneurs, will start early next year.
Brown’s aides dismiss Cameron’s call for an annual limit on net migration as
unworkable, given that Britain cannot prevent most EU citizens from moving
here. They emphasise, however, that the government has allowed for a rising
population in its plans.
Whitehall departments were told to budget for a population of between 64m and
66m by 2017 in their negotiations with the Treasury leading up to last
month’s comprehensive spending review. POLITICIANS on both sides know that
this subject requires serious attention. Not only did the opinion poll
published yesterday reveal that immigration and race relations were now
voters’ top priority, but events in Italy will have shown how quickly
problems can escalate.
Growing racial tension caused by the attribution of nine murders to Romanians
exploded last week after an alleged murder of an Italian woman by a Roma
gypsy on the outskirts of Rome. The squatter camp in which the suspect was
living was broken up and officials elsewhere in the country made the first
applications to use new laws to expel foreigners who pose a threat to
“public security”.
In Britain, such flare-ups have so far been localised and have not escalated.
After the 2004 football riots in Boston, local officials denied that there
had been a racial element to the disturbances, even though England had been
knocked out of the competition by Portugal.
There have been no big problems since, but there are tensions below the
surface. Last year one of the town’s schools faced claims that local
children were being turned away because it had so many pupils from migrant
families.
This is the way resentment builds. The risk is that people will come to think
of immigration as merely filling Britain’s already crowded island and taking
jobs that native workers could have done. Then immigration will bite the
government hard.
Mass immigration hasn't enriched culture. It's created no-go areas and segregation. Economically it's been bad too. Brits aren't lazy - just a growing number feel helpless to create a future in the face of cheap labour from abroad and an often hostile community of non-Brits around them
John , London, England
UK Migration is THE HOT TOPIC - more posts than anything else. But the discussions miss the issue. Like it or not, the UK is a region of Europe and not a nation state. Economists still seem to regard UK Migration as a national issue rather than a regional one. The goldsmiths of Lombardy who settled in London during the reign of King Edward 1, or the Mexican wave who currently settle in the US, are immigrants SETTLING in a new nation they have chosen as home. The Scots in English parliament, or the Eastern Europeans in UK, are also classed as migrants, but can just as easily move back home. This becomes a regional issue with regional policy needed to ensure the sustainability of a region, unless of course UK nationality reasserts itself, against the EU, with tighter UK (and/or EU) border controls. Stats on migration need to more refined before being worthwhile, (migrant intention, social fit). But past UK regional policies and experiences may guide the new UK region within the wider EU.
DavidL, Brentwood, Essex
Race/culture: Briatania was founded by immigrants, Romans, when this island had less than a million inhabitants. Rome taught the natives reading and writing, triggered huge immigration from the empire, and created and built this country: roads, towns, institutions, etc. Since then constant migration (in and out) made us.
Economics: net benefit of immigrants for the NHS (bigger share of immigrant health workers than patients); net benefit on housing, (bigger share of immigrant builders than in the population, or as house buyers); net benefit for transport/infrastructure, if/when the government decides to invest, as immigrants pay a LOT of tax, and will build it too!
Crowded? NO. Fly over it to see. More than 95% of Britain is empty! The feeling of crowdedness is due to very low investment levels in infrastructure, and crazy planning blocks. The immigrants will pay and build their own houses, and pay more taxes and use less benefits than the natives. Only xenophobes can be against it.
Laura Fox, Chichester, Sussex
Isn't it true that imigration affects different towns in different ways.
London or New York without a constant flow of incomers would be disasters. No longer the hyper cosmopolitan metropolises that they are now, and therefore no longer the haven that they offer for citizens from other parts of the UK and USA respectively.
I live (and grew up) in Brighton. it has many faults and problems but I love it. Without immigartion I dread to think what it might become. Just a second rate town in England because it is very new (only 200 years) and therefore does not have a strong local culture with its own dialect and history. it has not got that, but at least it makes up for it by being ultra cosmopolitan and liberal. New arrivals often "chuck" off their cultural norms when away fro home and family and contribute greatly to what makes Brighton so wonderful.
Alan Moroney, Brighton, England
Just four words (which the liberal fifth column will castigate me for): Enoch Powell was right!
LJ, Bekas, Indonesia
Underneath the politics , economics and ideology, there is the pragmatic consideration that England is so crowded
that leading the middle class ideal, house, garden, car ,vacations, is now very difficult and stressful.
I don't see how the population can continue to expand without further degaradation of living conditions.
To halt the population growth would require draconian regulations which would be unacceptable at least for the current geistrite. Howver trends usualy do not continue
and geistrites do change, often quite suddenly.
b higgs, Ladysmith, Canada
We have a million and a half people unemployed, many more under-employed and yet we have a shortage of unskilled workers. We also have 40%+ of school leavers going to further education and yet we have a shortage of skilled workers. Something is badly wrong with this, and immigration is the quick fix. It is not the fault of migrants (who are only doing the rational thing), but politicians for letting it happen.
Also, does Britain have to redefine its own identity to accommodate immigrants? It seems we have tried to distance British identity from the country's own history and heritage so that migrants and their descendants can be thought of as British without in any way assimilating. If previous migration had taken this path, we'd still have Viking and Hugenot communities. We cannot force migrants to assimilate, but if they chose not to, then they should thought of as ex-pats and make no demands on the local national identity.
Joseph, London,
You asked for the obvious reply - immigration has made Britain broken, financially and socially. New Labour has sold the country down to the road of apatheid South Africa.
James Wong, Macau,
i'm a member of the so-called 'ethnic minority'. I'm sick and tired of being blamed for the immigration mess in this country. When most of 'us' the 'ethnic minority' are not in charge of policy in any sphere in this country. How many ethnic MPS are there. I'll tell you what, a LOT less than there should be. Who makes the decisions, you guessed it!!
In fact the racists, should be celebrating. The country is today overwhelming more white than it has been for the past 4 decades.
Courtesy of millions of Eastern Europeans.
Sam Hussey, London,
I am curious to know why Alex Johnson of London considers reading The Times a sign that Mike in Alicante has not integrated. I have lived in Bulgaria for several years and read the on-line Times, together with a number of other on-line newspapers from around the world, just as I am sure that tens of thousands of people from around the world also read The Times daily. How else would one keep up with world news?
As for Mr. Johnson's remarks about the mean level of benefits available in other european countries compared to the UK, I would suggest he knows little about eastern Europe. Before I was issued with a 'Sertificate (sic) for long-term residence' I had to sign an agreement that as a retiree I had sufficient funds to keep myself and would never claim benefits from the Republic of Bulgaria.
Patricia Thornton, Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria
I live in south London and the vast majority of new immigrants I encounter are unskilled, hostile to all things British other than the welfare state - which they seem to have an expert knowledge and put into practice which , should it be put to any other subject would probably make them highly employable.
Hence there are armies of 'bottlewashers' with massive families all claiming family tax credit, housing benefit, etc. having their miminum wages topped up by thousands every month by state subsidies. Topped up with with some cash in hand work, they are awash with disposable money, unconcerned about not paying into the tax system from which they so lavishly benefit. But how do we?
Penny, London, UK
Before answering the question: "Do migrants make us or break us?" it's necessary to ask the question: who exactly is "us"? London seems to relish its image as a mix of just about every nationality and language on the planet, which in many ways makes it such an exciting place to live. I think it has lost its own defining character in the process though. I’ve lived in London for thirty years and while I still love the place, find that I identify even more with my own roots, in a different part of the country, than I did when I first arrived. Yes, I love London but hope my home town manages to cling on to its traditional character and absorb newcomers.
Cirep G Nol, London,
Nothing adds-up concerning mass immigration. It is the element of duplicity over figures, that casual dishonesty, which is most offensive, closely followed by the contortions of the status quo in order to make room for the influx. Our ancestors spent generations re-equipping the rural poor of Britain to accommodate the industrial revolution but Labour, at a whim, have now cast them adrift; they compare so poorly with their foreign equivalent, idle, overpaid. Britain has not sought success at cockle production, never considered strawberry harvesting a principal industry, yet now a shortage of hands in either provides good cause for not standing up to aberrant EU rules that so demean Government in Britain. Britain’s took note of the over crowding in the world in the 60's and 70's and instinctively produced less children, now they wish that they had had a whole lot more, been really selfish. Now foreigners are occupying those spaces that our own progeny could have taken on to our delight.
Malcolm Turner, Alsager, England
"... given that Britain cannot prevent most EU citizens from moving here." Wrong. All you have to do is say "No" and raise two fingers in the general direction of Brussels.
Whilst some immigration of the appropriately skilled is good, the massive influx of cheap, peasant labour is bad. Even long established, tax-paying immigrants are worried by what is presently happening to England with this unprecedented flood of Euro-immigrants.
Stephen Brown, Selsey, England
In this globalised world no Western country is a fortress state. Tourism flourishes.Skilled workers move easily between nation states. However, people from unstable or poverty stricken nations quite naturally want to move to the Western country of their choice. This, contrary to beliefs of some people, is not a right. People have the right to leave their nation state, and, under the UN Convention, have a right to asylum [ if the nation state they are entering is a member and they are found to be refugees within the meaning of the UN Convention] but not to permanent residency. In Australia, the present ,but perhaps for not much longer, Prime Minister. John Howard said " We will determine who comes to this country and the circumstances under which they come". Quite right!. However, nothwithstanding a Gov't report in 2006 which said that per capita income was only marginally increased by immigration and population Australia is experiencing it's highest legal immigration.Cui Bono?.
Arthur, Melbourne, Victoria,Australia
The smearing and suppressing of discussion continues as usual, 'racists' etc etc. Migration has nothing to do with race. Culture yes: we have imported religio-cultural groups quite hostile to UK culture, that's a fact.
Now Labour have allowed the flow to become so uncontrolled that our economy is basically entwined with ongoing immigration, low wages in a consumerist economy, pushing spending on more services, roads, and now 3 million houses in England. This economic churn is making money for the incomers, and for property developers, retailers. That's obvious.
Tim, Oxford, UK
It is not racist or xenophobic to wish to preserve and protect our culture ,language, and values. It is weak and effete not to do it No one should be allowed to come and undercut British workers .No one should be allowed to come and abuse our health and welfare systems.Anyone foreign born who commits an imprisonable offence should be chucked straight out .The Somali born multiple sex offender should be chucked back at Somalia to serve his sentence.We shoud not have to bear the expense of housing him and he is too dangerous to let out as is the Somali born murderer of the female PC..
We should also be robust about not allowing other cultures and other faiths to be imposed on us.We have a long history of rational thought and our version of Christianity is liberal and humane.Other cultures are often abusive to women and children.Primitive attitudes must be resisted.Strongly.
Frances , Tunbridge Wells, Kent
Are EU nationals considered migrants when they move to another EU member state?
Peter, Fulham, London
The inevitable outcome of mass unrestricted immigration into Britain is the ultimate demise of indigenous British culture and it' people - It's a stark choice. Exactly what is racist in acknowledging this fact?
Tim, UK,
This article, like almost every article on immigration, tries to justify immigration because "it is good for the economy".
While economists appear to doubt that somewhat, even if it were true, I believe immigration affects us in many more ways and is highly detrimental to the majority of British people.
Kevin Smith, London, England
I come from Poland, I live and work here. I know that lots of polish people go to UK to work. It is an only way for them to earn money, in Poland we have big unemployment and little earnings.
Most of us have good abilities to work in GB-we are well-educated and we know English. But there are a lot of Polish who do not speak your language and do not hvae where to live in your country, sometimes they live in slums or railway stations (my poor English:( ...).
Anyway, try to understand us. We are only looking for well-paid job.
Now, I work in Poland. Next year i am going to start my studies at the university. But I do not know whether I will go to GB in the future... It is our Polish reality.
s_ullen@o2.pl
sullen, central Poland, Poland
I am all for tolerance and completely against xenophobia of any sort. It is true that immigration can and does enrich the nation! My main fear though is that the reason immigration is so popular at governmental level is that it enables commerical business's to get jobs done with a fraction of the wage costs, thus bossting profits and that is good for "the economy". The public might be deluded though to think a booming economy means a personal boom for them, in this system quite the opposite holds true, as it comes at the expense of jobs for those who wish to remain living in this country and therefore need above-subsistance wages to pay for (amongst other things): massive increases in council tax/bills/extortionate house prices etc-which are all an inescapable part and parcel of living in the UK today! But I doubt this government cares about the average person on the street, as long as their business contacts are happy they are happy!
Simon, Portsmouth, Hampshire
There seems little doubt that overall, the East European immigrants are hard working and making a contribution to our society. I believe those who stay will integrate in one generation.
However, I wonder what would happen if we had a sudden influx of 50,000 Polish lawyers all prepared to work for a fraction of the fees expected by their British counterparts. Would the door still be open? Or would the government have found a reason to act to stop them arriving.
KG Brown, Brighton, East Sussex
Most people from the Continent are better trained and better educated than most British people. The EU guarantees freedom of movement to all its citizens. If you choose you can go and live in an English- or German- speaking enclave/ghetto in Spain, although that will not endear you to the locals. Anyone with an EU passport can work, study, train, and hopefully integrate, learn the language, pay taxes, make friends anywhere else in the Union. And because there is a different percentage of people of non-EU origin in each country as well - more Turks in Germany, more people from the Indian subcontinent here, more people from the Maghreb in France, etc ... you can learn about other people's cultures everywhere without losing your own. I like it.
Julia Iskandar, London, England
The country should welcome people that want to work. The fact that migrants can find legal jobs with relative ease indicates that the economy needs them. However, when I see certain individuals driving to the post office in BMW to collect their benefits I am driven slightly mad. One migrant told me that he came to the UK from Somalia partly by foot, donkey, bus and car because the benefits in the UK are better. The fact that this man went all the way through Africa and Europe to get to the UK because the payouts are better also says something don't you think.....?
Kris, Bristol,
Mike in Alicante: do you have no sense of the amazing hypocrisy of your position? Why are you reading the Times? Not integrating very well are you? Or is it different for you? Why is that? I'm sure the Spanish are simply delighted that every inch of their coastline has been built on for the benefit of ageing Brits and Germans, who then propose to use a hospital system as they grow older for which they have not paid during their working lives. But before I rant I should remember that people in your position do the rest of us a huge service by being somewhere else , and your altruism in abdicating yourself out of the NHS is to be applauded. You are however factually incorrect on the relative level of benefits in the UK: by European standards, we are actually quite mean. And you can't have it both ways: they can't be both scroungers and "stealing our jobs."
Alex Johnson, London, UK
The vision of bliar and brown was a low wage low skill, low cost, jobs econamy,as your essay states their plan is working. The impacted on the houseing sector is yet to come into view.remember its all the fault of the exploited foriegner, not the fault of the spinless brit who is un willing to stand up for workers rights.
michael joseph heavey, cahersiveen>adams towns, madness
This country's economy and prosperity is driven primarily by a hard working and diverse populace. The people who moan most about immigrants and perceive they have most to fear are generally ill-informed British people who think it is more constructive to moan about their hardship and find some other group of people to blame rather than to get off their own backsides and create their own chances and advancement in life.
Marie Demets, London, UK
So what if the majority of new jobs have been going to immigrants. How do the racists square that with their view that immigrants are scroungers? My parents were immigrants to this country and the came here to work for a better life and to provide for their family.
I'm so pleased the racists are getting high blood pressure from seeing more immigrant scroungers coming here to work (how so?) and taking all the council houses (I thought the Tories sold them all off) and whatever else the bigots think immigrants get up to.
The problem isn't immigrants, it's the lazy workshy white anglo saxons that's the bigger problem in the UK.
Also will the bigots refuse health care if there are immigrants are treating them?
A Thomas, Durham,
You made your bed you sleep in it!
Until people have the guts to fight the PC brigage this country will continue to spiral downwards towards being the laughing stock of the world.
Mike Jones, Farnborough, Hampshire
Firstly, let's get one thing straight. I for one am far happier with immigrants taking 80 per cent of jobs than them having no jobs at all. Some people above have clearly missed the point that they come to work, not to scrounge. That's what us natural English folk do better than anyone.
Secondly, if these migrants are worth £40 billion to the economy, where has that money gone? A lot of people (many of whom have commented above) seem to think these people arrive, sit down in their council-funded house and start watching Jeremy Kyle. Clearly they don't. Clearly they are getting these jobs that are referred to in the article and, one hopes, they pay taxes accordingly. That money in turn should deal with the cost of accommodating them. Where has it gone wrong?
chris, Worthing, England
So 50% to 80% of new jobs (depending on who you believe - the Office of National Stastistics or the Sunday
Times) creted in the last 10 years went to foreigners. Between 2000 and 2005, Gordon Brown as Chancellor borrowed heavily (pushing the UK into even greater debt), which money he poured into the UK public sector. This largesse created jobs in the public sector and also made the economy grow above its long terms rates. So did we go into debt simply to create jobs for foreigners. Go figure!
Joanna Ashley, London, UK
"An Ipsos Mori opinion poll published in The Sun newspaper yesterday revealed that 48% of people believed immigration was good for the country. " We must always remember that such opinions are not the result of any knowledge or research whatsoever on the part of the respondents. They are merely a measure of how successful newspaper polemicists and government propaganda have been.
John Ledbury, Kings Lynn, England
479 billion is spent annually by the Americans on defence. It would only take 100 billion to wipe out world poverty. Every child would have food, shelter, cleanwater and a primary education. We are all humans soon so mixed that race will become unrecognisable. A person in Africa should be regarded as our own, equivalent and equal to a person in the poorest parts of London. We need leadership that can envisage the larger picture. We are being misled to blame immigrants. We must address human nature and spend less on bombs and attempt to create less provocation and reduce the fear we have of each other. These primitive uneducated caricitures we have of each other, sometimes people of the same race dislike each other after being exposed to this in this society. There is an innate good in human beings this is why as a group in a democracy we always try to do our best for other humans but we also need to address our greed and selfishness. Both immigation and world population would reduce.
amina, Aberdeen,
And in answer to the question that heads the article... Migrants are not just breaking this country they are absolutely destroying it.
Matt G, gillingham, UK
Has the Green lobby lost its voice ?
We will have to build more houses on green fields to accommodate more immigrants.
Our roads are already overloaded so we will have to build more.
More hospitals, power stations, schools, airports, ect.
800,000 immigrants must mean at least 200,000 extra cars on the road.
And yet the greens say nothing.
Peter, Wells, Somerset
If we had a Democracy, we would not have immigration. We would not be in the EEC, and we would not have English people being told not to bother to apply for certain jobs.
We have been living under one Dicatorship after another, and nobody has noticed.
What is need is a mechanism to remove from office any Government ofr individual who does not honour their election promises.
Clive Burghard , LANCING, ENGLAND
We should stop all immigration, deport all illegal immigrants, send asylum seekers back whence they came, stop payments to dependents of immigrants in other countries, stop being a sponge for spongers and be brave enough to say that this is for the benefit of the country. This is an English-speaking nation with traditions and cultures that are not the same as those of other countries and we must not allow the arguments of Political Correctness and Human Rights to destroy our heritage.
I believe that this would give the public what it wants and would facilitate, as a minimum, the following benefits:
Reduce the influx of undesirable aliens
Reduce spread of disease and infection
Reduce erosion of the nation's identity
Reduce the threat of terrorism
Reduce the housing shortage
Reduce the prison population
Reduce hospital waiting lists
Reduce congestion on roads
Reduce welfare expenditure
Reduce school class sizes
Reduce driving accidents
Reduce unemployment
Reduce crime rate
Reduce taxes
John Crowther, Cambridge,
Not only Gordo Brown knew all about immigration in&out of UK
but all Government's of the day knew the influx of immigrants,
the current labour government only carrying-out,what the tories
were doing under Mrs Margaret Thatcher,all politician tell lies,
you can't pick&drop human-kinds,per your convenience,human
beings-cannot betaken as animals.
All ciminal shoulbe punished,without favours or ill-will
we can talk about incompetent,but negligence should be corrected..........Cllr Ken Tiwari(Oxford/UK)
Cllr Ken Tiwari, Oxford, United Kingdom
I have been working in the UK for three years.
I am amazed to see that it has become harder and harder to come accross someone who is a native speaker.
If it looks weird to me, I can only imagine how it must feel from the English people's point of view. The country is completely taken over, and nobody seems to care.
I am tempted to believe that the dramatic increase of house prices, resulting from the considerable influx of immigrants, has somewhat bribed people into silence: landowners get richer and richer and will retire early, their future is safe is sound, what should they care about the future of their country?
Peter is right when he equates immigration in England to "sale day". The country is litteraly being sold. But at a good price, so who cares?
Laurent, London, England
Virtually all immigrants moving into a foreign country are driven by economic factors rather than any idealistic reasons. Ex pats like myself emigrate for a better quality of life than the UK can offer and similarly most eastern Europeans move to the UK to pay for their families back home. Where else but the UK will the state pay for your family living in another country. The real attraction in Britain are the extraordinary social benefits that are available thanks to Gordon Browns obsession with hand outs, bribes & freebies instead of a fairer tax system. This obsession attracts hundreds of thousands of immigrants to benefit immediately in all manner of social and health arrangements without paying a penny into the system. Expats in contrast bring hundreds of thousands of pounds to Spain, France or Italy and all pay for their health care in one way or another. In a word, immigrants do break the UK system but only because of Labours tax and social engineering programs to buy votes.
Mike, Alicante, Spain
Politically the purpose of mass immigration is to homogenise Europe thus making the super state more stable. The main problem is it destroys local culture and in the case of UK, the danger of overwhelming numbers following a religion such as islam in their culture means the death of human rights and western style freedom should they achieve a voting majority.
A Warrington, UK,
the flood of immigrants into the uk is like sale day.too many to stop.so close the doors and open a side door and control the entry...you cant just have any amount of anyone just walking into the country..a whole army could just walk in under civilian disguise and take over parliament.stop it NOW before it destroys britain and the british way of life.
peter, luton, england
Gordon Brown knew the truth all along. His pretending to be shocked now is more evidence of his unlimited dishonesy. But you carry on Brown. Lie, gloat, carp, treat the British like fools. But even the British electrorate are not that stupid. Even they are seeing through what I hope will soon be seen as the biggest whitewash and lie in Britain's political history. In every conceivable way, New Labour had sold the British and Britain down the river. Not only do New Labour need to be thrown out but the liars and cheats need to be brought to account. If the truth has been deliberately hidden, and I think it must have been, then what has gone on is not just negligent and incompetent, it is CRIMINAL. And criminals should be punished.
alan, London,