Britons afraid of Eastern Europeans?

[henerte]

Invasion of the New Europeans

by Anthony Browne27 January 2006, The Spectator


Europe is one of the most divisive issues in British politics. But on one thing most Europhiles and Eurosceptics agree: that enlargement, letting those benighted former communist countries into the warm democracy-enhancing embrace of Brussels, was a good thing. Just about all respectable, right-thinking people feel that the UK should congratulate itself for opening its borders to Eastern European workers on 1 May 2004.

And enlargement certainly has been a Good Thing for the affluent property-owning professionals, as Rod Liddle observed on these pages last week. Importing a servant class of nannies, plumbers and waiters means that people like me can enjoy the lifestyle of a Victorian gentleman that we so clearly deserve.

The New Europeans are hard-working, presentable, well educated, and integrate so perfectly that they will disappear within a generation. I have admiration for their Mittel-European sophistication, a soft spot for their historical fatalism, and a weakness for their vodka-soaked parties. I grew up with Poles and Russians circulating through my Cambridge family home in the 1970s, and spent time as a teenager behind the Iron Curtain listening to wonderful young Hungarians dream of breathing free. And now they are. They are as perfect immigrants as one could wish for.

And yet. And yet. Immigration is not just about quality but about numbers. And the numbers of Eastern Europeans arriving here in the past two years have been extraordinary — far exceeding the government’s reassuring predictions. The Home Office said that between 5,000 and 13,000 would turn up, but it was wrong by a factor of as much as 60: the latest count is 293,000. Even that, however, is almost certainly a huge underestimate. The Association of Labour Providers, which represents recruitment agencies, reckons twice as many have arrived.

The New Europeans are not confined to London, though their numbers are greatest in the capital. Newsnight discovered last week that 3,000 Poles have settled in Crewe, which has a population of 48,000. Jason Canny, the head of the recruitment agency that brought them in after opening an office in Poland said, ‘It’s quite mind-blowing the changes that we’ve gone though as a town — and I’ve been personally responsible. The migrating workforce that has come into the UK is far bigger than people realise. Not just in our area, but nationally.’ And in Crewe, as elsewhere, they are coming to settle: families are being brought over and schools are filling up with sparky Eastern European kids. One Catholic school in Crewe ended up with 23 extra Polish pupils. So much for the government’s oft-repeated claim that they are just temporary workers who would go back.

The same pattern has repeated itself in the two other EU countries, Ireland and Sweden, which opened their borders to Eastern Europeans in May 2004. Ireland, with a population of 4 million, has made room for 160,000 of them in the past two years, and many of them are settling. Sweden had 21,800 in the first year. Even countries that operated a strict quota system were surprised by the response — the Netherlands set up a quota for 20,000 work permits for Eastern Europeans, and got 24,728 applications in the first year alone.

Opening the borders on this scale between a wealthy part of the world and a comparatively poor one is unprecedented, but none of what has happened should be a surprise. With wages up to five times higher in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe, and unemployment of up to 20 per cent in the former communist countries, you’d have to be stupid not to move West to improve your lot. And these people ain’t stupid. On top of all the legitimate Eastern Europeans from the enlarged EU, the open border mania has let in lots of less legitimate immigrants, from Russian mafia bosses to Kosovan and Albanian gangs, which have transformed parts of London and allowed the police to argue for ever bigger budgets. And the opening up of Europe has much further to go: in less than a year the government plans to give the right to live and work in the UK to the 30 million people of Bulgaria and Romania, followed within ten years by the people of Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia — and then 70 million Turks.

You will not read about any of this in a European Commission report on the subject of immigrants from the East due out on 7 February. The report, officials have made clear to me, will be unabashed propaganda about the unqualified success it has been for the UK, Ireland and Sweden — dismissing any claims of floods of new arrivals. It will be aimed at persuading those 12 of the 15 old EU member states that imposed a two-year ban on Eastern Europeans to open up their borders. Their restrictions are up for review by 1 May, and at most they will only be allowed to keep them in place until 2011. The EU’s border wars are the subject of intense lobbying between old and new member states, and already Finland, Spain and Portugal have indicated they will drop their barriers. France, Germany and Austria, however, are certain to remain firm for a few years longer.

The Commission will point out that there has been only a trickle of Eastern Europeans to France, but will not make the point that this merely shows how well France’s ban has worked. It will also triumphantly point out that only a handful of Eastern Europeans claimed benefits in the UK, while failing to point out that that probably had something to do with the fact that the UK banned them from doing so. From the Commission’s point of view, open borders make sense. On balance, they clearly bring benefits to the EU as a whole, not least for the Eastern Europeans who are allowed to improve their lot. But just because it is a benefit for the EU as a whole does not mean it is a benefit for the UK, or all who reside within her.

Immigration creates not just the winners we always hear about, but also losers, whom we prefer not to discuss. While the UK’s media-political-business elite may benefit from cheap Eastern European labour, there are many others who have legitimate gripes. Last summer’s industrial dispute at Gate Gourmet, the British Airways caterer, was provoked by fears that existing workers were about to be got rid of and replaced by cheaper Eastern Europeans. Those at risk were mainly Asian women, already at the bottom of the pile: the last wave of immigrants threatened by the latest one. Ireland and Sweden have their own Gate Gourmets — the Irish ferries and a Swedish construction company — which created national scandals by trying to use imported cheap labour to displace local workers.

The effect on wages of the wave of immigration is not just confined to a few sectors. The Bank of England, in its August quarterly inflation report, examined the high level of immigration and its impact on the labour market, and concluded that ‘migration could help explain some of the recent weakness in wages’. Now low wage inflation is usually presented as a boon, but you may not feel that if it is you experiencing the low wages.

After the doors to Eastern Europe were opened, unemployment in the UK started rising — admittedly from a very low base — up 121,000 in the last year. The hardest hit are the most vulnerable, with the number of those unemployed for more than six months having risen by 66,000, and the number of 18–24-year-olds out of a job by 53,000. John Philpott, chief economist at the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development, said that competition from Eastern Europeans was making it difficult for the unemployed to move back into the labour market: ‘When it comes to recruitment, benefit claimants, many of whom are not immediately job-ready, are losing out to other jobseekers, in particular growing numbers of immigrant workers.’ One construction industry source admitted that they have cut training schemes because they can get workers ready trained from the East. Even Polly Toynbee, who previously spilt a few barrels of ink denouncing critics of mass immigration as racists, claimed in the Guardian, ‘Cheap labour provides more cheap services for the rich ...while nailing an ever-larger swath of the workforce to the minimum wage floor.’ The government insisted we needed the Eastern Europeans to fill the half a million job vacancies, but vacancies are still at that level. The government claimed we needed the immigrants to pay for our pensions in our aging society, but the head of the government’s own pension commission, Adair Turner, disagrees, claiming this week that in the UK ‘there is no insoluble pension crisis, nor huge and wide-ranging challenges arising from an aging society, nor a need for increased immigration to provide sufficient numbers of future workers’.

Instead it boosts our population, which, in a country already as congested as Britain is, has clear drawbacks. And as the great East–West migration gives us a demographic uplift, it is pushing aging Eastern European countries over the demographic brink: the Baltic states are alarmed at the pace their rural communities are collapsing as their youngsters head West.

You won’t get any serious politician in Britain admitting any of this, or any of our politically correct unions campaigning against it, but the Irish are made of sterner stuff. Pat Rabbitte, the Labour party leader, is riding high in the polls after showing how native workers are being undercut, and calling for the re-introduction of work permits for Eastern Europeans — the way things were before EU enlargement. A poll this week in the Irish Times showed that 78 per cent wanted to re-impose restrictions on Eastern Europeans.

The Irish Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union has started warning of the problems, with its head of research, Manus O’Riordan, producing a stream of statistics showing how wages in areas such as construction and manufacturing are now falling in real terms. The average hourly earnings of an electrical machine operator have dropped 13 per cent in just the last year, for example. Immigrants now make up a third of the construction industry workforce, where use of self-employed contractors by building companies has jumped 27 per cent as they seek to avoid paying pensions.

I am in favour of the most open borders possible, so long as they don’t lead to a sustained one-way population flow. Allowing French entrepreneurs to work in Britain and British pensioners to lounge in Provence is good for us all. But even economic liberals like me have to accept that there are limits to open borders between rich countries and poor ones, which remove the congruence between a government and its labour force, and can destroy a country’s willingness to accept responsibility for its own workers. There is a fundamental difference between free movement of people and free movement of goods: the economy is there to serve the people, not vice versa.

Anthony Browne is Europe correspondent for the Times.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article_pfv.php?id=7244

Source:

http://www.bhhrg.org/mediaDetails.asp?ArticleID=854

[Tiago]

I welcome Poles to the UK. They are by and large, very polite, hard-working, speak good English, and have the added advantage of being white and Christians; if only we could have done a deal on all the Asians and negroes. Not so sure about the Romanians and Albanians, who seem to have cornered the market in cash-point fraud and prostitution.

[Milesian]

There is a problem with Intra-European migration and the Poles seem to be here in larger numbers than others. It's a shame because both immigrants and natives are being exploited so that businesses maximise their profits. The Poles are paid a fraction of what the native workforce are which fosters a lot of resentment.
They are getting a bad name because of it, and that really is a pity.
Recently, 500 Irish workers were sacked by Irish Ferries who promptly replaced them with 500 Polish immigrants working for cheaper wages.
That benefits no-one except the employers.

I'm afraid in another 10 years, it may be a developed Poland suddenly finding itself swamped with thousands of Turkish, Armenian or whoever is the newest boys in the EU, taking Polish jobs. The EU benefits business in the long-term (greater competition for jobs drives wages down), and people in the short term. But eventually the beneficiaries find their own lands subject to the same immigration problems.

I have nothing against Poles, other Europeans, or really anyone at all.
But this situation is calculated to cause resentment and bad feeling and can only injure friendly relations between the peoples of Europe.

[Gil]

The same exact thing that Tiago and Milesian described is happening here though the majority of eastern european immigration is from Ukraine and Russia.
There is no comparison between a eastern european worker and a asian or african, and that is not what the portuguese question, the fact is that any eastern european immigrant works for a very low wage and the end result is that, for example in construction or any other non-specific areas, the employers prefer to hire cheaper immigrants than nationals, which results in resentment and is counterproductive for Portugal and those immigrants.

[Milesian]

Originally Posted by Manji

the fact is that any eastern european immigrant works for a very low wage and the end result is that, for example in construction or any other non-specific areas, the employers prefer to hire cheaper immigrants than nationals,

Indeed, in fact the construction industry in particular is replete with them.
I've heard mutterings that some serious discontent is formenting over it.
Only a couple of months ago, I was awakened early on a Saturday morning to the sound of loud Polish songs being sung outside my window as my house was being worked on. Quite surreal actually.

[Tiago]

Originally Posted by Milesian

Indeed, in fact the construction industry in particular is replete with them.
I've heard mutterings that some serious discontent is formenting over it.
Only a couple of months ago, I was awakened early on a Saturday morning to the sound of loud Polish songs being sung outside my window as my house was being worked on. Quite surreal actually.

Slightly ironic that an Irishman is bemoaning the availibility of cheap foreign labour in the construction industry, don't you think?

[Wilkolak]

Damn, I was actually planning on going to England for a short while, perhaps do my postgraduate studies there. How do job opportunities look for the educated sector, in terms of contract work maybe, obviously not for immigration (I am a Pole, I was born here, I lived my whole life here, and I will die here)? I am quite xenophobic myself, and would not like to impose on the British/Irish the need for m own employment, causing the loss of one of the locals there.

[Milesian]

Originally Posted by Tiago

Slightly ironic that an Irishman is bemoaning the availibility of cheap foreign labour in the construction industry, don't you think?

No, because Poland was not ground under the heel by Ireland for centuries, nor was it's poverty the result of Irish mismanagement.

Was that retort direct from the Indymedia School of Debating?

If Ireland had occupied Poland and ran it into the ground then I could see the hypocrisy of what I just said. As that never happened though, it's a moot point.

[Milesian]

By the way, let it not be said that my interests in this are entirely selfish.
In the long run, the Poles are being exploited every bit as much as the Irish or the English or the Portuguese.

You are right that the Irish were in a somewhat similar situation in the past.
As Gladstone says below - "The evil once done to the Irish is now done to the Poles"

http://irish-nationalism.net/forum/s...85&postcount=5

They have just been completed in time to convey the aborigines of Ireland to the ports where they take leave of their country. Strange to say, they derive a fleeting prosperity from depopulation and despair

[Carnyx]

Afraid, who wouln't?

[wilpuri]

It is highly unfair, that those out of the poorer countries can work for less, thereby being far more attractive on the labour market and this means higher unemployment among natives. While I have nothing against Estonians coming to Finland (love them like brothers), it is unfair against the Finnish working man, as the Estonian can still live in Estonia but can work in Finland for less pay, as that pay is far more than sufficient for a good life back in Estonia. The argument that Finland needs workers from abroad might ring true in certain proffessions, but we still have unemployment hovering around 8-10%.. Let's take care of our own first.

[Milesian]

Originally Posted by wilpuri

The argument that Finland needs workers from abroad might ring true in certain proffessions, but we still have unemployment hovering around 8-10%..

That is one of several arguments that the multiculturalists/globalists use to justify imigration. Basically what they are saying is - "Your people are too lazy or too proud to do some jobs, which is why we have to import foreigners to do them". In other words, they are saying to us - the natives are lazy while the immigrants are scum who will do any demeaning job.

Well, those 500 ferry workers certainly were happy to do their jobs before they were sacked in favour of cheap imported labour. And really - people to proud to wkr as what? Sailors? Builders? Doctors and nurses?
I don't buy that for a second. Total BS.

Let's take care of our own first.

Yes, and I'd be happy that these immigrants were able to do good jobs in their own countries. Let's help them to build up their own economies, industries and infrastructure. Then they don't have to roam foreign lands in search of jobs where they have to undercut the native workers and steal their jobs.
Remember, that if intelligent hard-working foreigners are in your country to do work, it means that their own countries suffer through lack of skilled labour and intelligentsa. Really, Big Business is plundering the brains and talents of poorer countries. Those poor countries will never be able to develop when their best people are being lured away.

Immigrants lose. Their own countries lose. Host people lose. Host country loses. But someone somewhere is making a big fat profit from it all.
And if anyone dares oppose this situation then the useful idiots of the Far-Left and the Anti-Racists will be marched out to decry the racism of people daring to protect their jobs and being upset about their cultural destruction.

Sick.

[Wilkolak]

Wilpuri and Milesian - While I understand your perspectives, there is our side of the story too. Poland not only had 50 years of Communism that destroyed it completely, but at its fall and the opening of the markets in the mid-ninetees, Poland was virgin ground for businessmen, investors, corporations etc. Now under Communism, Polish infrastructure was far behind that of the West, this shows in the amount of Poles hired to work in the factories (automization was not particularly advanced, agriculture was lso almost purely manual etc.), and with foreign investment, came the automization of infrastructure/agriculture, leading to MASSIVE job losses (from next to nothing under Communist rule, to roughly 20% today!). These Poles are desperate to find work, but are simply not able to find a job in their professions, and we have the same problems as you (Ukrainians, and recently according to reforms, Romanians and Bulgarians are given jobs due to lower wage expectations), and it simply shifts westward. This idea of Poland joining the EU is FUCKING RIDICULOUS, and if there's one man who should be hanged by the balls, it's Alexander Kwasniewski (Izaak Stolzman, his real name, go figure!), for whoring out Poland to the West, and not giving a flying fuck about Poles! My cousin as a judge gets paid E300 PER MONTH! Me as an Industrial Psychologist/Communications Analyst apprentice, gets paid E150 PER MONTH!!! As you can see, this argument goes both ways, and it is far worse for Poles than Westerners, I am sorry to say.

[Milesian]

I don't doubt that Poles suffer hardship and need to look for work out of desperation. However, emigrating abroad to look for work is a short-term solution. Polish workers are paid substantially less here than native workers. True, they might enjoy a slightly better quality of life here being poor than they would being poor back home but that is rivalled by the increasing anger and disdain they are held by the unemployed natives.. Meanwhile, Poland sees it's best people, it's intelligentsa and it's skilled labour force bleeding off to other countries. That doesn't bode well for Poland's future.

What would be in everyone's best interest (except for business owners in need of cheap foreign slave workers) would be to give aid to Poland and help it to develop itself, rather than plundering it's best people.