You are reading a single comment by @Dammit and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
-
I ran bars in Central London for seven years, English people almost never applied for a job- when I was running the place on Regent Street I had 22 staff and none of them were from the UK- because only foreign nationals had applied for a job there. I used to do create shift allocations based on level of English, which was challenging - but you work with who is willing to work, and "native English" weren't.
Dammit
Although years of shouting it down as racist is probably part of what ended us up where we are today.
If there'd been a bit more openness and discussion then maybe people wouldn't have reacted the way they did when given a chance to vote on it.
It's OK saying that immigrants make a net contribution to society, but people find it hard to accept that when they are not working and some industries have a disproportionate amount of foreign labour.
This is particularly the case in unskilled labour:
Of those 43%, 19% are migrants who've arrived in the past 5 years. It's easy to see why people have concerns.
There are obviously bigger issues at play, enforcement of the minimum wage for one, but just suggesting that restricting immigration is backwards and racist is part of the reason we're fucked now.