You are reading a single comment by @The_Kindness_of_Trees and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@The_Kindness_of_Trees
Surely one could argue that a steady stream of immigrants who are prepared to work for less - because relative to their background situation the pay conditions are acceptable -serves to keep wages down, particularly within the service sector. This in turn persuades people that they're better off on benefits, unemployment stagnates, the directors and shareholders at Costa, or wherever, get rich.
Immigrants are people like us, no more noble than us, no more vulnerable to racism or being generally unpleasant than us (and conversely just as capable of niceness).
This is not moral issue, it's about what the country can afford and the majority of the population want. If that turns out to be completely unrestricted immigration than so be it.
[Postscript: Miss Trees has just finished a ten-year tenure working in a school that serves mostly African and Asian children, with a couple of Poles thrown in for good measure. In some school years there wouldn't be a single 'indigenous' child in Miss Trees' class, and when there was they were invariably from broken homes - dad in prison and /or on drugs, brothers and sisters by different fathers, mum on benefits, etc. The point is I don't think some people realise how total immigration is in some places. The only 'white people' a lot of these folk have any sort of contact with is with their children's teachers and social services. So whatever benefits immigration might bring to this country, it's not done by way of cultural assimilation - it can only really be economic]