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From the conversations I've had, online and offline, the hard socialist viewpoint on immigration is 'no borders'. You don't get more more easy immigration than removing the boundaries between countries because you believe them to be fictional lines drawn on a map.

If you are using 'hard socialist' to describe the current leaders of the UK Labour party, then a) no and b) there's a big difference between five year tractor plans and unfucking the trains

This is true but there are a number of significant steps which would need to be taken before this is in any way realistic. Our current global economic system does not allow for a "no borders" immigration solution which would be palatable to many socialists that I'm aware of.

Socialists want open borders for very different reasons than the European Union.

But you won’t say what they are. Cunning. Hard to discuss mind.

I'm at work and don't really have time but could happily get more into it later.

Hint: the short answer is getting rid of global capitalism.

Historically hard left socialist policy has been internationalist, as in "take over other countries".

Or do you mean the reasons?

I'd like to know what the reasoning is that sees restricting peoples ability to move between countries as a sound socialist principal.

I doubt many 'socialists' want to restrict free movement. The main gripe is how employers depress people's wages by attracting labour from countries with much lower wages. Solidarity doesn't work if countries have vastly different standards--foreign workers aren't really scabs despite coming from far away and taking local labour. Corbyn has often said he wants to end that exploitative mechanism. The single market is all well and good in theory (although there is the problem that larger markets tend to favour larger companies), but when it's built on such (worsening) wealth inequality, it is certainly worth considering, from a socialist perspective, whether the interests of poorer workers would not be served better by modifying it. Obviously, to take the example of fruit and vegetable picking, it's likely that farmers actually would let the produce rot in the fields rather than attract local workers with decent pay for that work, but there's a problem with the whole supply chain--large supermarkets putting pressure on farmers to lower prices, consumers expecting very low prices for food, food getting trucked all around the country, flown in as air freight, trucked from other countries--it's a very big mess and a very skewed market.

Where I grew up in Germany, the local food system still just about works--you can buy from the farmers' markets for decent prices, seasonally obviously, but there are cracks there, too. Over here, apart from the recent re-introduction of some (often none too cheap) farmers' markets, it's completely bonkers.

Homelessness special. For homeless Windrush people, a bit like the Grenfell follow-up (or not), things are not moving quickly here, either:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/21/windrush-migrants-still-sleeping-rough-one-month-after-ministers-promise

Priorities, priorities. There are homeless people to be harassed and underhand tactics to be applied:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/18/royal-wedding-windsor-police-seize-rough-sleepers-bus

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/20/homeless-people-fined-imprisoned-pspo-england-wales

And why have many become homeless?

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/22/benefit-sanctions-found-to-be-ineffective-and-damaging

This is a minimum wage question though, surely? As in, make that respectable and that problem is behind you.

Across different countries, you mean?

People aren't commodities to be traded across boarders for the benefit of our capitalist overlords? People shouldn't be forcibly driven from their communities due to their relative poverty?

There's also the problem that the current structure that facilitates free movement is built on a capitalist quazi-imperialist structure that owes much of its success to leveraging its already strong position to further beat down weaker countries. It's hard to think of a sound socialist defense of the EU as a concept.

?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/23/ex-mayor-of-ipswich-inga-lockington-denied-citizenship-after-almost-40-years-in-uk

Sandi Toksvig next?

"We need to move away from the assumption that xenophobic immigration hysteria is the only reason to object to freedom of movement of labour. "

Where do I state this?
I had a look around at research around wage lowering and actually the effect is small, this is the argument the left is using atm.

The local socialist parties in NI are NOT against freedom of movement, now they could be a small sample size.

"but it's clear that Corbyn doubts the possibility of delivering a "progressive" policy platform whilst maintaining our current relationship to the single market. " correct but the arguments he gives have been debunked, so it would be nice if then gives others.

US staff suffering sonic attack again

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44223523

As one of these immigrants, I perhaps have a slightly different view.

I agree with the issues that Oliver points out that the single market can lead to exploitation via the backdoor.
However, visa systems can also lead to exploitation. I already read about people being exploited now that companies can sponsor visas and it's very hard to change jobs for people. If the left does not like exploitation that will need to be addressed.

And the current talk is very much that immigration, so immigrants are part of a problem.

Yet I see skill shortages, lack of union power and many issues that are part caused by the local government. I see local EU governments voting more and more neoliberal which of course skews the decision making more towards neoliberalism.

I see money being sent back to local countries from higher wage countries (lots of Polish people, for example, told me their wages were so low, working in the UK for a bit would help them save. This was when the £ was much higher) and who am I to judge?

Any immigrant also got their job fair and square here. The discussion has gotten quite one VS the other. Yet, we could also all agree that exploitation is wrong, push for joining of unions and work together.

And to make it even more complex is that immigrants are not a homogeneous group. Some are quite neoliberal for example and may not care about issues (I am a Green voter) so issues may need to be approached from a human rights/economic view rather than a political view.

Where do I state this?

I guess I misinterpreted you, although it's been a common claim in this thread the past couple of years.

the arguments he gives have been debunked

I haven't actually read the whole report on this but from what I've read I wouldn't say they've been debunked. What has been debunked is the Troika's favourite strategy of pushing continued austerity on struggling EU economies.

Now you could of course argue that the UK is not at risk of the same full-scale economic meltdown as Portugal, Spain, Greece etc but I think that would be missing the bigger picture and would certainly contradict any principles of international solidarity.

How exactly would a Labour government nationalise the entire rail industry without breaching EU competition rules?

Edit: hit send too soon.

suffered a "variety of physical symptoms"

brown noise?

The common demoninator in the Cuban and Chinese incidents is an American Embassy. The American line is they’re being targeted. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theory nutter I have a hunch the answer might be closer to home.

What. The. Fuck. How does this kind of shit go on in a workplace? All manner of levels of management need severe arse kicking (preferably out of the door) for something getting that far.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-44222575

That is awful. It's disgusting that such prehistoric attitudes still exist and that it sounds like the employers have done fuck all about it.

"How exactly would a Labour government nationalise the entire rail industry without breaching EU competition rules?"

They don't forbid it, to assert that they do is to misunderstand the rules.

This is very good: How exactly would a Labour government nationalise the entire rail industry without breaching EU competition rules?

Cha, what I am afraid of, and I am saying this as somebody who feels her trust is completely betrayed is that the Labour party (as the Greens and socialist do not say this) is now playing a zero sum game based on no data.

The assertion is "immigration does x" (I can't find data)
THEREFORE
"we must add more controls to EU immigration" AND "the only way to solve x is to do this"

It's a zero sum game. There is no option on the table of

"immigration does x and we have data"
THEREFORE we try y, and actually, try to make immigrants welcome and feel like they want to improve x (skill shortages whatever)
AND
we achievement a result w/o throwing people under the bus.

That can be done in or out the EU, Labour has decided to take the option of saying they don't want FOM.

Obviously, I am simplifying as such solutions and problems are complex, but a simple solution (more controls and limits on EU immigration) to a complex problem is most likely wrong, as the saying goes.

I guess we could go around in circles forever, each saying the other has misunderstood the rules.

The EU rules would allow the introduction of state-owned operators as competitors within the rail industry. They would not allow for a state monopoly over the entire rail industry because there is by definition no competition there. These are entirely different and most on the left (including Corbyn, to get back to the point) believe that the former would be an insufficient fix.

The EU is openly pursuing a programme of increased liberalisation, so I think it's reasonable to assume worst case scenarios in respect of its opposition to sweeping renationalisation.