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You could easily also argue that the Brexit voters you talk about see immigrants as less than them. Even if they are not openly racist, because most people are not.
Rather than engaging and unionising together immigrants are seen as "the problem". Poor immigrants are ripe for exploitation beyond what the local workforce would accept (which you point out)
The Greens actually DID say that in some areas, because of a fast influx of immigrants, there was more pressure on services and the gains should be more fairly distributed.
There are also possibilities to limit immigration under freedom of movement, which can be taken. I understand some of the frustrations as an EU immigrant myself who has had to put up with nearly 2 years of Brexit shit.
But if somebody cares f-all about if their immigrants colleagues will get problems due to Brexit [and I know there was an immense amount of lying about this by the Brexit team as they promised there would be no issues, which they could not promise as nobody is held to account in referendums] there is a sympathy deficit in response.
But, perhaps the leave team knew all this. They have exploited the NHS money, take back control promises and immigration lies [turkey? lol] ignoring the anger and anguish that would come when nothing was done.
And now people that think the bottom was reached may find out there is another cellar under the cellar they are in. The whole thing is massively cynical.
But I am also fedup as being "part of the problem" all the time. So this is what is has done, we are all pissed off with each other [sometimes for good reason] while Mogg is laughing all the way to his Irish funds.
JWestland-
The leave team definitely exploited all of this. It's just a pisser that some political parties, maybe someone like the labour party, didn't recognise this issue and do something about it in the past 20 years or so.
A lot of these are casual labour, in for a few years and then home again. It's not really a situation conducive to unionising and forming a common front.
aggi
This thread is really just a big echo chamber. A load of people in London (a reasonable proportion earning significant salaries and owning expensive houses) pointing at Brexit voters and declaring them all racist idiots. You can see why a lot of people in deprived towns thought Fuck you, what relevance does this have to us.
Any questioning of free movement of people is shouted down as racism. People point out that immigrants are net contributors to the economy without taking into account the impact on local workforces (a number of studies suggest that the net contributor figure doesn't stand up when this is taken into account).
When people look at the local factories and see what used to be reasonably paid roles gradually being replaced by foreign, non-unionised labour on the minimum wage I think they're entitled to wonder what benefits the EU has brought them.
It's become a race to the bottom in many cases, unscrupulous owners know they have a ready supply of cheap labour, often not that familiar with UK employment rules and less likely to kick up a fuss, so they can push the pay and working conditions down and replace them at will.
The response to this is generally, that isn't the EU's fault, the UK government should be doing more about it. They're not though, and haven't been for years, so what other choice did people have? If you're already at the bottom then if you shake things up the worst that can happen is you stay at the bottom. It's no coincidence that if you look at the 20 most deprived local authorities, all but a couple of them voted to Leave.
Undoubtedly some did vote leave because they were racist but the patronising response that all Brexit voters are racist or too stupid to understand.
Before the vote the lack of willingness to engage was one of the reasons that Remain lost. The continuation of that is partly contributing to the fact that most of those leave voters are still pro-leave.