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Bingo.
The paradox:
Brexit was popular on the promise to ‘get back control’ of borders in order to reduce costly immigration. Opening borders to (relatively costly) non-eu migration in order to fill roles previously taken by (relatively un-costly) eu migrant workers.Brexit may slow immigration. That might be enough for Leave voters. But I doubt it. They’ll still not really like brown people.
miro_o-
Think it was more the white east europeans they hated more.
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Bear in mind as well that people on working visa are now tied to their employer for 5 years and so pretty easy to overwork and abuse in other ways.
It may avoid the abuse in low wages roles where people were laid off in fake redundancies and minimum wage immigrants rehired (yes that's a UK problem but...I don't get anywhere explaining that to Brexys)
Or create the same problem in another wage band cos you better shut up if you don't want to lose your job and visa? Maybe not?
I don't know for sure if it's going to give the nativists what they want or the law of unintended consequences will come into effect and they'll still complain.
lynx
JWestland
I think you may be right. I think that the only predictions that I can confidently make right now are (i) we will have to compromise (for trade deals etc.) relative to the "all the benefit and none of the cost" vision that Brexit was sold on and (ii) people that voted for Brexit (and the press that pushed it) will be largely unable to own those compromises as inevitable failures of Brexit
It's going to be very difficult to bite one's tongue when people are complaining about problems that lots of people saw coming a mile off.
More worryingly, on Brexit day Liam Fox said something that basically confirmed what a perceptive friend of mine noted before the referendum, namely that the Brexit camp is irreconcilably divided between globalisers and protectionists. Fox, clearly in the globalising camp (as are all the Brexiteers with any actual power), said something to the effect of "a lot of people who voted for Brexit are going to be disappointed." Other than being an admission that the whole thing is a fucking sham and that we're now on a path to a UK that is actually wanted by a very small minority of the population, it's very worrying because it suggests that there will be a huge number of disgruntled people out there who will continue to blame the EU, foreigners and immigrants for a few years, before someone charismatic and fashy steps forward and actually shows them that they were sold a pup by their own government (and of course he will make Britain great again if they only vote for him).