Red Faction
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very important pointbelboid said:
think i agree with you on that one
Immigration .. part of neo liberalism/Thatcherism??
- Thread starter durruti02
- Start date
think i agree with you on that one
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
Apologies for C+P but some of my stuff is on paper:
As an aside migrants are not immune from growing old having children aswell (assuming full settlement and citizenship rights are granted rather than just using keeping migrants on WPs during adulthood and sending them back when they reach old age)
I'd argue:
None of this in any way stops me from arguing for full rights of migrants who are here in Britain- (just as I do not argue for heterosexual people in Britain to have less rights)
For 2003
Back on 27 May 2005 Independent made a report into reliance on African medicine workers. It had interviews with doctors- one of them from Ghana describes how he came in order to have more money, a more relaxed work-life and to be able to send his children to private schools in Britain- because Britain's private school system was the best in the world.
Given the current lack of sufficient state training and pay in medicine in UK- the case should be made for ending this migration and replacing it with
Similarly ReUn(&Semi-)skilled labour- given unemployment, given that entirely non-unionised casual work and temporary work is becoming increasingly the norm for some sectors- the focus should be on workers already here.
Re Recruitment into unions- that is a huge different matter not helped by their absurd and hierarchical structures- but one of the problems is that there are so many new migrants of a mentality where the aim is to work as much as possible on their limited WP time/send as much money as remittance and not care about anything else. Where there is a degree of illegality- overstayed visas, permits, passports- this is even more acute.
As you've argued it is meaningless me saying all the above given that we have no control over decisions.
It's important only in that it helps me answer when
working-class people (indigenous English, Afro-Caribbean & Turkish) have said: "There are too many immigrants entering into Britain currently".
My first response is that "Yes there are, and the reason why is as a result of Blair(and Major) & the CBI 'politics is usually the shadow cast on society by business'" (not particularly as a result of 'political correctness' or 'the liberal/loony elite')
I've found durruti02's approach is a better one than arguing for "Everyone should have the right to live wherever they want"
PS When speaking to lefties about immigration I've found some terrified of saying (or even hearing bless the cotton socks of one SWPer!) "there are too immigrants in Britain currently"
Even the TUC have a draft document about pensions being easily coverable by basic Keynesianism- investment in industries, taxation and reducing unemployment etc...belboid said:
As an aside migrants are not immune from growing old having children aswell (assuming full settlement and citizenship rights are granted rather than just using keeping migrants on WPs during adulthood and sending them back when they reach old age)
I'd argue:
None of this in any way stops me from arguing for full rights of migrants who are here in Britain- (just as I do not argue for heterosexual people in Britain to have less rights)
For 2003
Back on 27 May 2005 Independent made a report into reliance on African medicine workers. It had interviews with doctors- one of them from Ghana describes how he came in order to have more money, a more relaxed work-life and to be able to send his children to private schools in Britain- because Britain's private school system was the best in the world.
Given the current lack of sufficient state training and pay in medicine in UK- the case should be made for ending this migration and replacing it with
Similarly ReUn(&Semi-)skilled labour- given unemployment, given that entirely non-unionised casual work and temporary work is becoming increasingly the norm for some sectors- the focus should be on workers already here.
Re Recruitment into unions- that is a huge different matter not helped by their absurd and hierarchical structures- but one of the problems is that there are so many new migrants of a mentality where the aim is to work as much as possible on their limited WP time/send as much money as remittance and not care about anything else. Where there is a degree of illegality- overstayed visas, permits, passports- this is even more acute.
As you've argued it is meaningless me saying all the above given that we have no control over decisions.
It's important only in that it helps me answer when
working-class people (indigenous English, Afro-Caribbean & Turkish) have said: "There are too many immigrants entering into Britain currently".
My first response is that "Yes there are, and the reason why is as a result of Blair(and Major) & the CBI 'politics is usually the shadow cast on society by business'" (not particularly as a result of 'political correctness' or 'the liberal/loony elite')
I've found durruti02's approach is a better one than arguing for "Everyone should have the right to live wherever they want"
PS When speaking to lefties about immigration I've found some terrified of saying (or even hearing bless the cotton socks of one SWPer!) "there are too immigrants in Britain currently"
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
very briefly, on a couple of points:
they do - and it involves substantial immigration!sihhi said:
but no immigration controls would probably mean people not migrating for life - at their wish - because they don't have to. so people would come and go over here lifetimes - most people, ime, would like to spend their last years 'at home'. And the flip side of the fact that immigrants temselves would be entitled to pensions, is that they don't need all that expensive educating (or not as much anyway).
not skipping this bit, just need an arlier hour to respond properly.
of that I have no doubt whatsoever.
a properly funded health service? as patty said, if we can influence immigration policy that much, we can influence health spending even easier.
there is some truth in this, but only some. Where it has been attempted, unionisation rates have been very very good amongst migrant labourers - not surprising given the super-exploitation with which they often are faced. The problem of smuggled labour/migrants is obviously connected, but still quite seperate.
and what do you say after agreeing there are too many immigrants, when asked 'what are we going to do about it then?' and then quotes some reactionary idea of immigration controls? If the thesis doesnt lead to any practical, concrete, applications, I have to ask what use it is?
Divisive Cotton said:
Very true. It's the reasons behind the people in power being in favour of mass immigration that we have to consider.
If it really were about creating one world, one country, no borders, or whatever, then that might be commendable. But does anyone really believe that is the reason?
belboid said:
Isn't the ageing population merely a symbol of the fact that the UK is a rich country? And a relatively free one? Do you think we should go back to the days of chaining women to the house and expecting them to live as baby machines?
cockneyrebel
New Member
Belboid has already raised many of the points I would of.
Tbaldwin and durutti the reason I didn't continue on the other thread is because you just went round and round in circles making the same points, no matter what anyone says. It's just tedious, nothing to do with your strength of argument.
I actually work in housing and this is a load of bollox. It basically means that housing gets handed down no matter what the needs of the family in comparison to others. It means that a single person can end up living in a four bedroom house.
Also as council housing is being decimated year in year out, this “solution” kind of misses the point.
Who would argue with that?
As others have said why should native working class people have more say than immigrant working class people about what decisions are made and who lives where. And as belboid pointed out, why is this just an immigration issues. Why aren’t you saying that people should oppose people moving from poor areas of the country to rich areas.
What a load of bollox. What does “relatively richer” mean? I’ve worked with immigrants for years and 99% of the people I’ve met have nothing. So because they and their families saved up for the smuggling costs they should be condemned for that or told they’re “relatively well off”. Do me a favour.
The point that the CBI and neo-liberals are in favour of immigration is nonsensical. They are also in favour of people going to work. Does that mean no-one should work?
Also while there is undoubtedly a damaging skills drain from poorer countries, what is your answer to that? Presumably you are saying we should set up “fortress UK” where we protect our gains against foreigners. What other “solution” are you proposing? Funnily enough while you compare people who don’t favour immigration controls to neo-liberals, the policy of “fortress UK” has a good resonance with a growing far right group in the UK.
Workers rights in the UK can be effectively protected by a good minimum wage and strong unions, and this will be far more effective than calls for ever stronger immigration controls. And as people have said, by the time workers have any control over immigration controls, we’ll also have the power to achieve far better things that that.
Tbaldwin and durutti the reason I didn't continue on the other thread is because you just went round and round in circles making the same points, no matter what anyone says. It's just tedious, nothing to do with your strength of argument.
I actually work in housing and this is a load of bollox. It basically means that housing gets handed down no matter what the needs of the family in comparison to others. It means that a single person can end up living in a four bedroom house.
Also as council housing is being decimated year in year out, this “solution” kind of misses the point.
Who would argue with that?
As others have said why should native working class people have more say than immigrant working class people about what decisions are made and who lives where. And as belboid pointed out, why is this just an immigration issues. Why aren’t you saying that people should oppose people moving from poor areas of the country to rich areas.
What a load of bollox. What does “relatively richer” mean? I’ve worked with immigrants for years and 99% of the people I’ve met have nothing. So because they and their families saved up for the smuggling costs they should be condemned for that or told they’re “relatively well off”. Do me a favour.
The point that the CBI and neo-liberals are in favour of immigration is nonsensical. They are also in favour of people going to work. Does that mean no-one should work?
Also while there is undoubtedly a damaging skills drain from poorer countries, what is your answer to that? Presumably you are saying we should set up “fortress UK” where we protect our gains against foreigners. What other “solution” are you proposing? Funnily enough while you compare people who don’t favour immigration controls to neo-liberals, the policy of “fortress UK” has a good resonance with a growing far right group in the UK.
Workers rights in the UK can be effectively protected by a good minimum wage and strong unions, and this will be far more effective than calls for ever stronger immigration controls. And as people have said, by the time workers have any control over immigration controls, we’ll also have the power to achieve far better things that that.
What is the difference between working class people voting for self interest and stopping immigration in their area and Governments voting for self interest in putting import tax on goods from countries where they are cheaper?
Why should working class people from one country be treated differently to others?
Isn’t this the sort of stuff Anarcho-Nationalists talk about?
Why should working class people from one country be treated differently to others?
Isn’t this the sort of stuff Anarcho-Nationalists talk about?
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Yes, yes, no, of course not.RenegadeDog said:
But why is Britain a relatively rich and free country? To no small extent this is due to trhe super-profits 'Britain' has exploited from 'third world' countries, and from the use of imported labour. Immigration has played a vital part in the capitalist growth of this country. Of course the working-class would be better off had such a capitalist system been overthrown and replaced by a socialist/communist/anarchist system, but that's just stating the obvious.
But if we are arguing about how to make capitalism more amenable to the working class (which seems to be the essence of this thread, some soft reformism, even tho it could never be implemented!), then one would still need some immigration.
But here we have the problem - the argument on this thread is about how we can try and reform capitalism, when actually, its not reforming it needs. You cannot make capitalism 'make sense' for the working-class, as that is the opposite if what it's all about!
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
cockneyrebel said:
So in practice, in the here and now you want council tenants to enjoy less rights than their home owning counterparts when it comes to deciding what happens to their homes once they have died. This wouldn't seem to be an encouragement to remaining a council tenant. And it also doesn't do wonders for the social and cultural value attached to being one.
Cheers - Louis Mac
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
1 - I would disagree entirely, that ois a far too simi=plistic and sweeping statement. At times (eg the relatively full employment of the fifties and sixties), immigration has helped the 'local' w-c enormously - by doing all the shit low paid jobs, whilst local workers had slightly (and only slightly) better onessihhi said:
2- Remittances are very probalby substantial, tho I have never seen any well researched figures on that. And no, of course they dont change the social relatins between classes, but who the heck ever argued they did? They're wages, and wages don't suddenly alter social relations. I dont understand what relevance you think this point has.
3 - yes, and their emigration will force the Polish government to address how it is to retain such workers, maybe force the EU to subsidise their wages. Do you really think having a government imposition of who can and can't leave he country is a socially progressive measure? Sounds more like imprisonment to me. Also, as stated before, on a proper training programme, gaining good experience ion a well funded environment, with an opportunity to work for a specified period, such migratin of health workers can have a highly positive effect on health services both 'here' and 'there'.
I'll try & phrase my previous question a bit better now - when someone says to you 'there are too many immigrants in this country', and you agree, what do you say when s/he continues 'good, so who are we gonna deport first, nad how'. if there are too many, logic dictates that some must/should be removed.
The thing is tho, it isn't immigrants -whether from Poland, the Phillipines, or Pimlico - that cause working-class poverty and insecurity, it's capitalism, and the bosses that seek to exploit us, and divide and rule us.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Im reasonably sure there arent enough workers here, so we need immigration.
Factors involved:
Decline in birthrate, really hard to overstate just how much of an impact this will have as the baby boomer generation start retiring.
More 'native' people trained to do management/service/office type jobs, less people left who are instilled with the expectation of a lifelong career down the mines etc.
Low unemployment. Im of the school of thought that you never get to 'full employment' because a percentage of jobless people are simply incapable of doing a job, for health, mental health, educational or other reasons. Or just because employers see that they could get twice the productivity from someone younger, keener, hungrier.
Now Im also sure that liberalisation, union destruction, isolation of people, profit are all factors too, more reasons why this stuff goes unchallenged by mainstream parties.
But at the end of the day I find immigration to be totally understandable given the current economic etc systems. To eliminate the need for immigration, we'd need a very radical change in how everything works, eg get more of us 'natives' to do the REAL jobs that need doing.
I am bothered by what will happen in an econimic downturn, in the event of rapidly rising unemployment. Seems most of the people I know barely tollerate immigration at the best of times, so it could get very messy when standards of living go down. I would say that people should have had more babies in the 70's if they were that bothered about it, but I dont think humans have a collective economic counciousness.
Factors involved:
Decline in birthrate, really hard to overstate just how much of an impact this will have as the baby boomer generation start retiring.
More 'native' people trained to do management/service/office type jobs, less people left who are instilled with the expectation of a lifelong career down the mines etc.
Low unemployment. Im of the school of thought that you never get to 'full employment' because a percentage of jobless people are simply incapable of doing a job, for health, mental health, educational or other reasons. Or just because employers see that they could get twice the productivity from someone younger, keener, hungrier.
Now Im also sure that liberalisation, union destruction, isolation of people, profit are all factors too, more reasons why this stuff goes unchallenged by mainstream parties.
But at the end of the day I find immigration to be totally understandable given the current economic etc systems. To eliminate the need for immigration, we'd need a very radical change in how everything works, eg get more of us 'natives' to do the REAL jobs that need doing.
I am bothered by what will happen in an econimic downturn, in the event of rapidly rising unemployment. Seems most of the people I know barely tollerate immigration at the best of times, so it could get very messy when standards of living go down. I would say that people should have had more babies in the 70's if they were that bothered about it, but I dont think humans have a collective economic counciousness.
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
belboid said:
Yep demand more council housing and make sure that housing is as appealing and as useful to the people using it as the home ownership sector is to us with mortgages. By not allowing people familial security of tenure - which is effectively what the sons and daughters policy does - you are creating a situation within the council sector where people are encouraged to scrap it out in order to prove who is the most deserving.
Cheers - Louis Mac
cockneyrebel
New Member
But I’d say the same about the private sector. It’s disgusting that you get single people in mansions, far worse than in the public sector. But two wrongs don’t make a right as they say.
There is no way you can justify single people staying in large properties when families with children are crying out for properties and are living in hostels. Of course the overall answer is a massive building programme for council housing. As it goes, if things carry on they way they are going, there won’t be any council housing left by 2010.
Is this a joke? Tbaldwin and durutti go around screaming racist at anyone who disagrees with them and you choose to pick up a "hidden subtext" from other posters?
If there is an economic downturn, anti-immigration and racist feelings may well rise. But as the BNP have noted themselves, the more people pander to their anti-immigration line the more it benefits them. The Labour Party line of pulling the rug from under their feet, far from marginalising groups like the BNP, actually ends up bolstering their support as more and more ground is conceded to a right-wing agenda.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Louis MacNeice said:
The problem is that the "sons and daughters" policy could have been very easily amended so that a non-compulsory system of "house-swapping" could have taken place, so that if, for example, the old couple with the "living at home" adult daughter both pass away, leaving their tenancy to a 4-bedroom house to their daughter, the local authority could offer her a transfer to a smaller property that better suited her needs if she wanted.
Instead, the tories chose to smash the social housing system and put in place a "needs-based" system that doesn't appear to serve anyone very well, except bean-counters.. The current system (IMHO) is tailored to meet the needs of local authorities to manage their (shrinking) stock, not to serve their tenants.
cockneyrebel
New Member
If you took away the "non-compulsory" and "if she wanted" bit from that, I'd agree.
In reality that is what local councils do. The one I work doesn't just evict people but will move them to a property that meets their housing needs.
However the "Decent Homes Scheme" (what an Orwellian name) means that by 2010 there won't be any council housing left if the government gets its way.
Sorry what is your big fear?treelover said:
I haven't seen any subtext here at all who has mentioned racism?
I am an immigrant to the UK I left Brazil where I had a job as a television Journalist and the only job I could get in the UK was as a cleaner, I was never given a house or money from the government.
The fact of the matter is that a cleaner working in the UK can earn enough money to support themselves in the UK and send money home to support the family, what is wrong with that?
I haven’t taken anyone’s job; I went door to door dropping leaflets offering my services as a cleaner and generated my own work, I don’t think any of the people that I cleaned for back then had a cleaner before I started.
I really can’t see how stopping working class people from other countries coming here to work will improve the lot of the working class in the UK, this isn’t a new issue and under the Thatcher government there were more than 3 million people unemployed and I don’t remember Anarchist and Socialists calling for a stop to immigration.
It is a very new concept for me to read working class people in one country should have more rights/opportunities than working class people from another country, sounds a bit like we are all equal but some are more equal than others.
immigration has always been used as a weapon against the working class - the only reason mass immigration was allowed after WWII was to prevent the spectre of full employment - if workers are not in constant fear of being thrown out of work they will start to demand better pay and conditions, simple as.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
fucking bullshit. ahistorical reactionary drivel.
mass immigraton was needed to fuel a massively growing economy, in order to try and keep up with the USSR and other 'competitor nations'.
I take it you would have oppossed allowing women to work on the same basis?
Workers have no country.
mass immigraton was needed to fuel a massively growing economy, in order to try and keep up with the USSR and other 'competitor nations'.
I take it you would have oppossed allowing women to work on the same basis?
Workers have no country.
If what you say is right (I don’t really know the history but I see others have challenged your view) are the working class from elsewhere to blame and if not where to you believe your anger should be directed?rednblack said:
Also do you think working class people from other countries should have less rights once they are in the UK to working class people born in the UK?
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
No, I say that cos I believe it. And because it is true, nationalism is a blight upon the workers movement, and another attempt at divide and rule.treelover said:
But how about trying to challenge some of the substance of what is being said, instead of just saying 'good point/crap point'?
All that anyone pro-immigration controls here has said is that 'the bosses try and use immigration to suit them' as if that's bloody surprising! What the hell does anyone expect bosses to do - try and use immigration because its just fair, or to help out 'local workers'? It makes no sense.
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