Immigration to the UK - do you have concerns?

[kabbes]

I think that economic arguments both for and against immigration as a benefit or cost to the country are missing the point. They find the price of everything and the value of nothing. But FWIW, research that is detailed enough tends to show that production per capita tends to rise with immigration, but only in the second or even third generation. The first generation tends to act as a net strain. And this becomes an economic problem where the first generation tend to arrive in a different place to where their children go on to settle. In those circumstances, you have a subsidy from the arrival areas to the subsequent settlement areas. And typically, that tends to mean that poor areas experience the economic cost whereas rich areas experience the economic benefit.

 

[mojo pixy]

I think that economic arguments both for and against immigration as a benefit or cost to the country are missing the point. They find the price of everything and the value of nothing. But FWIW, research that is detailed enough tends to show that production per capita tends to rise with immigration, but only in the second or even third generation. The first generation tends to act as a net strain. And this becomes an economic problem where the first generation tend to arrive in a different place to where their children go on to settle. In those circumstances, you have a subsidy from the arrival areas to the subsequent settlement areas. And typically, that tends to mean that poor areas experience the economic cost whereas rich areas experience the economic benefit.

However, this strain and that economic cost is really to do with neglectful government policy, rather than immigration or the people that brings. There are many ways the effects you outline could be mitigated, one of course could be to stem the tide of immigration. Another could be eg extra funding from central government, to support and improve the infrastructure under strain. Support to turn the economic costs into economic benefits. But of course it suits governments of all shades to have working class communities angry and divided, instead of united and punching upward.

 

[danny la rouge]

i do agre that culture shouldn't be defined at a border, but saying " i hate this country" falls into exactly the same trap therefore as saying "i love this country".

Is that supposed to be something I said? I said nothing of the sort. People really need to stop making up what other people think.

 

[danny la rouge]

This is a term of your own. It’s made me really angry because it bears absolutely no relation to anything I’ve said or believe. In fact it’s the direct opposite to what I love about humans: their cultures.

I’m going to have to put you and this thread on ignore in case I say something I regret. I’m literally seeing red.

I’ve had a chance to calm down now.

 

[brogdale]

I think that economic arguments both for and against immigration as a benefit or cost to the country are missing the point. They find the price of everything and the value of nothing. But FWIW, research that is detailed enough tends to show that production per capita tends to rise with immigration, but only in the second or even third generation. The first generation tends to act as a net strain. And this becomes an economic problem where the first generation tend to arrive in a different place to where their children go on to settle. In those circumstances, you have a subsidy from the arrival areas to the subsequent settlement areas. And typically, that tends to mean that poor areas experience the economic cost whereas rich areas experience the economic benefit.

Yes, quite right; the net fiscal impacts (at a national level) inevitably mask the differential spatial patterns. The concept of initial migrant receiving areas being poorer makes complete sense; first G migrants will inevitably tend to be relatively poor in relation to their host nation and therefore only able to afford the cheapest housing in poorer areas.

 

[brogdale]

I’ve had a chance to calm down now.

I'm glad to hear that Danny; it's good to have you back in here.
FWIW, you weren't the only one who found this thread difficult yesterday.

 

[danny la rouge]

Culture, nation-state, nationality, country: these are not synonyms.

Culture is far more granular and layered than nationality. Nationality is something that stops at borders.

And let's get something very clear here. State and country are not synonyms. A state is a power structure. A country is a region.

I don't identify with the state. The state is not my identity. The state is a bureaucratic structure. A polity made by people. The institutions of the state are just constructs. The peoples of the region are not those constructs.

The political affairs of humans come and go. The lines we draw on maps do not exist in the dirt on the land that those maps describe. Even check points erected according to those maps will crumble if not maintained.

Saying I don't identify with those structures is not saying "I hate this country". I don't hate this country. I don't hate the people or the cultures of this country.

I was born and raised on an archipelago known as the British Isles. Because of the political baggage that comes with the term "British", people in Ireland contest that name. I personally like to refer to the archipelago as "these islands". One day it may not be a political statement to say "British". But for many it still is. One day we may be able to say British in the way Norwegians and Swedes can say Scandinavian. I would like that. I hope it comes soon. But it hasn’t come yet.

I am not, by the way, saying nobody feels British. Nor am I saying that by not feeling British I am "above" anything. I am saying that identity is not something we can just assume falls into the borders we ourselves have drawn.

I feel Scottish and European, and I want one day to be able to put a name to These Islands without assumptions being made. But those identities for me are not the governments or institutions of government.

Although I am Scottish, I speak English. This is an example of why it is nonsense to imagine culture stops at borders. Nor is culture homogenous within borders.

I grew up north of the Highland Boundary fault in a place that had not long previously had Gaelic as its majority language. When I grew up there, only very few old people still knew any Gaelic. And yet local church services had been held in Gaelic until the 1930s. But in my day, only a few decades later, that was all forgotten.

My parents, though, were not raised there. My Dad came from Blantyre, my mother from Galashiels. The varieties of dialect they brought to my childhood included words and syntax I didn't hear elsewhere locally when I was growing up. And the dialect of Galashiels is very different from the dialect of Blantyre.

The local traditions of those places differ, too, as did the employment opportunities in my parents' youths.

All of this stuff overlaps, layers, mingles. And I love it.

I am not blind to culture. Culture enriches our lives. When I speak to people from Galashiels I want to hear the accent and vocabulary. Just as when I visit my wife's home in Staffordshire. And when I talk to my Syrian musician friend, I want to hear about his culture, folk tunes, his words for things, his way of seeing the world. Why would I want to be blind to that? It's fascinating!

When I visit the part of Staffordshire my wife grew up in, many of the older people have ways of saying things that the younger people don't. Because culture is ever changing. I knew my wife's grandparents, now long dead, and their irregular plural of house, houzen. You don't hear people say that now. And that too is fascinating. Why would I want to be blind to that? I don't! I'm glad I heard houzen spoken, but I'm also intrigued that it has gone the way of other -en plurals in English. Why now? Why did it hang on so long there? But also what was it that finally made it follow the trend and vanish?

Why would I want to be blind to all that? The change is as interesting as the existence of the outlier in the first place!

What I don't do is to imagine those things extend all the way to nation-state borders and stop dead at them.

I know I've used the term border a lot in a thread about immigration. And the danger is that people will therefore make assumptions about what that means about the policies I "want". That would be to miss the point.

The point is that these things are of different orders. Policy and culture are like apples and chalk.

 

[Pickman's model]

Culture, nation-state, nationality, country: these are not synonyms.

Culture is far more granular and layered than nationality. Nationality is something that stops at borders.

And let's get something very clear here. State and country are not synonyms. A state is a power structure. A country is a region.

I don't identify with the state. The state is not my identity. The state is a bureaucratic structure. A polity made by people. The institutions of the state are just constructs. The peoples of the region are not those constructs.

The political affairs of humans come and go. The lines we draw on maps do not exist in the dirt on the land that those maps describe. Even check points erected according to those maps will crumble if not maintained.

Saying I don't identify with those structures is not saying "I hate this country". I don't hate this country. I don't hate the people or the cultures of this country.

I was born and raised on an archipelago known as the British Isles. Because of the political baggage that comes with the term "British", people in Ireland contest that name. I personally like to refer to the archipelago as "these islands". One day it may not be a political statement to say "British". But for many it still is. One day we may be able to say British in the way Norwegians and Swedes can say Scandinavian. I would like that. I hope it comes soon. But it hasn’t come yet.

I am not, by the way, saying nobody feels British. Nor am I saying that by not feeling British I am "above" anything. I am saying that identity is not something we can just assume falls into the borders we ourselves have drawn.

I feel Scottish and European, and I want one day to be able to put a name to These Islands without assumptions being made. But those identities for me are not the governments or institutions of government.

Although I am Scottish, I speak English. This is an example of why it is nonsense to imagine culture stops at borders. Nor is culture homogenous within borders.

I grew up north of the Highland Boundary fault in a place that had not long previously had Gaelic as its majority language. When I grew up there, only very few old people still knew any Gaelic. And yet local church services had been held in Gaelic until the 1930s. But in my day, only a few decades later, that was all forgotten.

My parents, though, were not raised there. My Dad came from Blantyre, my mother from Galashiels. The varieties of dialect they brought to my childhood included words and syntax I didn't hear elsewhere locally when I was growing up. And the dialect of Galashiels is very different from the dialect of Blantyre.

The local traditions of those places differ, too, as did the employment opportunities in my parents' youths.

All of this stuff overlaps, layers, mingles. And I love it.

I am not blind to culture. Culture enriches our lives. When I speak to people from Galashiels I want to hear the accent and vocabulary. Just as when I visit my wife's home in Staffordshire. And when I talk to my Syrian musician friend, I want to hear about his culture, folk tunes, his words for things, his way of seeing the world. Why would I want to be blind to that? It's fascinating!

When I visit the part of Staffordshire my wife grew up in, many of the older people have ways of saying things that the younger people don't. Because culture is ever changing. I knew my wife's grandparents, now long dead, and their irregular plural of house, houzen. You don't hear people say that now. And that too is fascinating. Why would I want to be blind to that? I don't! I'm glad I heard houzen spoken, but I'm also intrigued that it has gone the way of other -en plurals in English. Why now? Why did it hang on so long there? But also what was it that finally made it follow the trend and vanish?

Why would I want to be blind to all that? The change is as interesting as the existence of the outlier in the first place!

What I don't do is to imagine those things extend all the way to nation-state borders and stop dead at them.

I know I've used the term border a lot in a thread about immigration. And the danger is that people will therefore make assumptions about what that means about the policies I "want". That would be to miss the point.

The point is that these things are of different orders. Policy and culture are like apples and chalk.

When we rid ourselves of the London government and its subsidiaries and the Dublin government and its lesser organs maybe the islands will be known as the north Atlantic archipelago

 

[danny la rouge]

Culture, nation-state, nationality, country: these are not synonyms.

Culture is far more granular and layered than nationality. Nationality is something that stops at borders.

And let's get something very clear here. State and country are not synonyms. A state is a power structure. A country is a region.

I don't identify with the state. The state is not my identity. The state is a bureaucratic structure. A polity made by people. The institutions of the state are just constructs. The peoples of the region are not those constructs.

The political affairs of humans come and go. The lines we draw on maps do not exist in the dirt on the land that those maps describe. Even check points erected according to those maps will crumble if not maintained.

Saying I don't identify with those structures is not saying "I hate this country". I don't hate this country. I don't hate the people or the cultures of this country.

I was born and raised on an archipelago known as the British Isles. Because of the political baggage that comes with the term "British", people in Ireland contest that name. I personally like to refer to the archipelago as "these islands". One day it may not be a political statement to say "British". But for many it still is. One day we may be able to say British in the way Norwegians and Swedes can say Scandinavian. I would like that. I hope it comes soon. But it hasn’t come yet.

I am not, by the way, saying nobody feels British. Nor am I saying that by not feeling British I am "above" anything. I am saying that identity is not something we can just assume falls into the borders we ourselves have drawn.

I feel Scottish and European, and I want one day to be able to put a name to These Islands without assumptions being made. But those identities for me are not the governments or institutions of government.

Although I am Scottish, I speak English. This is an example of why it is nonsense to imagine culture stops at borders. Nor is culture homogenous within borders.

I grew up north of the Highland Boundary fault in a place that had not long previously had Gaelic as its majority language. When I grew up there, only very few old people still knew any Gaelic. And yet local church services had been held in Gaelic until the 1930s. But in my day, only a few decades later, that was all forgotten.

My parents, though, were not raised there. My Dad came from Blantyre, my mother from Galashiels. The varieties of dialect they brought to my childhood included words and syntax I didn't hear elsewhere locally when I was growing up. And the dialect of Galashiels is very different from the dialect of Blantyre.

The local traditions of those places differ, too, as did the employment opportunities in my parents' youths.

All of this stuff overlaps, layers, mingles. And I love it.

I am not blind to culture. Culture enriches our lives. When I speak to people from Galashiels I want to hear the accent and vocabulary. Just as when I visit my wife's home in Staffordshire. And when I talk to my Syrian musician friend, I want to hear about his culture, folk tunes, his words for things, his way of seeing the world. Why would I want to be blind to that? It's fascinating!

When I visit the part of Staffordshire my wife grew up in, many of the older people have ways of saying things that the younger people don't. Because culture is ever changing. I knew my wife's grandparents, now long dead, and their irregular plural of house, houzen. You don't hear people say that now. And that too is fascinating. Why would I want to be blind to that? I don't! I'm glad I heard houzen spoken, but I'm also intrigued that it has gone the way of other -en plurals in English. Why now? Why did it hang on so long there? But also what was it that finally made it follow the trend and vanish?

Why would I want to be blind to all that? The change is as interesting as the existence of the outlier in the first place!

What I don't do is to imagine those things extend all the way to nation-state borders and stop dead at them.

I know I've used the term border a lot in a thread about immigration. And the danger is that people will therefore make assumptions about what that means about the policies I "want". That would be to miss the point.

The point is that these things are of different orders. Policy and culture are like apples and chalk.

Another and more succinct way of putting all that is that how I’d use “our” is different to how Edie uses “our”. Not better or worse, just different. We see the groups, sets and even definitions, involved in different ways. Very different ways. Which would be why I got so angry (and I got very angry) when she tried to paraphrase my views and did so in a way I found very offensive.

 

[kabbes]

I know you were making a generic post to everyone, danny. But just on a personal note, I’d emphasise that I’ve been extremely careful throughout to avoid mixing up nationality and culture.

 

[danny la rouge]

I know you were making a generic post to everyone, danny. But just on a personal note, I’d emphasise that I’ve been extremely careful throughout to avoid mixing up nationality and culture.

I appreciate that. The post was mainly for the benefit of Edie and BigMoaner whom I didn’t want to address directly in case I got angry again. I wanted to maintain an equanimous tone.

But one other thing I’d throw in the mix for the thread in general to mull:

During the period of the Coronation, I was in a place called Petworth. An affluent town in Sussex. It was festooned with union Flags and bunting. There was a street party/fair that we went along to see. There were entertainments and food stalls. It was all very jolly, friendly and fun.

If I were to see similar flags and bunting in Glasgow I’d stay away. I’d feel threatened, fearful and unwelcome. My wife, born and brought up in England, but who has lived in Scotland for three decades, noted the same distinction.

Britishness and its symbols do not signify the same things in different parts of these islands. And people don’t need to be born and raised in Glasgow or Derry to notice that and to feel the trepidation in one location and not the other.

And I know Britishness means yet other different things to people of colour who live in these islands.

I have a British Asian friend of English birth but who came to Scotland during his secondary school years. I’ve known him decades. He is the drummer in my band, and one of my closest friends. He wouldn’t describe himself as English. He prefers British Asian. He’s quite happy with the term Scottish Asian and intriguingly English-Scot. I’ve listened to him describe why, but I’m not him and wouldn’t presume to explain it second hand. It’s interesting, though. I’m very interested in that stuff. It matters to people. I would never, ever say I’m “blind to it”. I was very upset to have those words put in my mouth.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

A few of us on this thread have been angered by having words put into our mouths.

I will only speak for myself, but I was made very angry by the false suggestion that I was going around shouting 'racist' at people and that merely by the act of talking about my take on this subject, I was driving people towards the far right.

I'm sure others have been angered in their own particular way on feeling misrepresented. It's clearly a difficult subject to talk about on here. A good start would be for everyone to consider seriously the idea that they have misunderstood when they are told that they have misunderstood. (And that also goes for me, of course.)

 

[Puddy_Tat]

FWIW, you weren't the only one who found this thread difficult yesterday.

I got as far as checking to see if I'd put someone on ignore accidentally and was missing posts, as some of the stuff that 'people on this thread had said' didn't bear any resemblance to what I'd read.

What with that, and some posters using common far-right dog whistle phrases (I can't say whether this was intentional or not) I decided to steer clear of it yesterday...

 

[danny la rouge]

I was especially annoyed to be told that what I actually feel deeply was “a flex”. That’s what annoyed me beyond the normal anger I’d feel in political debates.

It would certainly be interesting to have another thread exploring why I (and others) were so angry. I can’t guarantee I’d be able to contribute without a similar reaction though!

 

[brogdale]

I was especially annoyed to be told that what I actually feel deeply was “a flex”. That’s what annoyed me beyond the normal anger I’d feel in political debates.

It would certainly be interesting to have another thread exploring why I (and others) were so angry. I can’t guarantee I’d be able to contribute without a similar reaction though!

I was also angry/embarrassed at seeing far-right/racist tropes posted up on our forum; we're better than that. I was also pretty dis-chuffed to told that I hadn't read the words that I had and be criticised for challenging the comments. However, i do think this thread is an important discussion and I think it's to our credit that it can progress with relative calm.

 

[danny la rouge]

I was also angry/embarrassed at seeing far-right/racist tropes posted up on our forum; we're better than that. I was also pretty dis-chuffed to told that I hadn't read the words that I had and be criticised for challenging the comments. However, i do think this thread is an important discussion and I think it's to our credit that it can progress with relative calm.

To be honest, I don’t think the person in question intended those terms as a dog whistle. I think it’s just a question of very different mindsets having different ways of understanding the terms used. But of course I don’t know.

 

[LakieLady]

Culture, nation-state, nationality, country: these are not synonyms.

Culture is far more granular and layered than nationality. Nationality is something that stops at borders.

And nationality can be changed if the state consents, it's a bureaucratic construct.

Changing your culture is a lot more difficult and more nebulous.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

To be honest, I don’t think the person in question intended those terms as a dog whistle. I think it’s just a question of very different mindsets having different ways of understanding the terms used. But of course I don’t know.

Either way, they are concepts that need to be challenged. The idea that immigration causes unemployment, for example, simply isn't true. It may well depress wages for some classes of workers in certain sectors (generally workers with significant levels of skill and experience), although even that is a complicated calculation, but it doesn't throw people out of work. That's a provably wrong falsehood.

In some ways, it is even more concerning to hear ideas with strong dog whistle connotations used unknowingly. That means the ideas are becoming normalised, part of a 'common sense' understanding.

 

[danny la rouge]

And nationality can be changed if the state consents, it's a bureaucratic construct.

Changing your culture is a lot more difficult and more nebulous.

One of the interesting things living in Glasgow is the way the accent is changing. Listen to recordings of the accent in the 70s. I do sometimes still listen to Billy Connolly records of the time. That’s a working class Glasgow accent of the period. The working class accent in Glasgow today is very different. It’s more nasal to my ears. And the East End accent isn’t the Drumchapel accent now, although in the 70s you couldn’t have heard the difference.

My paternal grandad, from Blantyre, sounded very like recordings of Mick McGahey, the trade union leader. But my dad doesn’t. And I don’t.

Dickens didn’t write the same language as Shakespeare who didn’t speak like Chaucer, who didn’t speak the language of Beowulf. These things are ever changing. And that’s wonderful, fascinating, and part of being human. None of that is to say culture doesn’t exist. It very much exists. But it’s not static, or bound, or homogenous.

 

[brogdale]

To be honest, I don’t think the person in question intended those terms as a dog whistle. I think it’s just a question of very different mindsets having different ways of understanding the terms used. But of course I don’t know.

That gracious post is an example why it's important for you to be here in this discussion; I do tend to just look at the words posted and maybe do take things too literally...I dunno?

 

[danny la rouge]

Either way, they are concepts that need to be challenged. The idea that immigration causes unemployment, for example, simply isn't true. It may well depress wages for some classes of workers in certain sectors (generally workers with significant levels of skill and experience), although even that is a complicated calculation, but it doesn't throw people out of work. That's a provably wrong falsehood.

In some ways, it is even more concerning to hear ideas with strong dog whistle connotations used unknowingly. That means the ideas are becoming normalised, part of a 'common sense' understanding.

Agreed.

 

[isvicthere?]

When I visit the part of Staffordshire my wife grew up in, many of the older people have ways of saying things that the younger people don't. Because culture is ever changing. I knew my wife's grandparents, now long dead, and their irregular plural of house, houzen. You don't hear people say that now. And that too is fascinating. Why would I want to be blind to that? I don't! I'm glad I heard houzen spoken, but I'm also intrigued that it has gone the way of other -en plurals in English. Why now? Why did it hang on so long there? But also what was it that finally made it follow the trend and vanish?

I´m guessing "houzen" was a long-lasting remnant of Old English. Like modern German, many Old English plurals ended in "-en"; the only one still remaining I can think of is "oxen."

Also, Old English had two plurals: one for two of something, and another for three or more of something. The only remnant of that now is "neither of them" vs "not any of them" which are the same in other languages (e.g. Spanish: "ninguno de ellos").

 

[danny la rouge]

That gracious post is an example why it's important for you to be here in this discussion; I do tend to just look at the words posted and maybe do take things too literally...I dunno?

Thank you. I have to admit I like Edie despite not always agreeing with or even understanding what she says.

 

[danny la rouge]

the only one still remaining I can think of is "oxen."

Children, women, in a sense brethren.

 

[LakieLady]

Deleted; already posted.

 

[PTK]

The vast majority of the rest of the world is not strange and frightening. A lot of it is a lot more welcoming than here.

We do have quite unique lush green scenery. Because it rains all the fucking time.

I would find it strange and frightening to suddenly be transported to a place of which I knew nothing. That is not to say that it is, on some objective scale.

 

[isvicthere?]

Children, women, in a sense brethren.

Of course! @ self.

 

[danny la rouge]

Deleted; already posted.

No need to delete. It was interesting to hear your view on brethren. Personally I think it’s changed meaning, and is used in a different sense to “brothers”. It’s religious now, whereas before it wasn’t purely so, it was a synonym of brothers.

 

[PTK]

Culture, nation-state, nationality, country: these are not synonyms.

Culture is far more granular and layered than nationality. Nationality is something that stops at borders.

And let's get something very clear here. State and country are not synonyms. A state is a power structure. A country is a region.

I don't identify with the state. The state is not my identity. The state is a bureaucratic structure. A polity made by people. The institutions of the state are just constructs. The peoples of the region are not those constructs.

The political affairs of humans come and go. The lines we draw on maps do not exist in the dirt on the land that those maps describe. Even check points erected according to those maps will crumble if not maintained.

Saying I don't identify with those structures is not saying "I hate this country". I don't hate this country. I don't hate the people or the cultures of this country.

I was born and raised on an archipelago known as the British Isles. Because of the political baggage that comes with the term "British", people in Ireland contest that name. I personally like to refer to the archipelago as "these islands". One day it may not be a political statement to say "British". But for many it still is. One day we may be able to say British in the way Norwegians and Swedes can say Scandinavian. I would like that. I hope it comes soon. But it hasn’t come yet.

I am not, by the way, saying nobody feels British. Nor am I saying that by not feeling British I am "above" anything. I am saying that identity is not something we can just assume falls into the borders we ourselves have drawn.

I feel Scottish and European, and I want one day to be able to put a name to These Islands without assumptions being made. But those identities for me are not the governments or institutions of government.

Although I am Scottish, I speak English. This is an example of why it is nonsense to imagine culture stops at borders. Nor is culture homogenous within borders.

I grew up north of the Highland Boundary fault in a place that had not long previously had Gaelic as its majority language. When I grew up there, only very few old people still knew any Gaelic. And yet local church services had been held in Gaelic until the 1930s. But in my day, only a few decades later, that was all forgotten.

My parents, though, were not raised there. My Dad came from Blantyre, my mother from Galashiels. The varieties of dialect they brought to my childhood included words and syntax I didn't hear elsewhere locally when I was growing up. And the dialect of Galashiels is very different from the dialect of Blantyre.

The local traditions of those places differ, too, as did the employment opportunities in my parents' youths.

All of this stuff overlaps, layers, mingles. And I love it.

I am not blind to culture. Culture enriches our lives. When I speak to people from Galashiels I want to hear the accent and vocabulary. Just as when I visit my wife's home in Staffordshire. And when I talk to my Syrian musician friend, I want to hear about his culture, folk tunes, his words for things, his way of seeing the world. Why would I want to be blind to that? It's fascinating!

When I visit the part of Staffordshire my wife grew up in, many of the older people have ways of saying things that the younger people don't. Because culture is ever changing. I knew my wife's grandparents, now long dead, and their irregular plural of house, houzen. You don't hear people say that now. And that too is fascinating. Why would I want to be blind to that? I don't! I'm glad I heard houzen spoken, but I'm also intrigued that it has gone the way of other -en plurals in English. Why now? Why did it hang on so long there? But also what was it that finally made it follow the trend and vanish?

Why would I want to be blind to all that? The change is as interesting as the existence of the outlier in the first place!

What I don't do is to imagine those things extend all the way to nation-state borders and stop dead at them.

I know I've used the term border a lot in a thread about immigration. And the danger is that people will therefore make assumptions about what that means about the policies I "want". That would be to miss the point.

The point is that these things are of different orders. Policy and culture are like apples and chalk.

Thank you. I found this account of your cultural experiences to be fascinating. I was surprised that there were church services in Gaelic until the 1930s in the area that you lived.

 

[belboid]

Either way, they are concepts that need to be challenged. The idea that immigration causes unemployment, for example, simply isn't true. It may well depress wages for some classes of workers in certain sectors (generally workers with significant levels of skill and experience), although even that is a complicated calculation, but it doesn't throw people out of work. That's a provably wrong falsehood.

In some ways, it is even more concerning to hear ideas with strong dog whistle connotations used unknowingly. That means the ideas are becoming normalised, part of a 'common sense' understanding.

Agree with all this except the bolded, its the low skilled workers who might lose out very slightly

More recently, Nickell and Salaheen (2015) find that a 10 percentage point (not 10%, as misleadingly claimed by a number of politicians) rise in the immigrant share – that is, larger than that observed over the entirety of the last decade – leads to approximately a 1.5% reduction in wages for native workers in the semi/unskilled service sector. This would mean that immigration since 2004 would have reduced wages for native workers in that sector by about 1%, or put another way, would have depressed annual pay increases by about a penny an hour.

The economic impacts of immigration to the UK

Much public and policy concern has focused on the distributional impacts of immigration – in particular, potential negative impacts on employment and wages for low-skilled workers. This column summarises evidence and draws conclusions from the now considerable literature on the impact of...

cepr.org