Bulgarian and Romanian Immigrants

[tillson]

Has anyone seen any Bulgarians or Romanians yet? I've just read in the Daily Wail that they are set to invade in the morning, arriving by bus and aeroplane. Apparently, the first wave will arrive by plane, parachuting in and securing the benefits offices, and then the second wave will arrive by coach. The ones in need of medical attention will arrive once that the first two objectives are achieved.

I thought I saw one this morning and wondered if they were part of an advance landing, but as I got closer, I saw that it was just an old lady with a walking stick bending down to pick up some dog **.

 

[flecc]

I'm sure there won't be any large influx, it's yet another immigration scare story.

No-one mentions the many English farmers who have bought up vast tracts of their wonderful Eastern European countryside and are now defiling it with massive scale factory farming, wrecking their soil quality with huge inputs of artificial fertilisers.

Nor does anyone mention the large numbers of Britons who have bought cheap property there, like my sister who will be living there full time from this next spring after being there part time in recent years.

And the unmentioned wonderful kindness and hospitality of all her Bulgarian neighbours who troop round with gifts and food each time she arrives and who watch over her property and garden when she is absent, all without asking or payment.

The people of Britain would do well to emulate them rather than being so intolerant.

 

[mike killay]

.

The people of Britain would do well to emulate them rather than being so intolerant.

Don't hold your breath!

 

[peerjay56]

Would the true Brit, who has no trace of foriegn blood in him/her, please identify themselves. We are all immigrants; it's just that some of us got here sooner than others.

 

[tillson]

I don't think it's the fact that they are, "foreigners," that concerns people. As someone has already said, if we go back far enough most of us will find our ancestors in other countries. I think the major concern for people, me included, is the swelling of the population of the country and the affect that this will have on services such as health, education and law enforcement.

Many problems in the world are caused by over population. We have too many babies being squeezed out by resident parents who have no means of supporting them as it is. I can't help feeling that an uncontrolled, unnatural, free for all population boom will end badly. I hope that I'm wrong, but I don't think that I am.

 

[flecc]

It is a self-correcting process though, we've already reached the stage where some who were previously attracted to Britain no longer wish to come here.

Remember when this first occurred sixteen years ago in 1997? We were said to be threatened by up to 3 million from Hong Kong when we transferred sovereignty to China, but in the event the majority said they didn't want to go to Britain and almost all those who emigrated went elsewhere to countries they saw as more attractive.

Much more recently large numbers of Poles have returned to Poland as that country's economy has benefited from the expansion of manufacturing there by western companies. Likewise the economies of Bulgaria and Romania are improving due to western investment, particularly in farming.

These EU countries are following Hungary, no-one seems to fear immigration from there, and the lack of that is due to the scale of western manufacturing there.

There is a problem with the Roma "gypsy" people who have long been subjected to severe discrimination in Eastern Europe, leading to their desire to be anywhere but there, but we have to keep a sense of proportion. Bulgaria has just 7.5 million people for example and only a tiny proportion of them are Roma. Neither is it the completely backward country that the media like to falsely portray, that small population has 1.5 million smart phones and over 30% of the country has high speed fibre optic broadband.

For all those reasons I don't see an overwhelming influx and expect that even those who do come will before long return in large numbers as their home country prospects improve. These are peoples with a much stronger sense of community than is common in Britain, and homesickness is a powerful influence.

 

[billadie]

We also have an aging `indigenous' poputation - including people from previous immigations - Caribean, Asian, Irsih etc. We desperately need young blood to maintain the balance of the population. Put bluntly who is going to keep me and care for me in my old age? The Germans have a real problem of a declining population.

Yes there are problems with resources, especially housing and jobs, but I think that these are more due to the internal problems of the Uk, not immigration. In the 1960s we built 300 to 400 thousand homes a year, now we are unable to manage one third of that. We used to have a `full employment" policy, but that was ditched at the behest of the money men. We now have a policy of promote the few, damn the many. The rich blame theit failures on the poor, and the poor are encouraged to blame the immigrants. What was it we were wll in together?

 

[john h]

There have been a lot of romanians in south side of glasgow for last couple of years, they did not have work permits they would sell rags to these shops that paid for them, i even would see them load up an artic on a sunday mornings , with old bikes, clothing, and anthing that they could get there hands on so it could be sold back in romania,

 

[jazper53]

We need in this country to look after our own FIRST and put a ban on migrants taking up work that can be taken up by our own Citizens. Immigration Policy, or lack of it seem to profit those Companies that who are only interested in paying people as little as possible and actively discriminate against employing British people.

 

[flecc]

We need in this country to look after our own FIRST and put a ban on migrants taking up work that can be taken up by our own Citizens. Immigration Policy, or lack of it seem to profit those Companies that who are only interested in paying people as little as possible and actively discriminate against employing British people.

So by this token, in England we must employ the English first and send back surplus Scots and Welsh?

England, Scotland and Wales are nations and we have those nationalities, Great Britain is a political term for the grouping of those nations, it's not a nation and the occupants don't have Great British nationality. Strictly speaking Britain as an isolated term has not existed since Roman Times and the political body Great Britain only came into being some 300 years ago. This is why we have no British sporting teams, just those representing our nations of England, Wales and Scotland.

The outcome of all this is that the native people of these islands of Great Britain correctly call themselves English, Welsh or Scots, and the incorrect identity British is most commonly used by first, second and third generation immigrants to describe their status.

It's ironical that those who wish to discriminate against them revert to calling themselves British for that purpose!

Of course if we ignore nationhood and reject the idea of employing English first in England etc and prefer to apply the policy to the larger political bodies, then as EU citizens we are all European and the Bulgarians and Romanians are "us".
.

 

[filsgreen]

It is predominantly the youth of Romania and Bulgaria who will come to England to try and get work. Just as our youth go to Australia and the USA on temporary work visas to find work. I must admit I don't know how many Brits go to Europe to find work now, but in the eighties British tradesmen invaded Germany.

I watched a programme on BBC news channel yesterday, which highlighted the plight of the world youth unemployment. It reported an average figure of 25% unemployment amongst men and women up to the age of twenty five. It highlighted a group of Irish girls who went to Sydney to find work, one girl said she was earning twice what she could have earned in Ireland. She then went on to say that although she was enjoying working in Sydney; she missed home and would return sometime in the future. I feel that she probably voiced the opinion of the majority of her peers living and working abroad. Although I did hear on Radio 4 that over half of people who emigrate to Australia and New Zealand do stay. However, this group were predominantly couples with children, who look to stay there for good.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that, yes, there will be immigrant who will come to Britain and take jobs from our youth, but at sometime in the future they will realise the streets of London are not paved with gold and will return home.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

It seems that it's the Romanians you need to worry about. there's 87,000 Romanians in the UK, and 35,000 have been arrested in the past 5 years.
Up to one in three Romanians arrested, figures show - Telegraph

 

[flecc]

I live in London. Over 37% of all Londoners are foreign born immigrants, under 45% are white British so less than half. In my borough over 20% of the population are black Caribbean. This sort of mixture has long been a London feature going back centuries and we have always prospered, not in spite of it but because of it.

Immigration made the USA the greatest nation on earth, and in our own example, London, where well over a third of the population is foreign born, it's by far the most successful part of UK economy and has long carried the rest of the country financially.

So what are people scared of? Getting rich?

 

[John F]

We also have an aging `indigenous' poputation - including people from previous immigations - Caribean, Asian, Irsih etc. We desperately need young blood to maintain the balance of the population. Put bluntly who is going to keep me and care for me in my old age? The Germans have a real problem of a declining population.

Yes there are problems with resources, especially housing and jobs, but I think that these are more due to the internal problems of the Uk, not immigration. In the 1960s we built 300 to 400 thousand homes a year, now we are unable to manage one third of that. We used to have a `full employment" policy, but that was ditched at the behest of the money men. We now have a policy of promote the few, damn the many. The rich blame theit failures on the poor, and the poor are encouraged to blame the immigrants. What was it we were wll in together?

So it's a good thing then that the UK is now the most populous country in Europe after Malta? The real issue is not immigration but the fact that those already here have too many babies.

 

[flecc]

It seems that it's the Romanians you need to worry about. there's 87,000 Romanians in the UK, and 35,000 have been arrested in the past 5 years.
Up to one in three Romanians arrested, figures show - Telegraph

Almost entirely the Roma gypsy people who have come here illegally and the arrest figures are misleading since it's the same ones getting repeatedly arrested making the number high. Despite deportation they return to offend again. The great majority of the arrests are for begging, not for serious criminal offences.

None of this is in any way relevant to the current freeing of restrictions which opens the door to the main Romanian working population, the great majority of whom have no intention of coming here.

 

[tillson]

I live in London. Over 37% of all Londoners are foreign born immigrants, under 45% are white British so less than half. In my borough over 20% of the population are black Caribbean. This sort of mixture has long been a London feature going back centuries and we have always prospered, not in spite of it but because of it.

Immigration made the USA the greatest nation on earth, and in our own example, London, where well over a third of the population is foreign born, it's by far the most successful part of UK economy and has long carried the rest of the country financially.

So what are people scared of? Getting rich?

I believe that to compare the present imigration situation into the UK with that of historical imigration into the USA gives a false impression. The USA is / was a vast land mass with an abundance of natural resource, materials and food producing capacity. This was set against a very low population. In short, the USA prospered as the population grew because they were able to exploit their natural resources more fully.

What we have here, now, is different. I don't hold any malice or dislike for people who come from a different ethnic background, culture or country to me. I'm that sure some of them are very nice people and I'm sure that some of them are very nasty people, just like our home-grown citizens here. But, I don't think that us, here, the UK, or whatever you want to call it can support an influx of people from other nations. We aren't like the USA, we can't grow enough food, we can't provide ourselves with enough energy, the schools are too full, hospital A&E departments are crumbling, the police are over stretched, social workers have too many cases each to provide a service, the prisons are full, there are more people than jobs. There are other examples, but what I am saying is, there are too many people. Regardless of whether they are English, Irish, Scottish, Romanian, Polish, French, German, Bulgarian, or any country, there are simply too many people here and to allow more people to come into the country makes no sense at all. Nearly all of our problems and everything that is wrong in the country can be traced back to too many people.

Apparently, the late Middle Ages, directly after the plague, was a good time to live in Europe. Low population. We will return to low levels of population again within 100 years, that is a mathematical certainty.

 

[Scimitar]

Apparently, the late Middle Ages, directly after the plague, was a good time to live in Europe. Low population. We will return to low levels of population again within 100 years, that is a mathematical certainty.

Problem is, we know too much compared to our ancestors and all the plagues will be countered, thus making the problem worse.
What the world needs is a slow-acting virus, that will despatch the population gradually, reducing it by at least two-thirds and lowering fertility. If it happens gradually enough, it will not be traumatic.

 

[tillson]

Problem is, we know too much compared to our ancestors and all the plagues will be countered, thus making the problem worse.
What the world needs is a slow-acting virus, that will despatch the population gradually, reducing it by at least two-thirds and lowering fertility. If it happens gradually enough, it will not be traumatic.

That would be the kindest thing, but it won't happen like that. World population is doubling at an alarming and unsustainable rate. We will simply run out of food and as a result, society will collapse suddenly and catastrophically. It has to happen, the world can only support a finite number of people and that number will be exceeded by 2X within 100 years.

 

[flecc]

we can't grow enough food, we can't provide ourselves with enough energy, the schools are too full, hospital A&E departments are crumbling, the police are over stretched, social workers have too many cases each to provide a service, the prisons are full, there are more people than jobs. There are other examples, but what I am saying is, there are too many people.

I have a lot of sympathy with the "too many people" argument, but some of the problems you list are those of our own making and not population related. As shown both by the latest surveys and the many TV programs about A & E services, that problem is entirely one of abuse, and that mostly by our native population who seem to regard A & E as a form of doctors surgery. Nearly all those I've seen present are not in any way emergencies.

The police are overstretched and our prisons are full due to a gross excess of laws and an equally gross excess of enforcement. For much of my life the prison population hovered around 11,000, but in the space of just 17 years (before the big immigration surge) that was catapulted to the present constant of around 88,000. I do not believe that we suddenly became 8 times worse within a single generation, or that we need 8 times as many in prison for our country to function well.

Social services have too many cases in most instances due to our nanny state which interferes far too many times where it's unnecessary. Even where they are needed, the problems are all too often those created by the culture of irresponsibility that the welfare state created.

That just leaves food and energy from your list. We now produce far more food and are more self-sufficient than ever before as a result of our advances since the near disaster of WW2 when we were hopeless at feeding ourselves, leaving us just with energy to deal with.

Fracking and nuclear power, last problem solved.

 

[Johnderh]

What the hell has all this to do with El Bike,s ?