This is most likely why Labour likes to bus in immigrants to the UK. The parties win on swing votes. The main issue is on economic migrants (except with a work visa). All the parties are not objecting to asylum seekers.
Of course right wing fanatics don't want any immigration but the issue is on economic migration in terms of the high volume coming over.
Of course the famous straw man (or rather straw donkey) is that those wishing to control migration are racist. The UK is lacking tighter border controls for security reasons.
The UK does not actually need more people. There is of course the racist statement that immigrants do the jobs Britons cannot do. There are still needs for skills for overseas workers in some areas that can be filled by workers who should have a contract and a work visa. Some are sneaking into the UK and fill odd jobs in sweatshops (garments and fruit picking etc, small shops, restaurants and odd casual labour such as car washes).
Bit of a ramble, here.
- Labour is 'bussing in' migrants? Really? Can you give us some examples? Granted they made a mistake with the admittance of workers from the new Eastern European EU members, but if you dig into what happened this was caused by a serious underestimate of how many were likely come. If they had known it would be that many, it is very likely that they would have implemented slow-down measures like most of the other EU countries did.
- The UK is not lacking tight border controls, it has in fact the most strict border controls of any EU country.
- The UK does need more people. Unemployment is at a historic low (see
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/unemployment-rate for the historic numbers) and without migrant workers a lot of vacancies would not be filled.
- The migrants that you commonly see at work in the branches you mention, such as fruit picking, car washing, hospitality - most of these are EU citizens who have the right to live and work in the UK. In doing so they contribute to society. They are NOT 'sneaking in' as you put it, they are here totally legally. Did you 'sneak' into the Middle East countries where you worked and lived? Then why do you use such terms to describe these legal migrant workers in the UK? Shame on you.
- I would not call people who want to control migration as racist. Rather, I would call them xenophobes because that is what they are. The whole frenzy about immigration is nothing more than a desire to keep out Johnny Foreigner. I find those sentiments a disgusting primitive tribal attitude that should have no place in the modern world. It should not matter who someone is, what colour their passport is or where they come from. We are all born equal. All that matters is what someone does, and if they contribute to society they should be made welcome. Don't get me started on the appalling behaviour from the Tories when it comes to helping out with the Syrian refugee crisis. Just today, after much debate, the Prime Minister finally agreed to take in another 3000 unaccompanied Syrian children who are out on their own in Europe. It needed far too much arm twisting and the threat of a defeat by the hands of some of his fellow Tories (the few that show some human compassion) for him to display some basic human decency. 3000 children, that is a fearful 0.005% of the UK population. Oh no, the world is going to end!
Unfortunately there are too many who think of foreigners as second-class people, and this sentiment is gaining fearful traction at the moment, whipped up by unscrupulous politicians like Trump and Boris Johnson, and right-wing media owners like Rupert Murdoch. They do this simply out of greed and power craze, because such people don't have any moral values.
We are going to pay the price for this. Not for letting in migrants, but for thinking that the majority of our fellow citizens are reasonable, fair and compassionate human beings. Just read the Readers Comments sections in the various UK online papers and your stomach will churn. If you are one of the reasonable, fair and compassionate human beings, that is. And don't get me started on the shocking level of misinformation and ignorance on display there. It is an unfortunate miracle that many of these nitwits still manage to find the way to the polling stations. The Far Right are far, far more scary than migrants, for the simple reason that they are fanatics and are organising themselves.
