UK Declares Independence From The EU!

[OUTLAW 09]

Outlaw09 cited in part:

Immigration has long been an issue for the public to mutter about and sometimes has resulted in significant minority votes for extremist / nationalist parties - today UKIP, before them the BNP. The main political parties have simply ignored the discontent, anxiety and hostility.

We now know that Tony Blair's government quietly enabled significant immigration, from outside the EU - I do not have the figures or sources to hand, but a Google search will find them.

Then the initial restrictions on the 'new' EU nations coming to the UK were changed. Originally entry was permitted if employment had been found; the change enabled entry to search for employment.

In the last decade, maybe slightly more two million new jobs were taken by immigrants, out of IIRC three million jobs and whilst official unemployment figures show a reduction there is little sign of that in many places - especially outside London and the South East.

Yes, we have a problem with getting UK nationals to work, especially if the work is dirty, hard, involves long hours and the pay is low (even if the minimum wage has gone up). That is not a unique UK problem.

Resentment over "immigrants taking our jobs" and possibly depressing wages has become more vocal of late - before the EU campaign. As the referendum results suggest Exit support was highest in English areas with extensive new immigration, often where food processing is the biggest employer and those who fear immigrants are coming.

Add in the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean and it is easy to see how some parts of the Exit campaign exploited the fears and realities of immigration. Yes, very few Syrian refugees have made it here, but everyone knows there are thousands of migrants @ Calais mainly trying every day to enter.

Do not think immigration is a whites only issue, it is not and a good number of the "settled" immigrant communities, such as those from South Asia, also have concerns - especially as family reunions are harder to get permission for.

David....

BUT this is what is not understood in Europe...UK is not part and parcel of “the Schengen Agreement” zone thus the so called "free movement of EU citizens" does not apply to UK...ALL the while UK citizens take advantage of Schengen to travel, work and reside in 26 different EU countries these days....does not quite sound right does it as it appears UK wants to eat the cake but refuses to provide the flour for the cake? ANd any outside the 26 countries coming in must have a Schengen visa thus would have been stopped in say Dover, Heathrow or Calais...

BUT THEN this
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...refugee-crisis

British ministers including Theresa May and Philip Hammond have made hair-raising claims about the dangers of migrants entering the country. But do the facts bear them out?

There are countries with social infrastructure at breaking point because of the refugee crisis – but they aren’t in Europe. The most obvious example is Lebanon, which houses 1.2 million Syrian refugees within a total population of roughly 4.5 million. To put that in context, a country that is more than 100 times smaller than the EU has already taken in more than 50 times as many refugees as the EU will even consider resettling in the future. Lebanon has a refugee crisis. Europe – and, in particular, Britain – does not.

£36.95
Many claim that Britain is a coveted destination for migrants because of its generous benefits system. Aside from the reality that most migrants have little prior knowledge of the exact nature of each European country’s asylum system, it is not true that the UK is particularly beneficent. Each asylum seeker in Britain gets a meagre £36.95 to live on (and they are not usually allowed to work to supplement this sum). In France, whose policies are supposedly driving up the numbers at Calais, migrants actually receive substantially more. According to the Asylum Information Database, asylum seekers in France receive up to £56.62 a week. Germany and Sweden – the two most popular migrant destinations – pay out £35.21 and £36.84 a week respectively, only fractionally less than Britain.

50%
In the dog-whistle rhetoric of Hammond and Theresa May, the archetypal contemporary migrant in Europe is from Africa. But again, that’s not true. This year, according to UN figures, 50% alone are from two non-African countries: Syria (38%) and Afghanistan (12%). When migrants from Pakistan, Iraq and Iran are added into the equation, it becomes clear that the number of African migrants is significantly less than half. Even so, as discussed above, many of them – especially those from Eritrea, Darfur, and Somalia – have legitimate claims to refugee status.

76,439
Despite the hysteria, the number of refugees in the UK has actually fallen by 76,439 since 2011. That’s according to Britain’s Refugee Council, which crunched the numbers gleaned from UN data and found that the number of refugees in the UK fell from 193,600 to 117,161 in the past four years. By comparison, the proportion of refugees housed by developing countries in the past 10 years has risen, according to the UN, from 70% to 86%. Britain could be doing far more

Sorry but I cannot find any EU decisions that forces UK to take any and all immigrants so is really the so called immigrant problem of the UK actually one that the UK in handling their own immigrant policies have been doing it poorly and then blaming the EU???

Maybe it is not known inside the UK by many but even the EU put restrictions on the newer members on their Schengen concept and limited "freedom of movement" for countries like Poland, Romania, Bulgaria for up to four or five years...so to argue UK was going to be overrun is again simply a smokescreen.

BTW...had then the receiving UK communities applied for the EU Rural or Low Income Development Funds...they could have funded additional schools, hospitals and other local community improvements.....without ....having to burden the UK taxpayer as the rest of EU is currently doing.

Sounds like to me the UK does after 40 odd years...not know how to play the EU funding games...but that is not a problem of the EU......

IF we go back before the EU...the UK has always had a problem with immigration starting with passing out UK passports to those residing in the British colonies/British Commonwealth and THEN restricting them to come to the UK even with valid UK Passports so this so called immigrant problem has been there for literally years before the EU.

So to now argue it is the "fault" of the EU is a tad disingenuous.......

Another argument by Leave was that by not having to pay into EU will mean more money back to UK residents...BUT Moodys has been saying whatever the savings will be that will be eaten up by a far weaker public finances and less money due to the drop in the Pound.

The other argument of Leave was EU red tape is killing investment and new businesses.....BUT UK is second in OCED countries on investment and new businesses and trade...the top position is the Dutch...so evidently the so called red tape of the EU did not seem to hinder neither the UK and the Netherlands ......in the top OCED ten positions EU countries made up five......