For those of you thinking of moving to the UK....

[David_Tepper]

Niall -

As I state in my post, the article on the job market in Britain is from the current issue.

Never let the facts get in the way of your opinions! (advice I often offer to Pat Mucci)

DT

[Niall C]

all I can say is I know an awful lot of people who wish the job market was buzzing !

[David_Tepper]

Bloody Foreigners, by Robert Winder, is an excellent and enlightening book that probably should be read by every high school student in the UK.

"A true-born Englishman's a Contradiction
In speech an Irony, in Fact a Fiction."

Daniel Defoe, 1700 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/jun/12/history.highereducation

[Mark Pearce]

David

No doubt. I recall when I worked in Glasgow city centre a few years ago and used to get a bus the short distance into town and often found I was the only Scot on the bus including the driver. The question is, why no locals going for that job, is it because the wages have gone down on the basis of foreign labour willing to take less, perhaps not.

Niall

No, it's not.  It's because there's a generation unwilling to work when they can survive on benefits.  Why are there so many Poles and other Eastern Europeans doing mundane jobs in the UK?  Because the locals aren't willing to do the work.  Sad but true.  And before anyone asks I am one of the more left wing members on this forum.

[Sean_A]

I live in an area loaded with Poles, Romanians, Latvians and now a few other Eastern Euro countries are well represented.  There is absolutely no question more of a criminal element has surged in these past few years.  Originally, the work supply was excellent.  Workers came to fill jobs.  Now some come and hang about the streets.  A lot of the first wave are already long gone after the exchange rate to the Euro went south.  

Anyway, a first world country which doesn't seek to control immigrant numbers based on an economic need is a country doomed.  The entire concept behind humanitarian access is a load of rubbish and completely unsustainable.   A country must have control of its borders or its not really a country at all.

Ciao

[Gib_Papazian]

Niall,

Your Eastern Europeans ought to think long and hard before voting to let another boatload into the country. The first place those Armenian gangsters gravitated towards was Armenian neighborhoods. Before you know it, the very slimebags that honest people ran away from in Eastern Europe moved in right next door. Pour a cup of sewage into a nice tasty pot of chili and suddenly you have a pot of sewage.

Criminal elements first establish themselves by terrorizing their own people, which is why otherwise honest, hardworking Muslims in America rarely stand up to the extremists in their midst. The local police cannot protect them - and the penalty for outing terrorists is certain death. 74 Armenian gangsters were rounded up in Southern California two years ago, but it barely made a dent in their activities.

The trick - in my view - is to put a strict yearly limit on any particular immigration demographic and fully vet who they are. Remember, in some ways, Western Europe, Australia, Canada and the United States act as enablers for corrupt governments. All four of my grandparents were driven by force out of Armenia and southern Turkey by Muslims, so on one hand I am thankful America took them in.

On the other hand, the New World demanded they pull their weight and assimilate into our culture here - and they did. I just don't see that anymore - especially in the Hispanic community, where their loyalty is to the homeland first; America is often looked upon only as a tool or means to an economic end. I cannot believe how many Mexican-Americans wave the Mexican flag at soccer games between our countries.


  

[David_Tepper]

Jeez Gib, next you will be saying we should stop celebrating St. Patrick's Day, because it is yet another example of "multi-culturalism."

[Andy Stamm]

David and Niall,

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding concerning the impact of remittances on the exporting country. The US is top of the heap for sending remittances and that's where there's scholarship with which I'm familiar.

http://immigrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/docs/Remittances_021010.pdf

In a nutshell (emphasis mine)

Millions of immigrants in the U.S. send billions of dollars in remittances to friends and family members in their home countries each year.  While it is easy to assume that this represents a huge loss for the U.S. economy, the relationship between remittances and the U.S. economy is much more complex than meets the eye. It’s true that remittances are an important source of income for immigrant-sending countries, but remittances are also a huge boost to U.S. exports and the U.S. economy

[Gib_Papazian]

David,

Under Sharia Law, the penalty for drinking that pint of Guinness on St. Paddy's Day is a minimum of 40 lashes.

So when the voting majority elects a fundamentalist Mullah as mayor of Dublin, you Catholic infidels can trade in your flasks of Jameson for prayer rugs.  

 

    

[David_Elvins]

Nobody is better at gaming the system than Russians and Eastern Europeans in particular. Survival in their homeland depends on covertly breaking the law...?

Isn't that the basic premise of American culture too? 

Every man for themselves, Push the laws and rules as far as you can get away with?  etc...

[David_Tepper]

Gib -

I am not talking about celebrating St. Patrick's Day in Ireland. I am talking about how it is celebrated here in the U.S.!

DT

P.S. Even by your standards of hyperbole, the notion of Sharia Law in Dublin (be it Ireland, Ohio or California) is fatuous nonsense, but I suspect you already know that. . On the other hand, there are already a number of "dry" counties in the U.S. where you already cannot buy a drink on St. Patrick's day or any other day of the year for that matter.

[Gary Slatter]

The Kingdom of Fife is a wonderful place - remember going to a ice hockey game between two Scottish teams, one was 100% Czechs and the other team was mixture of Scottish Canadians and Canadian Scots.  At Fairmont St Andrews you seldom heard English spoken by food & beverage staff.  Glate!

Rich, when I lived there I used to love putting SCOTLAND down as my residence country, and watching the UK immigration officer (in London at Heathrow) scribble it out as he said "there's no Scotland country, it's UK".

[David_Tepper]

If the population demographics in the UK are deteriorating as badly as they are elsewhere in Europe (see article linked below), the UK should be competing to attract as many capable 20-somethings from any where in Europe (or around the world for that matter). An aging population is one very good way to kill an economy.

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21570752-growth-will-suffer-workers-dwindle-working-age-shift 

[Bill_McBride]

If the population demographics in the UK are deteriorating as badly as they are elsewhere in Europe (see article linked below), the UK should be competing to attract as many capable 20-somethings from any where in Europe (or around the world for that matter). An aging population is one very good way to kill an economy.

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21570752-growth-will-suffer-workers-dwindle-working-age-shift 

It's about the same in the US.  We have a flat population with a entire group that has lost the fire in the belly that immigrants bring to entrepreneurship.  We need immigrants to create positive population growth.  Otherwise.....who knows?

[David_Tepper]

Bill -

I don't think the population demographics in the U.S. are nearly as bad as they are in continental Europe. The situation in Japan is probably the worst of any country in the developed world.

The Chinese economy is very close to hitting the wall (not the Great one;)) as they are about to reap a very sour reward for their "one child" policy. They are literally running out of people to work in their factories. 

DT

[Gib_Papazian]

David,

I'm going to assert that I have far more Muslim friends than you do - and therefore I am privy to far more privately blunt opinions than the party-line spew expelled on Al Jazeera; further, the average American has no shot of passing even a rudimentary quiz on international geography. If I was to take a poll across all demographics in this country, I will wager you a round at Pebble, dinner in the Tap Room and the best looking hooker in Monterey County that 75% of America has no f*cking idea that Arabs and Persians (like, uh, Iran) are different races.

All they know is the same brainless drivel my brilliant daughter gets fed by teachers so afraid of offending one of the violent nutbag sub-groups that she never gets taught the truth. It is sort of like the astonished look I get in business meetings when it becomes obvious I know the difference between the Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Southeast Asians and Filipinos.

We are the most ignorant developed country in the world when it comes to international relations. The idiot electorate depends on our leaders - most of whom could not make a 2nd interview to be a TSA drone if they were desperate for bodies - blindly following both sides of the sewer line into idiotic wars and the very entanglements that Thomas Jefferson warned against. And now look at us!

We sit in line at the airport like Concentration Camp inductees, having our papers perused by foreign nationals who barely read English and most of whom could be bought off for the cost of a Sukiyaki stir fry and a tank of gas.

Yes, my "hyperbole" is often tongue in cheek, but so was Ben Franklin's "Modest Proposal" - except that I'm an idiot compared to my hero (aside from C.B. Macdonald). We have X-amount of Quatloos in the kitty my friend - and we need to make sure all those illiterate Black Kids get educated and employed (since we brought their ancestors here at gunpoint) before America worries about the next crop of refugees, many of whom come from countries the United States was stupid enough to tear apart to further the same corporations who dodge taxes while shmucks like me pay full boat to support their murderous activities.

Don't argue with pissed off Libertarians. Bad idea, especially today.            

[David_Tepper]

Gib -

It must be a terrible burden having to live your life surrounded by so many lesser men. You have my sympathy.

Try to get a good night's sleep!

DT

[Gib_Papazian]

David,

Now, how about my wager?

You in?

 

Gawd, I hope you don't take this too seriously . . . . . You snotty-faced heap of parrot droppings!

[RJ_Daley]

Ok, taking another chance here... but last time on the 'Mickelson paying too much tax' thread, the discussion got a bit desparate and I know I tried to post something with some reference to offer some alternative perspective, particularly to Gib's revelations of difficult times being experienced.  I wasn't able to see any response because the thread got killed.  But, once again I'm compelled to try and add what in my mind is perspective as the nature of this thread sent me scurrying to find some information or ideas posed by folks a lot smarter than I.  

What David and Gib seem to me to be going around about, brought to my mind (correctly or not) the notion of some force of human ecology at work when Gib particularly paints a pretty desparate picture of population migration trends, and with them, big cultural, economic, and societal conflict.   It is as if the seeds of human self-destruction are inate in the species...

I found this article that ponders some of the urban-migration of ethnic populations and conflicts and conundrums mentioned here by my freind Gib.

The article has broader commentary than just the issue of populations migrating or encroaching on other tribal turf.  And, I'm not sure it offers any solutions, but it was a good read, and hope it offers some alternative perspective to all who care to read it.  Of course, it may be another thread killer... which I may have some talent for...

http://www.indiana.edu/~spea/pubs/perspectives/humanity5.html

  

[David_Tepper]

Gib -

Sorry to disappoint you, but I have indeed been aware for many years of the difference between Persians and Arabs.
Frankly, I would be surprised if half of the U.S. Congress is aware of the difference!

And I am very serious about hoping you get a good night's sleep. It sounds like you could use one!

DT

[Sean_A]

Must be some of this continuing new ideas on race division.  I have never heard that Persians were a separate race at all.  Out of curiosity, how many races exist?  It is quite obvious Iran is very different culturally from other Muslim nations, but I don't know if they are genetically different enough to be considered a separate race from Arabs.   

Ciao

[Rich Goodale]

The Kingdom of Fife is a wonderful place - remember going to a ice hockey game between two Scottish teams, one was 100% Czechs and the other team was mixture of Scottish Canadians and Canadian Scots.  At Fairmont St Andrews you seldom heard English spoken by food & beverage staff.  Glate!

Rich, when I lived there I used to love putting SCOTLAND down as my residence country, and watching the UK immigration officer (in London at Heathrow) scribble it out as he said "there's no Scotland country, it's UK".

Gary

You'll be pleased to know that in renewing my youngest daughters' UK passport, my wife discovered that "Scotland" is now an acceptable answer for "Country" on the application form.  That should silence all those Little England Bangladeshis who man the front line of immigration control at Heathrow.

Gib

You're on a roll as good as Belushi in "Animal House" in his "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" speech.

David T  and Andy

Excellent points about the value of immigration to the US and other developed economies.  That being said, Gib, Mark P and others are right about the criminality which the liberalisation of immigration enables and even fosters.  How to get rid of these scum bags (and most importantly to where?) is a real problem in the UK and I assume the USA too.

[Mark Chaplin]

David - the work figures are up to date. I disagree on the tax and VAT argument, workers on minimum wage do not pay much in the way of tax and VAT is zero on rent, food and transport which take up the majority of a young workers income.

The reason this country is in the do-dah is simple, 53.4% of Britons receive more in welfare than they pay in taxes and the welfare bill in REAL terms is 14 times higher than it was when welfare was introduced. Foreign workers aren't taking jobs because an underbelly of society makes a living from the welfare state rather than working.

[David_Elvins]

Excellent points about the value of immigration to the US and other developed economies.  That being said, Gib, Mark P and others are right about the criminality which the liberalisation of immigration enables and even fosters.  How to get rid of these scum bags (and most importantly to where?) is a real problem in the UK and I assume the USA too.

It's interesting to read about US system creating criminals in the ghettos of Los Angeles and then exporting them back to central America where they can reak real havoc. 

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/60803/ana-arana/how-the-street-gangs-took-central-america

[Mark Pearce]

Rich,

I believe you are confusing your Marks.