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Comment by ausvisaissues | Hacker News Reader

I don’t have a horse in this race, but the language you use (‘bigoted’) is way too strong…

The UK is a really popular immigration destination (perhaps due to it being a rich English-speaking economy and the legacy of its colonial empire).

Let's say the British public is willing to accept a fixed amount of immigrants. The UK can easily fill this up with high-skilled immigrants (Masters/PhD’s in technical fields). Wouldn't that be better than accepting blue-collar workers from Eastern Europe? Are you ‘bigoted’ because I think a PhD from India would be better for the economy than a blue-collar worker from E-Europe?

It is high-time that the UK start re-engaging with its own commonwealth. This includes closer trade and immigration.

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>Wouldn't that be better than accepting blue-collar workers from Eastern Europe? Are you ‘bigoted’ because I think a PhD from India would be better for the economy than a blue-collar worker from E-Europe?

It doesn't work exactly like that. The "value" of a worker depends on the demand for workers in said field. Accepting a million people with PhDs in particle physics doesn't add much to the economy when there are hardly any job openings (you get 999700 physicist working lower-skilled jobs or on the dole). I don't know exactly how the situation in Briatin is right now, but I'm guessing that part of the reason why blue collar workers from Easter-EU come to work Britain, is because there has been demand for them.

> The "value" of a worker depends on the demand for workers in said field. Accepting a million people with PhDs in particle physics

That is true. But then, make a uniform standard and measure everyone fairly (whether from European Union or India).

Look at Australia's highly-skilled visa (189). They have a "Skilled Occupations List" that consists of jobs that are in demand (including non-university technical occupations).

There is no reason why this can't be implemented in the UK.

Do you know that European countries pay to stay in Europe?

Not "ideologically", but in terms of money. Now, I am Poland, I have contributed to the EU budget with 3.526 billion eur [0], we have free movement of people, but no, you don't like my people because they are not master/phd? This was not our agreement. If you don't like the fact that people are free to come there, we can discuss about it. Further, if people go there, it means that the country needs such people. So, what are you UK complaining about? I am sorry, but: http://imgur.com/u9oqSWm

If such people come and work there for a very low salary, then the country may try to regulate itself by privileging its own citizens first - and this you CAN do. You CAN regulate your own country, it's not true that you can't. You simply don't have to make it impossible for people to come and work there, because this goes against European values - and it's also fair.

The truth is that it's easy to close borders instead of trying to solve conflicts: it takes less effort, and "move on". But this is short term thinking.

[0] http://europa.eu/about-eu/countries/member-countries/poland/...

There are a couple advantages to the EU system that I can think of:

* Workers can (in theory) move around the EU depending on the demand for them in the different regions.

* Lower bureaucratic cost.

> Lower bureaucratic cost.

Muhahahaha. EU is the largest and by definition most inefficient bureaucracy in the history of the world

Source: living there for 30-ish years.

Could you articulate more?

> I don’t have a horse in this race, but the language you use (‘bigoted’) is way too strong…

It is not. Have you followed the debate? I'm sure there are plenty of Leave supporters that aren't, but a huge proportion of them have also expressed outright racist views.

> The UK can easily fill this up with high-skilled immigrants (Masters/PhD’s in technical fields). Wouldn't that be better than accepting blue-collar workers from Eastern Europe?

Not when a lot of the jobs that needs filling are blue-collar jobs.

> It is high-time that the UK start re-engaging with its own commonwealth. This includes closer trade and immigration.

About half the UKs immigration are from commonwealth countries, and a substantial proportion of trade. EU membership did not prevent that.

And noteworthy in this respect: The UK is accepting a lot of lower skilled labour immigration from these countries because of demand. I don't think it is likely that the immigration will drop much with Brexit, for the reason that it could already have been drastically tightened without touching EU immigration if there was any kind of genuine desire in government to limit immigration further.

> It is not. Have you followed the debate? I'm sure there are plenty of Leave supporters that aren't, but a huge proportion of them have also expressed outright racist views.

So by that chain of logic, couldn't we say that because a huge proportion of muslims are for the punishment of homosexuals that we can generalize them as homophobic?

The issue here is that polish workers are putting downwards price pressure on the construction industry. If Britain leaves, that will no longer be the case. Leading to increased prices for construction, which leads to less construction being done. Which will slow down the economy.

It is not as simple as replacing blue-collar workers with white-collar and expecting things to turn out awesome. The demand for blue-collar workers will remain. People in Britian will in the future get less for their money (this will also make it a less attractive destination for foreign educated professionals)

> The issue here is that polish workers are putting downwards price pressure on the construction industry.

It also puts downward price pressure on wages of blue-collar workers!

Immigration should depend on jobs that are in demand. If construction jobs are in demand, I am sure that there would be thousands of people (from non-EU countries) willing to satisfy the demand.

What difference does it make if the workers come from eu or non eu countries?

They're still foreign workers.

The downward pressure on wages is fine - the polish guy says I'll work for half that, the British guy says OK I'll work for a bit less than the polish guy. The polish guy says I'll go cheaper, the British guy says that's no longer best for me, I can earn more by doing X instead. More work done, and now there's 2 taxpayers instead of just one.

Presumably the British guy went to another job, didn't just turn up their nose and say 'I'm not working for that! I'm claiming benefits / going to crime instead'

Yes, I think that is bigoted.. Why does the blue collar worker from Eastern Europe deserve less opportunity than a blue collar worker from Sheffield? How is discriminating against some group of people based on what country they were born in morally different than discriminating based on race?

> Why does the blue collar worker from Eastern Europe deserve less opportunity than a blue collar worker from Sheffield?

Does a blue collar worker from India deserve less of an opportunity than a blue collar worker from Eastern Europe?

You may answer no to this (i.e., believe in completely open borders). But I think that the general public will not accept this.

I would answer no to it - a blue collar worker from india absolutely deserves the same opportunity as a worker in Europe.

I agree, we are a long ways from the public accepting open borders. I just think its important to point out - as a society we have rejected racism, but we are blind to the fact that exclusionary nationalism is it's strict moral equivalent.

I would challenge anyone who disagrees to come up w/ an explanation why racism is immoral, that does not also apply to birthplace.

I love my neighbour more than my neighbour's neighbour. Is that shocking?

Not at all - I think that is human nature, and how we all behave. I just don't think its justified - if you asked most people to describe their moral frameworks, I don't think many would say 'the value of a human being is a function of their distance from me'.

> The UK can easily fill this up with high-skilled immigrants (Masters/PhD’s in technical fields)

Is that so? I'm not sure it's true. I have a master in a technical field and given enough money I would be of course be willing to move to the UK, but my salary expectactions have just been raised a lot. I don't like being a second-class citizen, I don't like being paid in a devaluated currency and I don't like depending on my employer renewing my visa. What if I was considering opening an startup in London? It's not going to happen. If I'm going to require a visa why the UK instead of USA, Australia or Dubai? It's not the end of world of course, the UK will do fine, and the same will happen with the rest of the EU but in my eyes it has been an absurd decision. An economic recession is going to have much more impact on employment that inmigrants taking away jobs.

To some extend, yes, it is 'bigoted'. Someone needs to stock shelves, and someone with a lower education from Eastern Europe might be more willing to do it. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the blue-collar workers all ended up with a job, paying tax, while the people with a degree ended up in perpetual job hunting, living partially off social services of various sorts.

What we need to avoid is that people end up living off social services, and it's very difficult to know who ends up having a job, who ends up climbing the ropes and making something big out of themselves, and who just ends up lying in the gutter on the street. You definitely cannot tell this solely by education or origin - you'll only know when it happens.

The bulk (50%+) of the immigration to the UK is from outside the EU. They already have control over that part and they haven't done anything about it and nothing will change on that front after BRExit.

Apparently unless you are for unlimited immigration with no control or assimilation period you are a bigot.

>Let's say the British public is willing to accept a fixed amount of immigrants.

Why should they have this power? To use the above example, New York doesn't. California doesn't. That causes some problems re: housing supply, but we've decided that freedom of movement is more important than agitating some locals.

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