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Comment by holografix | Hacker News Reader

If I can play devil’s advocate for a second:

Maybe the UK’s working welfare system can’t cater for all of Europe’s economic refugees plus the middle east’s conflict refugees.

For a representation of a labour market + immigration free-for-all, at least in theory, I invite you to live in Brussels for 12 months.

Dilapidated infrastructure, abandonment by national population, high levels of petty crime and a de-facto skills test where regardless of who you are and how well educated you’ll fail a job interview if you don’t speak both fluent French and Dutch. A simple way to keep the _good office jobs_ for the locals.

That is once you jump through the many bureaucratic hoops-on-fire

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> Maybe the UK’s working welfare system can’t cater for all of Europe’s economic refugees

Which European economic refugees did you have in mind? The ones that live on benefits while simultaneously stealing local jobs?

> you’ll fail a job interview if you don’t speak both fluent French and Dutch.

That seems entirely reasonable in a country that speaks French and Dutch. Try getting an Engineering job in the US without speaking English. Even in low skill retail you need to speak Spanish, English, or both preferably.

Yes it does. If, and only if, the Belgians themselves spoke both languages fluently. A large proportion doesn’t. Mostly the business language is English. No such obligation is required in the Netherlands, Denmark etc. Mostly because knowing only one European language well is not a big impediment.

I work in IT in the Netherlands where you can get away with only English, but I'd say if you don't speak Dutch in English and are not in a highly sought after profession such as software engineering then you're out of luck for 99% of the jobs.

I know three different people who lived in the Netherlands for multiple years whose Dutch is basically good enough to order a beer. Loads of people work office jobs for companies whose EMEA HQ is in Amsterdam. Most of the population of Amsterdam wasn't born in the Netherlands. Given how easy it is to live in the Netherlands speaking English it's honestly amazing so many foreigners do end up learning Dutch.

> Maybe the UK’s working welfare system can’t cater for all of Europe’s economic refugees

The first time that I read about this argument in relation with the support to the Brexit I was a bit surprised.

Do you guys really believe in that? Massive amount of people from Germany, France, Italy, Belgium or Spain demanding refuge from those extremely damaged countries, and requesting support from UK?

But I must note something. Where I live I actually see in the hospitals (in medium and big cities) queues of lots British refugees looking for a better health care. If you take the train in those places you will not listen the local language, but only some Cockney variation of English.

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