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So you’re an immigrant who says none of the 4 freedoms are beneficial to regular people, when it looks like you personally used those freedoms - freedom of movement and possibly freedom to establish and provide services.

My parents moved from an Eastern European country to a Western European country before the 4 "freedoms" of the EU existed. They were as free as I am today to move from one place to another, settle and make a life for themselves. And they were not privileged at all. My other worked hard as a nurse, working more hours than the average person works today and my father was a waiter in a restaurant, always struggling, yet they had freedom to move to Belgium first and then they had the freedom to move to Austria to work and live there too, before the EU decided to give us "freedoms". I was born as a free human being and refuse to accept that the only reason why I was able to move to the UK is because the EU was so graceful to give me the freedom of movement. If I wanted to I could move to any other country in the world which isn't part of the EU as well, so clearly my freedom has nothing to do with the current 4 "freedoms".

I think you don't understand what those 4 freedoms mean and what freedom of movement exactly is, you take things for granted.

No, just because "you were born a free human" (whatever you mean by this) you wouldn't be able to easily move to the UK if it was not for the freedom of movement.

The only reason you were able to _easily_ immigrate to the UK is because of freedom of movement and UK being part of the single market.

Speak with anyone trying to stay in the UK (being from outside the EU). I'll tell you a secret, it's very hard, and it costs money. It costs employers, who'll need to go through headache of sponsoring your visa, and it'll cost you, who'll need to pay to the Home Office if you want to stay.

I have numerous friends and people I studied and worked with over the last 12 years in the UK that couldn't stay. They were from Russia, Australia, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, etc. Every time I discussed with them their visa situation and attempts to stay in the country, I thanked god that where I emigrated from, we've joined the European Union and I don't have to deal with these issues. It's a nightmare.

You, as a EU national, can look for a job and work here without a permit, you can reside here without a permit, you can stay here after studies or employment, and from legal point of view, you enjoy equal, non-discriminatory treatment with same rights and access to employment, working conditions, social & health security and tax advantages as UK citizens.

No, you cannot have the same and "move to any other country in the world which isn't part of the EU as well, so clearly my freedom has nothing to do with the current 4 "freedoms"."

> you wouldn't be able to easily move to the UK if it was not for the freedom of movement

Neither you nor I can know this at this point, since I'm already here.

> The only reason you were able to _easily_ immigrate to the UK is because of freedom of movement

This is factually wrong and is at most your personal opinion. There are many reasons why someone can immigrate _easily_. For example the UK is currently recruiting many doctors and nurses and people of those professions will have it significantly _easier_ to move to the UK than others.

> I have numerous friends and people I studied and worked with over the last 12 years in the UK that couldn't stay.

I also have numerous friends and people who I worked with and they could stay. So could my family members who also moved to the UK from a non EU country.

> Every time I discussed with them their visa situation and attempts to stay in the country, I thanked god that where I emigrated from, we've joined the European Union and I don't have to deal with these issues.

This is partly the fault of having no control over EU immigration, forcing richer EU countries to have harsher restriction on non EU countries (this is even more true for other EU countries, the UK is already much friendlier in its immigration laws in comparison to the others in the EU).

> You, as a EU national, can look for a job and work here without a permit, you can reside here without a permit, you can stay here after studies or employment, and from legal point of view, you enjoy equal, non-discriminatory treatment with same rights and access to employment, working conditions, social & health security and tax advantages as UK citizens

Yes, so my EU passport elevates me above other nationalities. Not exactly something to be proud of in my honest opinion. I rather compete on an even playing field, but maybe that's just me.

> No, you cannot have the same and "move to any other country in the world which isn't part of the EU as well, so clearly my freedom has nothing to do with the current 4 "freedoms"."

That's just your personal opinion and if I had a desire to move to another non EU country I'd probably prove you wrong. Where there is a will there is a way. I'm certain that I could find a job, get a work permit and build a life elsewhere and eventually naturalise there if I decide to call it my home.

You're mudding the waters and missing the point.

If you're on Hacker News, I assume you work in IT. Of course you can find a job in any part of the world. You have one of the most desired and in demand professions in the world. No one argues about that.

But being in privileged position like yours and saying 4 freedoms don't benefit _regular people_?!

No one cares if you personally are proud or not that EU nationals have equal rights, but these equal rights exist, regardless of what you think or feel, because it's a fact and a law which along with other 3 freedoms have been playing huge role in shaping the European Union. And it benefits everyone of almost 500 million EU nationals today, including whoever you mean by _regular people_.

This discussion is about you saying "None of the 4 freedoms of the EU is actually beneficial to regular people".

Saying that, you either:

1) Don't know what you're talking about

2) Or you're delusional

I will assume you're not delusional, but a logical person, since you're on Hacker News and you can understand rational argument.

So please, research what free movement of goods, capital, services and labour actually means and has done for everyone in Europe, including _regular people_. Saying they're not beneficial is nonsense, and means you haven't done your homework.

A few years ago I could just decide to immigrate to the UK on a whim. Now I have to check if I am eligible for some sort of fast track scheme like "For example the UK is currently recruiting many doctors and nurses and people of those professions will have it significantly _easier_ to move to the UK than others." It's very likely that I do not know all the special exemptions for immigrants in the UK. I will have to consult an immigration expert so that I can maximize my chances of being accepted. Then there is the obvious problem of not being accepted. If I'm not a nurse or doctor I will have a much harder time. There is also the small but impactful risk of being forced to return to my home country even after I have immigrated. Visa programs can change in the blink of an eye and throw off a decade of planning.

It feels to me that you are just pointing at survivorship bias. Yeah sure your relatives were the few ones that immigrated without any help but what about all those that were shown the door?

The entire world can’t migrate to the top 10 wealthiest countries so there must be some form of selection. Ideally that selection should be fair to everyone. Sour Europeans like yourself are just selfishly crying because your passport privilege for which you have done nothing to deserve it is being taken away and you have to compete on an equal playing field with everyone now. Too bad that you find this situation so upsetting, but I find it good. Nobody deserves an advantage based on their birth place.

If there's one thing worse than hosts hate towards immigrants, it is immigrant hate toward hosts. I wonder if you are religious but not christian.

Saying "the world is in change" doesn't do much when it's plain to see that Brexit is a net negative for the UK.

Negative for some, positive for others. We will see.

I'm curious to know from you why you think the idea of globalisation is bullshit. As an immigrant such as yourself, I can't say I agree with you. Or perhaps our definitions of globalisation are not the same. In any case, I would like to hear why you think so.

It is bullshit unless countries coordinate on wages and regulation. The EU (Italy/France) have let clandestine immigration go rampant so that their low-cost industry remains competitive. It also helps that these people have no papers and can be deported at a moment notice. It is slavery with some cash and with the benefit of blaming these people for all the problems they self-inflicted on themselves.

It is why some countries are racist: Poland/Hungary are unfriendly to illegal immigrant because they don't need them. It is also why Italy has recently become strict with illegals: They don't need that many workers now, so they are not welcome and they are ramping up the extraditions.

Illegal immigration is very easy to solve: You have all workers register with the government, you then put big fines (and jail) for those who hire non-registered people. But the current fines for hiring an illegal are a joke. You can simply pay the fine and hire another the same day and still be more profitable than going by the law.

> Illegal immigration is very easy to solve: You have all workers register with the government, you then put big fines (and jail) for those who hire non-registered people.

That doesn’t solve illegal immigration, it just promotes illegal documentation forgery and illegal under-the-table employment on top of illegal immigration.

OTOH, illegal immigration is easy to solve, you first align the numerical limits of your immigration system with demand by retaining only in-total and not per-country caps, and then, if you want a more complete solution, you make those caps soft caps instead of hard caps by allowing supernumerary immigrants that would be qualified but for numerical limits to temporarily reside while waiting in line for a regular slot (or just bypass the line entirely) by paying an annual (or, for the bypass mechanism, larger one-time) impact fee to address expected social costs.

Now, the problem is that many people who say they want to “solve” illegal immigration don’t want to solve illegal immigration, they want to limit total immigration and, particularly, limit immigration of certain nationalities for which there is high immigration demand, and are using “illegality” as a cover.

> That doesn’t solve illegal immigration, it just promotes illegal documentation forgery and illegal under-the-table employment on top of illegal immigration.

Anything that increases the costs of illegal immigration will reduce the incidence of it. It will probably never go all the way to zero, but the harder you make it the less it will happen.

Many people, both outside and inside the system, are openly obstructing enforcement of even existing laws and policies. That's the biggest reason illegal immigration continues - a lot of people want it to.

> OTOH, illegal immigration is easy to solve, you first align the numerical limits of your immigration system with demand by retaining only in-total and not per-country caps, and then, if you want a more complete solution, you make those caps soft caps instead of hard caps by allowing supernumerary immigrants that would be qualified but for numerical limits to temporarily reside while waiting in line for a regular slot (or just bypass the line entirely) by paying an annual (or, for the bypass mechanism, larger one-time) impact fee to address expected social costs.

That's like telling people who want to "solve" a high murder rate that they should just legalise murder, problem solved. The limits that we have are the product of our democratic process, even if you disagree with them. Even many pro-immigration people are against the idea of selling extra spaces, and many anti-immigration people would be (rightly!) dubious that the people who the social costs actually fall on would see any of the money.

> That's like telling people who want to "solve" a high murder rate that they should just legalise murder

Well, no, it's not, because people who want to solve a high murder rate will admit that their concern is people getting killed in the conditions that are currently illegal not the illegality. And murder laws reflect the view that those conditions are inherently wrong (mala in se); they don't permit a fixed number of what-would-otherwise-be-murders per year with a specific allocation of who gets to commit them and a waiting list if you would qualify to commit them but your application would exceed the allowed number.

People who conplain about “illegal immigration” pretend that their problem is illegality, not immigration, and the structure of immigration laws reflect that immigration of vast groups of people who are denied legal immigration each year is not inherently wrong but only “wrong” due to aggregate impact, which can be addressed by other means.

> Even many pro-immigration people are against the idea of selling extra spaces,

The only difference between trying to prohibit supernumerary immigration of immigrants who aren't personally barred and selling extra spaces is that the money those people are willing and able to spend to immigrate goes to criminals, and the public foots additional costs of enforcement as well as dealing with the social costs of immigration and the additional social costs of illegality, instead of avoiding the last cost, mitigating the penultimate cost, and avoiding driving money to criminal organizations. And part of the additional social costs of the particular illegality it engenders helping those who are personally barred for good cause avoid detection because the prohibition of immigrants who aren't undesirable breeds widespread contempt for immigration laws and there enforcement.

> which can be addressed by other means.

Maybe. Maybe not. If there was a good answer that everyone was happy with then I'm sure the democratic process would adopt it.

> The only difference between trying to prohibit supernumerary immigration of immigrants who aren't personally barred and selling extra spaces is that the money those people are willing and able to spend to immigrate goes to criminals, and the public foots additional costs of enforcement as well as dealing with the social costs of immigration and the additional social costs of illegality, instead of avoiding the last cost, mitigating the penultimate cost, and avoiding driving money to criminal organizations.

Again, just as with murder; the point of making it illegal is to stop it, and I'm sure the illegality cuts the rate at which it happens.

There is lots of B.S. on your own comment but I did stop here

> None of the 4 freedoms of the EU is actually beneficial to regular people, who have no choice where to pay their tax or under which employment laws they want to be employed.

The system is rigged to painfully screw the regular droid in the a. This seems to be the case for most of the developed world and especially the EU.

I'm getting tired of all the news around vaccines.

Every change is being portrayed as either a huge loss or huge win.

Things change, millions die. A virus is just a virus.

We should look forward to a future with fewer people in it.

What has vaccine medicine ever done for the average person?

EDIT: this is sarcasm, obviously!

The point is that the parent comment is making rhetorical generic points about "change", and "the future" which apply to any kind of change, including mass death.

He neither references, nor provides, any evidence or substantive content that shows this change will be Good.

Stopped them getting one of many horrible diseases?

> What has vaccine medicine ever done for the average person.

um... I actually know someone with polio, and of course I know many people with COVID.

...exactly...

The parent commenter might have alluded to "What Have The Romans Ever Done For Us":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ

There's good change and bad change though. I'm not sure brexit was the way to go.