Post-Brexit immigration: mission accomplished?
sifted.eu
sifted.eu
I think the most fundamental change of Brexit is the overwhelming "you're not welcome" message. Visas, papers, bureaucrats, people can deal with. But the idea that you're at best tolerated so long as you pay your taxes is really off-putting (even for me, now UK citizen and long-time resident).
Also, all these schemes forget that moving for a job is so much more than that - it is moving a life. Can you move your life with your partner and kids - are they welcome? Can your parents come and visit? Is it obvious you can access healthcare, schools, social safety net on fair terms? Will you have to justify your whole existence to a reluctant bureaucrat every 12 months?
Pre-Brexit, there was always a bit of tension to foreigners in the UK, but then there always is, and London was by far better than most places. But the guarantees of EU membership were so strong that you didn't even think about any of these issues.
My impression is that another upside Silicon Valley has over the UK is that the US is genuinely a country of immigrants. Whatever hoops you have to jump through to get in or stay, I don't get the impression people are looked down on because they are foreign, once actually on the ground. Which is not so much the case in Brexitania.
In USA? It just depends how rich you are. Does that make things better?
Maybe yes, I'm only taking about my impressions, I never worked in the US. Certainly doesn't seem to project that image, to me.
Have you ever tried applying for a US Visa? The process makes the complaints of the author in this article look like a joke.
Whilst that may be the personal impression of some, the harsh reality is that many immigrants in the US suffer severe discrimination. For instance, many parts of the country have significant pockets of anti-hispanic sentiment. This often spills over into outright violence - just look at the El Paso shooting in 2019[1].
Anecdotal, but London is the only European capital city where I got shouted at on he street, in the middle of day, for being a foreigner. It happened about 10 years ago and actually the shouts of the two English young-ladies were directed at my (now) ex-wife, but I was still surprised by it. If it matters it happened in a posh-ish area of the city, around Kensington, I believe. As such the anti-foreigner mania that took over a great part of the British (and especially English) electorate a few years after that didn't surprise me.
Otherwise I found London a great place, the only real cosmopolitan city left on this continent together with Istanbul (I haven't visited Moscow yet, to be honest), otherwise everything else seems rather stale (Vienna) or too self-absorbed to care about anything else outside of it (definitely Paris, maybe also Rome).
The UK is easily among the most tolerant and least racist of European countries. In international studies, the UK scores very highly on all such measures, usually much better than continental European countries. See e.g. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/least-rac...
I don't understand this compulsive need of pro-EU voters to construct massive straw men about brexit voters and Brexit Britain. It is possible and reasonable for a country to decide it doesn't want to be a part of the European "project" without being a racist xenophobic hellhole.
On the original article, it is strange it never covers how easy it is for someone in India or the Uk or Africa to immigrate to Germany. The UK has mass immigration still from all over the world - when you have considerably more potential immigrants than you can reasonably accommodate is when countries start getting picky and having rules.
No one is taking that right away. No one is saying UK is a xenophobic hellhole. But the "foreigners" en masse are saying they don't like it, and are more likely to give the UK a miss. Either you don't mind, or if you do, don't pin your hopes of a booming start-up industry on those very same foreigners.
Speaking for my own workplace the effect of brexit has been to replace European migrants with more Indian migrants, not to actually reduce migration. Unless you believe that continental Europeans have some unique ability to found startups, I'm not sure there's much to worry about.
But ultimately, if you don't mind, that's good news to you. One thing less to worry about in a stressful world.
There's is not a labour shortage of lorry drivers. There is increased demand, reduced supply (due to a pandemic on both counts) - but plenty of people who can drive a lorry and are licensed - who don't because salary is not competitive.
If your argument was that wages were kept depressed due to cheap labour from abroad, and how terrible it is that we now have to pay lorry drivers and fruit pickers competitively, I'm not sure that's much of an argument.
"...but plenty of people who can drive a lorry and are licensed - who don't because salary is not competitive"
Is really the crux of the issue. Getting a licence, whilst involving some moderate challenge, isn't exactly the most difficult or expensive thing to do. It's been a crappy job for a while and relying on it being filled by immigrants who had no better alternatives isn't a sustainable solution anywhere.
Not sure what you mean by that, BBC mentiones a lack of 100.000 drivers just a few days ago: https://www.bbc.com/news/57810729
That's a shortage, no matter how you turn it regardless if people are not available or simply don't want to do it.
Sure, pay can increase but so will the price of goods and components, having a knock-on effect on the rest of the economy and making UK less competitive as a result. Companies want to move stuff and they see no profitable means to do so.
I'm in The Netherlands, there's a driver shortage here too but it's mostly eastern europeans filling the void. With an unemployment rate of 3% why bother with a boring away-from-home job? Unless Trucking is your hobby essentially. I imagine most people in the UK feel the same way; there's better jobs available now with the economy opening up.
Yes there are fewer drivers, however my understanding was that this was due to "pingdemic", a lot of drivers not able to work due to isolation. Additionally there were fewer new drivers trained last year, because of obvious reasons.
Also Brexit means there are fewer EU drivers able to work here, but I think the above as had more of an effect.
I would stop spreading the fake news of Europeans being the servants of the Britons.
Since labour frictions tend to be absolute, not proportional to e.g. salaries, they are always going to be less acute in better-paid, higher-profile jobs. It doesn't mean they are any less grating to the people who experience them.
The point is not that the British society is more or less tolerant than the Italian society (and it certainly is more tolerant). The problem is that as a European I’ve never experienced xenophobia until 2016, while for some years after that every single Briton I talked to felt entitled to share with me some uneducated opinions about immigration and about my immigration status. These would range from some form of “you are a good migrant (sic) so you can stay”, to “only English people should live in England”. Some friends and colleagues, especially women who mixed with locals from the lower classes, have experienced more extreme forms of xenophobia, such as a doctor friend who stopped working outside of London because half of her patients were telling her to go back to her country (she was already naturalised then) on a daily basis. The locals trying to burn European flags (and failing miserably) weren’t really sending a welcome message.
Edit: poor migrant fix typoz
In my experience, I see about 100x as many people trying to shame folk with the "brexit=racist xenophobe" brush than I witness actual incidents of such behaviour.
At the end of the day it is all anecdotes from people who have an ideological axe to grind.
I'd be more interested to see actual data that suggests any permanent effect - like changes in all the many studies into the tolerance of countries towards immigrants, or even a substantial increase of hate crimes - but so far all that is strangely lacking and all we are left with is anecdotes.
However the main issue is that the mainstream leadership took cues from them and the dialog about immigration has changed.
Now it's pretty much native vs immigrants, England vs Europe. It's no longer a family/love story.
"Once Britain is free of the EU’s shackles, there’s nothing it cannot achieve". This kind of slogans extend to simple immigrants as well because "they" are the reason UK is no longer an empire...(so they said).
Said that, is police data enough evidence?
https://news.npcc.police.uk/releases/hate-crime-undermines-t...
> National Police Chiefs’ Council Lead for Hate Crime, Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton said:
“We now have a clear indication of the increases in the reporting of hate crime nationally and can see that there has been a sharp rise in recent weeks. This is unacceptable and it undermines the diversity and tolerance we should instead be celebrating.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/brexit-race-hate...
You don’t have to reply, if you think the police are all crazy leftists who hate brexiters.
2021 hate crimes are not above those of eg 2014 so I fail to see how the UK has become some xenophobic country.
However, you are right that it does lend credence to complaints around the referendum period that it was a difficult time. But I am still reluctant to draw long term conclusions from that.
There was a peak after the referendum, but there is also a long term trend. The cause of the trend can't all be attributed to brexit though (the causality might be reversed for example).
>> without being a racist xenophobic hellhole.
Well if that's the bar UK has set for itself then it's all good but it tries to have its cake and eat it too.
UK has a huge issue with racism that people don't even want to acknowledge. The prejudice, micro aggressions, general nastiness from people is extremely off-putting in UK.
In the US nearly every city with over 1 mil in population is open to conversations about racial discrimination, and individuals generally do a good job and admit fault when some behavior is called out.
The opposite of this holds for UK. Pointing out racist behavior becomes denial. Everyone thinks that because they're not the US they're saints and have no racial issues.
This has been the experience of a bunch of my brown European friends as well. US is genuinely better when dealing with other people.
https://twitter.com/titaniamcgrath/status/128102398724248780...
Don't conflate woke identity politics with racism. They are fundamentally different. British people are right to reject your America-centric obsession with finding racism in everything, given the UK's excellent track record.
Again, this is what I mean by British people refusing to engage with my experiences as a brown person living in UK.
Building up a strawman, then assuming I'm part of that strawman, then dismissing it does no one any good.
In Primary school in UK I (and all the non-white) kids were segregated in seating. I was always assigned seating near other brown kids.
When out shopping with my parents, in smaller stores we were "stalked" to make sure we didn't steal anything. This did not happen to our white friends that we asked to keep an eye out for this behavior.
In school plays, the non-white kids were always assigned the side-roles and the "peasant" roles. E.g. I was assigned to be a "chimney cleaner", which involved the makeup people spreading black ink all over myface and essentially making me do blackface.
But sure, this is just woke politics and you know everything about our lives.
By liberal standards, being asked what your accent is, becomes the equivalent of being beaten to death by the KKK. Stop wanting so hard to be a victim.
Also, just because they are rich or can start a tech company doesn’t make them any more entitled to live wherever they want any more than anyone else.
Just a very bizarre stance IMO and it seems one-sided.
So EU citizen moving to the UK must have known on the day they decided to migrate that their entitlement to live in the UK was always subject to this caveat.
It may suck, but it was never an right that could never be revoked.
For people who already qualified for permanent residence (i.e. who had been working in the UK for 5 years) nothing changed.
For people who were in the UK for less than 5 years the automatic right to stay disappeared by in reality I believe that they were given so-called "pre-settled status" until they reach the 5 year mark and can stay as long as they want, from what I understand.
Personally I like have proof of things so I had applied for proof of permanent residence (under EU law) before the UK actually left the EU (there was a gap of several years to do so after the referendum), which was quite straightforward, so moving to the new "settled status" only took a few minutes online.
Of course, EU citizens who have been in the UK for 6+ years and have permanent residence can also apply for citizenship and forget about all of this altogether.
Of course not. I'm saying that in this world you are not entitled to live in other people's territory and you must first gain their permission to live in their territory. If you are able to make the prerequisite arrangements you should be free to live wherever you want.
We do live in London, however my family are from elsewhere so we've spent plenty of time in other parts.
Surveys generally say the UK and US attitude to immigrants is pretty similar, for example [1].
I'm not a fan of Brexit and wish it hadn't happened, but on the other hand I feel like the idea that there's been a huge anti-immigration shift in the UK to be exaggerated. If anything, our attitudes towards immigration have continued their trend of softening since the vote.
Most other countries around the world get to apply discretion over which immigrants can settle there - why is it wrong if the UK also gets to do that? The upset seems to be mostly from rich western EU citizens, bothered that they are no longer an exception and are now treated exactly as any other country. Many of our ethnically Indian citizens, for example, voted for Brexit.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/03/14/around-the-wor...
I'd never go as far as saying it's terrible, but it's markedly different than it was.
However, I should add that when I was growing up 20+ years ago (also not in London), this kind of thing was much more common. Indeed, it was quite a lot worse. A roll of the eyes was probably the best you could expect. Some of the more unsavoury characters would walk around at night looking for members of particular immigrant groups to beat up, and people would talk about this as if it was perfectly normal and fine.
Thankfully, that is no longer remotely acceptable. The long term trend has been greatly softening attitudes towards immigration. Perhaps the divisive Brexit campaign has knocked it back a bit, but when I compare us now to even 10-15 years ago, it still feels like we're practically a different country to how we were when I grew up.
I strongly dispute this. The UK has anything but a softened attitude towards immigration in recent years. It was bad enough that it made me leave because I felt the longer term trend is not going to be good for me and my family and I'm a white European. You might not see it as much if you're not directly affected, but the discourse on the news and social media in the UK has degraded greatly since Brexit and that even happens on some rural public busses now.
I think the UK both wants to think of itself as world open, but a huge part of the population does not like it. Now it's conflicted of what it wants as a country.
Yes isn't it great that we live in a democracy, and have the population decide which direction they would like the country to go in.
Also I'm guessing you are suggesting that voters who voted leave where uniformed? (Please correct me if I'm wrong). I still don't believe that to be the case. The run up to the election there was wall-to-wall coverage on the subject across TV, radio and the internet.
But for record, this experience is from benign and safe environments - playgrounds in nice part of the city, National Trust parks etc. I have certainly felt at times it is best not to appear "foreign" in less polished places, and probably wouldn't attract attention to being from Poland.
Funny story (in hindsight), from way back when - ironically before the word "Brexit" even existed. Around 2006 or 2007, I was (almost) mugged at knifepoint in South London. The muggers realised I'm not local, and asked me where I'm from. For whatever reason, I said "Czechoslovakia" - a country that hadn't existed for O(15 years). The muggers saw my old tattered phone and finally let me go, saying they were just messing. I sometimes wonder how that could have gone had I said I'm from Poland.
When you combine this approach with administrative incompetence (eg but not limited to Windrush [2] where people who legally had the right to stay were deported to countries where they had never lived as adults) you get some very unpleasant situations indeed.
Not surprising at all that all this deters people from moving to the UK.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Office_hostile_environmen...
My experience with France is much, much worse, for instance.
I don't think the current UK system deters people in itself. It's relative and people take the path of least resistance: If you're from the EU then it has become more difficult to move to the UK whereas you can still freely move around the EU + Norway and Switzerland so perhaps this influences some people within the EU. But if you look further than that (e.g. non-EU person trying to move to EU, UK, US, etc) then the UK is certainly not deterring anyone.
If by "not bad at all" you mean "previously you could just come over with a 1 day notice and start working immediately" changing to "you literally can't be hired at all unless you fulfill certain criteria that disqualify entire groups of workers" then sure, "not bad at all".
At the company where we work 9/10 hires in the last years were from EU for junior/intermediate positions, now that number is zero, we aren't even interviewing because we know we can't hire them.
But sure, "not bad at all".
The EU is very special in that it has internal free movement. Now, obviously the UK has left so it controls immigration from the EU in the same way the EU controls immigration from outside the EU.
Comparatively the UK is not bad. Try having to queue in the street from 6am and be treated like sh*t at a French 'prefecture' every year to renew your resident card...
As for hiring, in tech in the UK, even for junior positions, we have many Indians. It's not a big problem to hire from outside the UK. Again what's happening is that people got so used to how easy it was within the EU that it's a rude awakening to be treated as non-EU, on both sides of the Channel, but that does not make it "dystopian"... It's just the reality of international migration worldwide. Countries do have immigration controls.
And again, just because some people have it worse doesn't mean these issues don't exist. No one at my company is going "well, we suddenly lost access to a job market of 300M people, but well, people from India have it much worse so I guess it's fine".
Like, I get your point, but it's not helpful.
In my book reality checks are helpful.
You've provided a personal view of your own experience - fair enough - but it's not a 'reality check' on the point made in the comment you replied to.
I don't understand the level of emotional reactions which border on hysteria, frankly.
Again, the UK has the right to control immigration like all countries have, and it is relatively straightforward and simple compared to many others. I am a EU citizen in the UK: yes, free movement has ended and that makes things less simple. This is not the end of the world. That's the reality check.
It's an appalling act that has devastated many families and caused untold worry for others.
Windrush is not a straw man as it resulted from the Hostile Environment which remains in place and now applies much more widely.
You may be lucky enough to escape its effects - and I hope you are - but downplaying it doesn't help anyone.
I applied for the permanent resident status before the EU forced the UK to introduce the Settlement Scheme and I ended up sending kilograms of documentation to prove that I had lived in the UK for the previous 5 years. I could easily collect these documents because I only worked in FTSE companies, but my partner couldn’t because she worked for smaller firms that ceased activity and couldn’t provide reference letters. The process was clearly designed to prevent people from getting ILR, even if they had a right to it.
An error to a few people (100 out of millions) and that resulted in nothing at all is not evidence of nefarious policy.
Sending payslips and council tax bills is hardly a problem for anyone who's been living and working in the UK, and that was a standard EU-wide procedure. It was not designed to be difficult or make people fail, it only required evidence that the applicant had been exercising "treaty rights", which is quit reasonable.
I was not in favour of Brexit but there is no reason to invent problems where there are none.
First of all, it doesn't result in nothing. I'm an EU citizen living in the UK and even though I haven't received a letter these sort of things make me deeply uncomfortable, to a point where this might be contributing to anxiety. So no, it's not nothing, these actions have consequences.
And what do you mean it's not evidence of nefarious policy??? The policy is nefarous explicitly, by design, and publicly as well! The famour "hostile environment" established by Theresa May is exactly this - hostile. It's meant to make you feel unwelcome as an immigrant.
>>there is no reason to invent problems where there are none.
I really really wish I could have such a positive outlook on life where I could honestly go on an internet forum and say "invent problems where there are none" when it comes to EU citizens living in the UK. I'm jealous frankly.
For instance, just to stay in English, if you're in Ireland this is the form: http://www.inis.gov.ie/en/INIS/Form-EUTR2.pdf/Files/Form-EUT...
It's pretty much the exact same as the British one used to be, and as I already mentioned this is because it is based on an EU procedure, and so will be pretty much the same everywhere:
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/residence/documents-fo...
Note that some EU countries also require EU/EEA nationals to register with the police/local authorities, which the UK did not and so actually made life for EU citizens simpler that quite a few other EU countries.
Another reality check here, apparently.
Also in the UK you have to register with the local authorities (read the local council), but then the government pretends you didn’t and asks for doctor notes and TV license bills.
Also, I don't see why you would need doctor notes or TV license bills...
I don't think you are being in good faith here and this is getting very tedious.
I feel like you're using these sentences to just say "suck it up and deal with it" and that's just really harsh for someone who feels like the rug has been pulled from under them. Making this country their home, and now being treated differently.
Leaflets given to people deported to Jamaica (their parents' homeland) said things like "attitudes to foreigners can vary abroad, try to <<act Jamaican>>, don't emphasise coming from Britain".
Feel free to send me a message for more details if you're interested, I'm happy to refer folks to our law firm etc.
Not to mention job prospects, it used to be Swiss, then EU then the rest of the world for consideration for a job, so I've dropped down a category, which is just an extra incentive for any company to not even consider UK citizens for a job.
I have a swiss residence permit, so I'm better off than most, and I will be going for citizenship in the next year or so.
One of the stranger conversations you can have with uk expats is those that supported brexit and are now perplexed that they suffer consequences.
As someone wrote pithily "This may not have been the Brexit that you voted for, but it was the one that I voted against."
You don't, in theory. However, within a certain zone from the border border agents have the right to ask you for identification. If you can't provide any they will take you along to determine your identity.
So while it's usually not a requirement to pass a border within the Schengen zone I highly recommend that you have proper identification on you.
Same goes for flying, at least before Covid. It was really rare that I even had to provide id within intra Schengen flights and if I was asked it was usually by the airline at the gate. The normal process was checking in automatically and then just badge yourself through the various checkpoints up and including the plane (depending on airport). Still, I would not recommend not to have a valid id or a passport when you fly. No matter if it's strictly required or not.
I had some of these conversations in Portugal in the lead-up to the Brexit vote. "Turkeys voting for Christmas," was a phrase that came to mind.
You should always bring EU-approved ID when crossing EU borders (even internal). There can be checks for a number of reasons.
For example, many moons ago high in the Alps, at the border between France and Italy, I witnessed two people on a French motorbike being turned back by the Italian customs for not having ID.
Worst case scenario for you would be to not be let back in.
Now it seems maybe you mis-understand the rules, which may be why you're claiming it's had a big impact on you when it should not. There are two things to recall:
1. The rights to a work permit only changed from January of this year. Everyone resident before that retains their prior rights. As you say you're soon going to apply for citizenship you presumably already have a work permit, so it's irrelevant - the grandfathering arrangement would apply for you.
2. Schengen rules say you must have ID with you at all times, even for internal travel. It's not well enforced so often people don't realize this, but you have always needed national ID like a passport not only to cross borders, but in theory, to go anywhere at all, even locally. Obviously the latter is ignored all the time but that's what the rules say. Also, the UK has never been a part of Schengen, and the UK leaving doesn't affect Schengen rules or Switzerland's application of them, so there's genuinely no change here.
This is true. My story:
Summer I returned from holiday in Ticino with family by car. The shortest way is by Italy. This way I avoided many hairpin bends. My son tends to get sick from them.
By the way, Italy explicitly allows transit without a Covid certificate if you travel by car and don't stay longer than 36 hours. Our route meant that we were in Italy for 60 minutes.
However I lost my Swiss ID card.
I decided to go anyway counting on Italian customs not being staffed and it worked. Back at the Swiss border our Simplon car-train got controlled but when I had our four cards (three ID cards and my driving license) ready and visible through the window we got waved through without a fuss.
The process here was as follows:
1 - Get a 'this person really lives here' document from your local village council office (easy, done in a day)
2 - Get a tax number (easy, but may be worth taking an accountant with you, done on the spot)
3 - Go to your local city, show both documents, pay €16, they give you your 5-year residency on the spot.
Of course this is harder now the UK has actually left the EU, but still perfectly do-able as I understand it.
I also think this can be a tricker process in the big cities. Things are generally more chill in the rural area where I am. I.e. the local official had seen my face around the village and was like 'heh, you obviously live here, whatever', and didn't need to see any title deeds or rental contracts.
I did a lot of browsing on https://www.pureportugal.co.uk, and the place I ended up buying was listed on there, but I'd actually discounted it for some reason.
I know some people here to buy without seeing the property but – generally speaking – I think it is a false economy. This is because:
1 - Places can look much different online. I suspect I discounted my current place because the photos were taken on a cloudy day in the winter
2 - Even in person – and if buying land – it can be really hard to know how the place looks. This is because many places are REALLY overgrown. I had entire terraces which were the depth of a person in brambles. I've known people who have found entire buildings when clearing the undergrowth.
3 - The cost of a trip to Portugal was pretty minimal compared to the cost of buying. Depends on where you are coming from though.
Happy to chat more about this. You can find my contact information on my profile / website.
Also, if you move to this area you can get high speed broadband from the ISP I've just launched: https://gardunha.net
There is no doubt that beyond lip service many European countries have sclerotic attitudes towards innovation and even hostility towards aspiring newcomers that "rock the boat" of cozy existing arrangements. But the only legitimate path is to fight for reforms within. Any serious innovation carries risks and ultimately those risks must be understood and accepted by society. Can you even do that from an offshore location?
More specifically for the European Union countries (and their aspiration of all sorts of unified digital / financial markets) the only meaningful design would be to spread the know-how (and thus acceptance / trust) across the region. Instead of looking for the next "winner-takes-all" silicon valley of Europe, think in terms of a strong network of neurons, all being equally required for the brain to function.
As for London/UK one would only hope that sooner rather than later it will rejoin the European project as an indispensable additional node.
The bottleneck here is housing, office space and such. Ireland, like much of Europe, is change averse. We don't build new towns or deal with physical changes to places well, or willingly. Slight upticks in immigration can quickly create big housing shortages.
It's an option though, and for the most part, we're more dedicated to the European project now than before Brexit. It's a good place for both UK & EU facing business.
It's certainly not perfect, but worth considering.
There are multiple routes to UK Visas and I have recently discussed with an acquaintance about bringing a business from elsewhere to the UK.
The problem, as cited in the article, is that the decision maker may simply Google for similar services and products and refuse. (Source: immigration lawyer I know - https://tom-bradford.com/innovator-and-start-up-using-an-exi...)
So it's easier for me to move myself and entire family abroad (TONS of hassle, Brexit or not, what with housing, schools, movers) to go to where the business is than for the business to move here (previously no hassle).
A mess. We're an ISLAND for goodness' sakes. How do you think people got here?
After Brexit, the visa requirements were somewhat relaxed in comparison to what they had been for non-EU citizens. For example, previously to hire a non-EU citizen, an employer had to advertise the vacancy on the market for a certain amount of time to 'prove' that they cannot fill it with an EU citizen. Now this requirement, if I remember correctly, has been abolished.
I am against Brexit for a number of reasons, but the differences in immigration rules for different people were too heavily affected by the 20th century war alliances, which have thoroughly influenced the current shape and composition of the EU. I am glad that the playing ground is now somewhat more even.
Many UK tech startups are getting acquired in all directions and the Big Tech companies in the US continue to open more offices in the UK. The biggest casualty of Brexit in the UK tech industry was ARM.
The competition for UK tech startups to hire away talent from the big tech companies has become close to impossible. I don't think we are going to see a 'Google' in the UK anytime soon if this continues.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/arrival-e-bus-electric-vehicl...
SPACing is the easy part. Just ask NKLA, LCID, GOEV and RIDE.
A company operating in the same league like 'Google' does not get itself acquired, is also profitable and expands onto multiple industries and countries.
We'll see if out of these other EV competitors Arrival is either a 'Google', 'Yahoo' or the EV company that could have been but somehow could not.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2016/07/18/arm-softb...
https://www.google.com/search?q=gbp+jpy&oq=gbp+jpy&aqs=chrom...
Given SoftBank paid a 43% premium over the share price at the time to buy it, and given the strategic nature of the ARM acquisition for them, it's unlikely relatively small currency fluctuations made much impact on that decision. Masayoshi Son is not exactly famous for his finance-driven, highly calculating approach to investments.
Immediately after the referendum was lost, my children and wife started to experience a level of racially motivated abuse that we had not seen before.
This reached a level where my wife felt she could no longer remain in the country and arranged for us to relocate as a family to mainland Europe.
The move was not kind for me, and soon after I arrived I had a breakdown and our marriage fell apart. I'm now back in the UK, but the place seems strangely unfamiliar and hostile to me; and whilst I am still able to work, all the joy, happiness and hope seems to have drained from this land.
I hope you find a good way forward, good luck.
That might have more to do with the 18 months of COIVD lockdown than Brexit.
-"Hi, nice to meet you"
-"Hi, are you Polish?"
Nothing against Polish people of course, but it made her start to gradually lose it. Each new instance would bring tears for days
Luckily, it seems Brexit is not on everyone's mind now. Good luck to you, try not to stress out (it's not your fault)
As a side note of the knowledge the general public holds, it seems like the history knowledge people get out of highschool is severely lacking.
Whether that is other nationalities or other professions, is then left unsaid, but either way it leaves me massively uncomfortable at that point and I usually excuse myself from the conversation.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqydTPDKQ44 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNXotuREZQ4
Relatedly Brexit is a really odd thing. I feel like absolutely nobody is happy and it will never be over. They are not even compromising on truck driver immigration now so I doubt anyone would touch investor visas.
Are you saying they should? I am from and in NL, and with all furthering EU integration there was the 'promise' from politicians it would be for the better for anyone. People who doubted this, for example truck drivers, were discounted as 'plebs' and not sophisticated enough.
Guess what happened when free movement of labor was granted to the Eastern block? Citizens from these countries quickly replaced the local drivers to the point Dutch transport agencies engineered mechanisms which guaranteed to could keep selecting foreign labor.
For the plebs this was of course no surprise. The ruling class just postulates 'everybody should become a knowledge worker'. I am highly educated but keep close tabs with all classes in my community.
The EU is mostly a trade bloc, a market for labor, where commodization (of labor) thrives. Primarily beneficial for companies and government (workers). It is my opinion we should build strong local economies with opportunities for all.
My only motivation for writing this is to present a differing viewpoint on the truck driver story.
Of course cheaper labor will displace more expensive labor, but that is quite literally why these jobs exist. Pay alone is not the reason the UK has a driver shortage, it's also the entire lifestyle that comes with it.
The EU works on the idea that you can work anywhere (with some restrictions) not too different from how this works in different US states. Over a sufficiently long period of time the differences in pay in the EU will move closer. Not entirely, but quite a bit. And that is the long game that will solve these problems more than to restrict labor markets.
You are just re-iterating the tiresome mantra of the EU beneficiaries 'in the end it will all work out for you too'. Except, maybe not in your lifetime.
It is a fundamental neo liberal viewpoint, and I admit in my opinion Labor (parties) have abandonded their constituency since the mid-80s.
And I think that needs to change, and if it takes a bit of protectionism, so what.
Brexit did not make people in the UK happier, quite the opposite. I don't see a future where this will change.
Do you have sources for this?
Anyway, the whole point is that those drivers who've left don't actually have the licenses and training to drive in the UK and couldn't afford to live here. The whole thing was an artefact of EU rules specific to lorry drivers that allowed them to work here using cheaper (and I think less stringent) qualifications from elsewhere whilst also living elsewhere, and of even the minimal restrictions there were on things like rest time outside of their cabs being effectively unenforceable. Without the weird distortions caused by those EU rules there's no way to get back to where we were, and opening up immigration wouldn't do it. Also, those rules were causing problems here and elsewhere in western Europe before Brexit, and there was already a substantial shortfall in drivers back then too, so it wasn't a sustainable situation.
[They work(ed) in the motor and film industries, the benefits and pay being in a completely different ballpark to haulage, even though driving large vehicles was a small part of the job]
The UK still have plenty of qualified drivers. Short-haul drivers have to be paid either the minimal wage of a country of the negociated sector wages if the sector Union is good. The Unions in the UK are worse than French unions (i wonder how it is possible) and did not secure any minimal guaranties, the drivers takes those minimals from EU + national laws. And while the pay is not that poor compared to other EU countries, HGV drivers also used to have a tax break and bonuses for crossing the channel. Now i think they lost this advantage (from what i understood). Also long haul UK -> portugal, UK-> Italy were probably the best paid trips, and are now filled by French drivers (probably other EU drivers too).
From what i understood, short-haul are the worst: worst pay, you have to get off your truck and help the stock or factory workers fill your truck if you don't want unbalanced cargo or worse, the hour are not much better than long haul except you don't have bonus day off.
> The whole thing was an artefact of EU rules specific to lorry drivers that allowed them to work here using cheaper (and I think less stringent) qualifications from elsewhere whilst also living elsewhere
No true for local haulage. For long haul, you do have companies who plot the trips to go through let's say Poland so they can take Poland's minimums on pays and qualifications. Not true for all EU long haul though (Uk-France it is quite expensive to cheat)
I understand the backlash, with Brexit vote and beyond.
I don’t like the criticism that UK people receive on choice they made for their society.
> can you account for all your international travels over the past 10 years
Well, absolutely.
> It has now become a long and challenging obstacle race
It has, or is it maybe quite normal?
> But it’s not only the UK — the United States has also made it difficult for founders to immigrate and settle in Silicon Valley. Like the new post-Brexit regime in the UK, it’s expensive, comes with a lot of hassle and restrictions and involves sponsoring and numerous recommendations — usually by VCs who have decided to back the company. How is the British situation any different?
Welcome to the everyday life of 3rd world nationals & yet another great example of people in the "1st world" are so completely disconnected. How dare they be asked to prove they *can enter a country (again, sarcasm).
Sincerely, an amused 3rd worlder living in the 1st world.
I think this really depends on your lifestyle. For the EU generation of people this can be really challenging. When I was asked to provide (just 5 years) this information, I had to attach an extra two sheets of paper to the form, as the space they provided (about a 1/3 of a page IIRC) was absurdly small. And I'm sure that only had air travel (since I found most of my travel dates by search my email for airline bookings) and certainly missed travel with family members who did bookings as well as many, many car trips.
Also no one tells you that 10 years later you're going to need the dates you crossed each border and that you should be keeping this information around.
To me, I really struggle with this one. To me, being an EU citizen is literally above being a citizen of my home country, so yes, I do feel at home anywhere within the EU, honestly and genuienly. So when UK started asking me "why are you here" it feels offensive - what do you mean why am I here? Do I suddenly not belong? And that lack of (or someone questioning it) belonging is really unpleasant feeling.
>>yet another great example of people in the "1st world" are so completely disconnected
I don't think being upset that someone is asking you why you live in your own home is being "disconnected". It's like having the proverbial rug pulled from under you. One day you have certain rights and priviledges, the next day you don't.
But like others have said - just because people complain about these problems, doesn't mean we're not aware of the issues others are having. Immigration from outside of the EU has always been difficult and full of hoops and we do acknowledge that.
Before Schengen, travelling across the border always carried the risk of meeting a grumpy border control agent and being subjected to abusive searches or interrogations. People not letting you past the border because they didn't find the right stamp in your passport and stuff like that.
After Schengen, all that went away and travelling within Europe has become so much nicer.
Of course people complain if you take that away again.
I suppose the rational is:
• Diminish the friction that multi-culturalism and diversity integration can bring.
• Free jobs for the local population.
• Having to share less of lands, resources, and infrastructures.
And I see the point, but it also fails to take in consideration that:
• The UK needs the import/export flow it was used to pre-brexit to keep their current life style. They don't produce much good internally, and they need to export their service. Brexit added huge barriers to that, not just for people.
• The current British population doesn't seem very motivated to take back the jobs they delegated to immigration.
• Even if it were, it can't be instant, since that requires training an entire workforce and sometimes even require permits or certification. Trucks, bus and cabs come to mind. And the inertia will do some damage. The supply chain is already seen glitches, although not as much as I would have expected. They are surprisingly pretty resilient.
• The Northern Ireland situation is a ticking bomb. Yeah, immigrates are not just brown people. People have a short memory though, so I suppose IRA stands for nothing nowadays. They may get a nasty reminder that ignored history is doomed to be repeated.
• Scotland nationalism has been exacerbated since they were pretty anti-brexit. Also, as an immigrant, scots were pretty welcoming, they need people there.
• Big players that needed to stay in Europe are sometimes moving to France or Ireland. So the promised jobs have to take that in consideration.
• The UK has an aging population, with a 0.53% growth rate, and that was when compensated by immigration.
• The UK education system sucks. People think Oxford and Cambridge, but the reality is more Leeds Metropolitan. I've studied there, and it's not going to be easy to find qualified workers only in the island.
• The UK managed to negotiate a very privileged deal inside the UE. It had most of the advantages, and way less of the down sides that other members. This deal is dead now, they have the worst of all worlds. So even if they get some benefits, the cost may be huge.
• France and the UK never really liked each other. The UE brings peace. But now, all bets are off. Also, no more bonding program such as Erasmus to bring future generation together. And good luck to make you BSC valued outside of the UK. And I guarantee the already little patience we had for the retired brits in the South of France that never try to learn proper France will not hold forever now that we are not bros.
• All that in the middle of covid. Not their fault, but damn, that's a terrible timing.
> - the UK needs the import/export flow it was used to pre-brexit to keep their current life style.
That is about goods, which are totally separate to immigration.
> - the current british population doesn't seem very motivation to take back the job they delegated to immigration.
Motivation has nothing to do with it. The employers offering these shitty jobs have gotten used to being able to pay poor wages to cheap imported labour. They need to pay more, and the jobs will be filled. Look at the wage growth of truck drivers as an example.
> - the UK education system sucks.
Disagree here. The UK punches way above its weight in terms of high end education institutions per capita (trailing only the US) The UK also has more STEM grads per capita than any European country.
> That is about goods, which are totally separate to immigration.
Yes, but you need trucks, boats, and loaders for those. A lot of the people dealing with that are immigrants.
> The employers offering these shitty jobs have gotten used to being able to pay poor wages to cheap imported labour.
Working in agriculture as always been low paid back breaking work. There were no "good old time". We are just not used anymore to have a part of our own population is been used as semi-slave and shutting up.
Not saying it's a bad thing, we should strive to make for better working conditions. But those jobs still need to be done, and we don't have android doing them for now.
It could go the Australian way, and make those jobs decently paid, but even there, immigrates still do those jobs! Not to mention their economy is sky rocketing so they can afford it.
> The UK punches way above its weight in terms of high end education institutions per capita (trailing only the US) The UK also has more STEM grads per capita than any European country.
The number are high yes, but the level of graduates is terrible. In fact, I got my diploma despite not handing out my final memoir or reaching the minimal passing grades. I spent a year drunk, and got a paper stating I studied hard and was worthy of my profession.
And damn, most of my friends were even worst than me.
Papers were a joke. Nothing was reproducible, arguments were barely holding together. Not to say my mates in French universities were geniuses, but the difference is glaring.
We need to pay more people to do these jobs, not rely on exploiting people from poorer nations to fill the gaps. I think the evidence suggests this is indeed happening. Wages are rising at their fastest rate on record.
I think your suggestion of applying the Australian model to filling those vacancies is also a good one, but most of the people filling those jobs are tourists on extended holidays, not people looking to build a life in Australia. Working holiday visas require that you must work in service or agriculture, and the will kick you out when your time is up (I'm Australian so I've seen it happen to a number of my friends).
I guess I can't disagree with your personal experiences at University, but I do suspect a lot of it comes down to the institution you attended. I studied at two universities in the UK and found them both academically rigourous.
Agreed, but giving our consumption rate, it's going to be hard to do that and be competitive with a global market. Australia can pull that off because they are swimming in wealth right now, have a lot of land, and also because they have very favorable import rules they can maintain because the country produces a lot of basic goods. I doubt the UK can pull it off, but I'm not an oracle so let's see.
> Wages are rising at their fastest rate on record.
In Australia, yes. Again they have plenty of resources to go by right now. In the UK, I'm not sure how sustainable it would be. But I hope it will. Maybe the UK will prove to be the poster child for a successful economy after closing your borders. I doubt it, usually trades needs flexible borders, but I could be dead wrong, I'm not an economist.
> Working holiday visas require that you must work in service or agriculture, and the will kick you out when your time is up
Yes, but right now you can't even do that in the UK.
> I guess I can't disagree with your personal experiences at University, but I do suspect a lot of it comes down to the institution you attended. I studied at two universities in the UK and found them both academically rigourous.
It's not just universities, though. Just chatting with people of my age kinda scared me. They didn't handle basic geography, couldn't read subtext and were very sensitive to pandering. All in all, they had a very narrow-minded point of view compared to their belgium, german or irish counter parts. Of course, as soon as you reach business London, this changes. But that's true everywhere in the world.
And although I understand arguments in favor of brexit, it's really hard to take the average brexiter seriously. They are the facebook anti-vax of politics, and I suspect their education system didn't help with that.
https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2019/02/how-the-uk-voted-on-br...
I genuinely don't know how much I believe people when they say that, though; sometimes people saying that are unable to provide specific decisions that were made outside the UK (so not for any obvious practical reason or lived example), but also are unable to expand on the more philosophical aspects of the principle itself or discuss how far such local desision making should go. I might expect a genuinely held belief to be able to do at least one of those.
In the interests of full disclosure, I do find that when people say that, I do instantly wonder how true that is; I do find myself instantly suspicious, which I am sure then colours my subsequent conclusions.
- "Brussels" and its decisions have long been vilified in the UK press so may be a reflection of that.
- This may partly be a proxy for a general feeling of disempowerment given that the UK is so highly centralised.
The desire for this is reasonable. There are lots of cases where dumb decisions were taken outside the UK against the will of the local government, many of which led to long-lasting resentment:
1. Most obviously, the total refusal by the EU to let the UK control immigration, which basically crushed all wage growth out of existence for nearly two decades. Also see: Germany's brilliant decision to let a million migrants in (at which point they can freely move elsewhere). Also: inability to prioritize immigrants from other English speaking countries like Australia, Canada, USA.
2. Transcription of vague "human rights" principles into actual law, which led to a lot of notorious high profile cases where the government tried to deport e.g. radical Islamists and the EU courts rejected it, or where criminals ended up basically playing the government by making mendacious arguments under these laws. This was especially nasty because the UK and Poland saw this problem coming and got confirmation in the treaties that EU human rights law wouldn't apply to the UK, in writing, as clearly as possible, and then the ECJ overturned it anyway in a pretty flagrant bit of judicial activism.
3. EU cookie laws. 100% stupid, never supported by the UK government, now being rolled back.
4. Fishing quotas that allocated most UK fish to other countries. Hence why fish is such an electric issue post-leaving.
5. CAP, which is basically a way to force Brits to subsidize French farmers. See also: the extremely high level of EU controlled subsidies and spending that create large amounts of waste, fraud and general weakness in the business sector.
There are a whole lot of others people might bring up, that's just some examples.
Less misinformation in the article than in Vote Leave's campaign.
That's not to say there aren't adverse effects of internationalisation, or to belittle people who suffer from them. But this whole "taking back control" agenda was steeped with British exceptionalism and exclusivity.
Immigration was literally the sticking point of what triggered the whole shitshow. When David Cameron did his EU roadtrip to negotiate a better deal for the UK ("give us what we want or we'll leave"), there were 2 sticking point requests: lower the EU fee, and curb EU immigration. EU said no, Cameron called the talks over, and organised the sorry referendum.
The argument was that there is a larger scope that is also relevant for international policy, but that wasn't even mentioned anymore.
So people were directly and obviously lied to and their argument was misconstrued and people just didn't buy it. If the lie wouldn't have been created, maybe the EU would be larger today.
Perhaps it wasn't a smart move to leave. But the advertising for remaining in the EU was extremely incompetent. To reduce it to xenophobia is still reductive like that.
https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2019/02/how-the-uk-voted-on-br...
Yes, easily. That's some hyperbolic braggadocio. If you're a maniacal globetrotter, sure, I can see it being annoying or maybe even difficult, but "almost impossible"? Get a grip.
Surely, not impossible, but might not be too trivial neither.
But how would I ever be able to account for international trips, where id was sufficient (so no stamp) or didn't need id in the first place, which is mostly the case since 2008?
If you're caught in such a "lie" you risk not only refusal of your visa, but you also risk being banned from the country for years.
It would be a different matter if the question would specifically exclude EU travel. But looking at the UKs behavior towards foreigners in the last ten years I very much doubt it.
This hostility is not something cooked up by me, or felt anecdotally, it's an actual government policy implemented in 2012[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Office_hostile_environmen...