Single market. Despite some bigots who don't want Polish people existing near them, having free movement of people, goods, capital and all the rest of it is really good for the participant economies.
Can you imagine if US citizens had to get a visa to move from New York to California?
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.
>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.
> 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?
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.
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.
>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.
Switzerland has had trade and free movement agreements with the EU for a while now. This argument alone doesn't justify a full membership IMO. Being a member of the economical zone does just that.
Yes but Switzerlan got a free trade agreement exactly BECAUSE they accepted free movement agreement too. Which is exactly what brexiters don't want - they want free trade, but no free movement. They're not going to get it.
This is the biggest miscalculation of Cameron's career, letting the population of non-economists vote on our future like this. He'll be gone within the week.
Every other country in the EEA has free movement of people as a condition. So we'll just have to have the same rules but not get a voice in making them. We've just cut off our nose to spite our face.
I wouldn't be so sure. The UK has a huge trade deficit with the EU, which means that import taxes on goods mostly hurts the EU, not the other way round.
Watch that erode over the next two years as those businesses who can easily move does so.
E.g. consider car manufacturers. Substantial interests in the EU would love to have tariffs on imports of cars from the UK, and the manufacturers here generally are here to serve the EU market more than the UK and have little reason to remain here if they can shift manufacturing capacity elsewhere.
A lot of UK exports are "on behalf" of companies headquartered elsewhere that have used the UK as a beachhead into the EU. If the UK is outside, suddenly the benefit is drastically reduced for them.
hmm I'm struggling with this argument. So you have a trade deficit now - if UK companies (who presumably now contribute mostly to exports, not imports) move away, the trace deficit becomes larger, not smaller. Of course at some point this is really bad news for UK economy if it happens on a large scale, but it doesn't "erode the trade deficit". Maybe I understood you wrong.
Car manufacturers. You mainly mean Ford UK I assume (that's the only one I know of with a high volume)? Yes, I can see it hurting them. What I don't see is how this would be in the interest of the EU. Germany would be very much against it. France and Italy I'm not sure. The others (mostly non manufacturing countries without high stakes in the game) would most likely not want to have high taxes on one of the favourite brands.
> A lot of UK exports are "on behalf" of companies headquartered elsewhere that have used the UK as a beachhead into the EU.
Yes, I could imagine that, say for pharmaceutical companies, just not so much for the car market.
> those businesses who can easily move does so.
hmm I'm struggling with this argument. So you have a trade deficit now - if UK companies (who presumably now contribute mostly to exports, not imports) move away, the trace deficit becomes larger, not smaller.
You're right of course. I blame lack of sleep - I was thinking the balance was the other way. I'll blame lack of sleep.
> You mainly mean Ford UK I assume (that's the only one I know of with a high volume)?
I don't know about volume. But e.g. Nissan employs 6700 people in Sunderland. The purpose of the plant is mainly to serve the EU market. Any kind of tariff on imports from the UK would make it attractive for them to move it elsewhere.
> What I don't see is how this would be in the interest of the EU. Germany would be very much against it.
It would be in the interest of many EU countries to make it attractive for those companies to move their plants to a country that will remain in the EU.
> The others (mostly non manufacturing countries without high stakes in the game) would most likely not want to have high taxes on one of the favourite brands.
It takes very little to block an agreement with the UK they don't like. And it wouldn't take long to see the main relieved by making some of those companies move manufacturing to EU countries.
Yes but compared to the size of their economies - let's keep it simple by looking at the GDP - the UK would be hurt disproportionately more. The UK GDP is ~$2.5 trillion, the EU GDP (sans UK) is ~12 trillion.
>>Can you imagine if US citizens had to get a visa to move from New York to California?
That's categorically different. The US is united under one national identity, so the ties between states are much stronger. Whereas the EU consists of many different countries and cultures, and each one has a long history of nationalism and rivalry with neighbors.
You've been downvoted but as European I can say that the part of your comment about Europe is true and that's why we should be careful about taking the way of nationalism again. With the EU we fixed the major problem (wars), anything else is less important and can be fixed with some good will. Not that having to go through borders and possibly multiple currencies and tariffs every time we move and buy won't be a major pain in the ass, still a less major problem than others.
A lot of the same principles at play though. Single currency. No visas. Same norms and industry standards to make "exporting" from e.g. California to Texas painless. Etc.
US: Same language, same culture, directly voted government and Senate that answers to the people. A standard democracy on both state and federal levels.
EU: A mix of countries that don't share the language or the culture. Legislative body is not voted (Comission: bureaucrats in the literal sense of the word). The little bit of directly-voted part, European Parliament, has only limited power and is out of sight of the voters. There's no oversight, most people don't even have a chance to know what's cooking until it's the law and is too late to do anything about it.
US-like federation of EU is not possibly for the lack of common language alone. Without it, there's no oversight. Without oversight, you get the current EU.
> Same language, same culture, directly voted government and Senate that answers to the people. A standard democracy on both state and federal levels.
All of which took about two hundred years to achieve. The starting point was a mix of languages, to the point it was not clear that English would become so dominant as it has become (and it's not clear it will remain so) and the majority of the adult population could not vote at all.
The EU is at the point of trying to "work around" the type of problems the US had under the Articles of Confederation. A lot of the cumbersome messy structure of the EU basically comes down to not wanting to make those mistakes (leading e.g. Congress to vote for measures only for states to just ignore them and refuse to fund stuff they were against, with Congress having no means of enforcing decisions). It took a lot of time and problems before the US went fully federal.
> US-like federation of EU is not possibly for the lack of common language alone.
By that argument, the existence of the US is an impossibility. The US did not have a common language when it was first created. There are still millions of Americans that speak little English, though the proportion is much greater now tha it used to be.
But the UK wants to keep the free market. And I doubt european countries will be ready to hurt their own exports by turning the UK down (most european countries really cannot afford that).
Ya I agree that that's a good thing. It just doesn't seem to me that you need such a powerful unelected institution overseeing it. Just make an agreement that people and goods can move freely.
Can you imagine if US citizens had to get a visa to move from New York to California?