Here goes "British jobs for British workers!"

I try and avoid any mention of race, ethnic origin, immigration and migration because
you bound to put peoples' backs up. But the debate over "British jobs for British workers" raises quite a few issues. To state my own ethnic orign, I am white, born and living in London. I subscribe to the OneWorldWeek mantra, 5.7bn people but one humanity.

When it comes to the crunch HM Government is only responsible for its own citizens. If all the UK jobs are being taken by foreigners, then of course the government will impose restrictions on entry even if they are EU citizens. I think the Irish government was recently close to imposing restrictions on
Eastern Europeans.

This leads to the possibility that the current social composition of the United Kingdom is not helping us to cope with the economic downturn. If more indigenous workers are losing their jobs than foreign workers this will cause resentment.
Until recently we have had a pretty good run economically and despite this certain groups of foreign people are already unpopular with the
local population.

There is the mantra that immigration helps the economy grow but HM government carefully avoids doing studies on such a contentious area. MigrationWatch and the Economist have done studies, which point to a negligible contribution after the
inclusion of social costs. There have been studies about the Mexican wave in the United States but the scale of remittances makes it difficult to assess the level of economic contribution.

Foreign workers bring drive and enthusiasm. They keep the NHS afloat. We live in a global world and benefit from the trade links they bring. I don't think we could survive without Indian restaurants. Hard-working Eastern Europeans keep farms working throughout the United Kingdom. It is a very competitive world out there and companies, football clubs and businesses have long moved to getting the best people in. Glaxo appointed a Frenchman to live in the United States to manage a flagship UK business. It possibly did not work out in this case but we still need foreign talent to compete.

In conclusion, I believe in 5.7bn people and one humanity. I hope I have'nt annoyed my readers too much. We need a resumption of economic growth to mask/hide/resolve the tensions in the population. The benefits of immigration are probably overplayed (we are having a major economic downturn despite our high level of immigration?).

www.searchaccountant.co.uk
PS. Nobody is afraid of Gordon Brown anymore. The head of the statistics body ONS has just released some damaging statistics for HM Government on the number of foreign workers in the UK. Apparently, Labour MP Keith Vaz, who had some colourful finances, was fulminating against the release of these
statistics.