Although the EU is expanding eastwards, clutching more of the nations of Eastern Europe to its regulating breast on May 1st, only Britain and Ireland will actually be welcoming the people of those countries as residents.
Britain and Ireland may soon be the only two states willing to open their doors entirely to the 73 million people joining the European Union in May. Countries such as Sweden, Holland, and Denmark, which initially pledged to let migrants from the 10 new states work freely in their countries from day one have changed their minds. They fear an influx will drive down wages and overload their welfare systems. Per capita incomes in the ex-Communist countries are just 40 per cent of EU levels.
And yet even officials at the benighted EU admit…
Privately, EU diplomats say the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and others are ideal guest workers. Well-educated, they bring fresh blood and dynamism to an ageing Europe. If they stay, it is usually because they inter-marry. Their “migration profile” is starkly different from Muslim groups, who studies suggest are resistant to assimilation and who prohibit their children marrying into the host society.
On the purely non-scientific observational evidence of my own eyes, there do seem to be rather a lot of happy looking English blokes wandering around London with eye-widening tall blondes from east of the Oder-Neisse line, so that seems about right… which makes me wonder why the Netherlands is not welcoming the Eastern Europeans with open arms!
Well if the rest of western Europe cannot see past the ‘waves of gypsies’ scare stories and see the huge benefits of well educated, easy to assimilate Slovaks, Czechs and Poles, then their loss will be Britain and Ireland’s gain when the best and brightest (amongst other things) decamp from the east and move en-mass to London and Dublin. Excellent!
Vitajte v Londyne!
Excuse the source, but this BBC story doesn’t really tie up with your text.
God bless our bureaucrats for their forward thinking. I’m on the next flight to Dublin.
Not really… if all they are doing is grimacing over ‘benefit’ issues, rather than the Continental concerns about ‘wage competition’, then who cares? That said, I can see a rather nice upside if massive pressure developed on the ‘benefit’ system too… if the system becomes unsupportable that would also be a result I could live with in the long run. Anything that weakens the theft based ‘welfare’ state is fine by me
Agreed, and I think it likely that we’ll see an influx of immigration, followed by some test cases against this legislation by ‘human rights’ lawyers, followed by a corresponding uptick in the monolithic benefits system. But them I’m a pessimist…
Wage competition is fine, but there’s no way the government can discriminate against citizens from one part of the EU legally when it comes to benefits. I guess your upside may come in time, but we’re in for a painful ride.
Regards
Hey, if you Brits don’t want the Ossis, we’ll take them, over here in the U.S.A.
We always have.
And we’re always open to a few extra tall blondes, although the ladies in Mississippi and Texas might gripe about the competition.
All sorts of consequences: at the moment we have lots of young immigrant East Europeans who have student visas so they can work “part-time” while “studying” for a often bogus business school or English language school.
But later this year they won’t need to pretend, so the types of work available to them will increase massively.
The big question is: will the free at the point of delivery National Health Service attract millions of elderly immigrants?
If so that is the end of the NHS and the state welfare system as we know it. Hurrah!
Can I claim some sort of samizdata “theme person of the day” award, please?
My basis for this claim:
(1) I am a software developer and have spent a lot of time in the last couple of years thinking about the impact my mostly intelligent, friendly and hard-working Indian colleagues will have on my profession.
(2) I plan to be wandering around London next week with a not particularly tall but nonetheless eye-widening redhead from east of the Volga, looking happy. (Actually, if all goes to plan we will mainly be looking happy because of leaving the kid with my folks and having a day out on our own for the first time in nine months)
If only Britain and Ireland keep their doors open to us, that’s all I need. And I don’t give a rat’s ass if Blair decides to “reconsider” allowing Ossies to consume welfare benefits. Actually, he ought to do just that, then reduce income taxes accordingly 🙂
I’m coming!
The experience of Germany, still struggling from the effects of unification, obviously doesn’t impinge on your considerations of opening the ‘doors’, even further.
The West Germans found the East German workers to be largely poorly trained and with little work ethic.
What makes you think that other ‘previously’ communist countries will be any different?, perhaps your hormones are clouding your judgement, I just hope that you take a good look at ‘Mama’, before you get too serious about those tall, blonde, dolly birds.
From the point-of-view of the EU, of course they say that the new immigrants are ideal ‘guest workers’, (what a twisted euphemism that is!), they aren’t Muslim or coloured, whether they would return ‘home’ after a few years here, is a very moot point. I know a large Polish community in West London, that has been there since WWII, which was originally a ‘temporary’ arrangement.
Seriously, do you really think it a good thing to crowd even more people into such a small space, where housing is at a premium and of inferior quality?, and where all of our services are strained to the limit. I cannot believe that you would wish to inflict further stress and discomfort on the citizenry, even in the pursuit of your personal libertarian nirvana.
The advantages, if any, and of dubious value to the indivudual, would be very long term, and would certainly be of no value to the present UK population.
Even the most strict interpretation of Libertarian dogma, acknowleges that the State should have a protective role, which would seem to include protection from both peaceful (economic) and forceful invasion. I feel that you are interpreting libertarion theory to suit your personal purpose, or circumstance.
The present immigration problems will take decades to resolve, without piling on further pressure. Do you not feel that more time should be allowed for assimilation of the current influx? or do you not accept that non-assimilation is a problem?
You really must dislike your fellow countrymen, to wish the nightmare of further immigration on them.
With the pressure on wages and jobs, it is surprising that the Trade Unions have not made more fuss.
The ‘strictest’ interpretation is anarcho-libertarianism… which acknowlages no such thing because it they envisage a stateless society.
Germany reunified did not require high initiative individuals to uproot themselves and go in search of their best interests so your analogue is deeply flawed…there is no self-selection process.
Oh please. Actually I could not care less about libertarianism, I just say it the way I see it. Our services strained to the limit? Not really, just the usual transport problems of all big cities and as for other services, those are strained because of decades of idiotic statist policies, not the influx of new productive people. Let the NHS go bust, it wasw a monstrous idea to start with. Yes I am happy to see London grow and I wish I had purchased some property speculatively in direction of Tilbury. Just let the free market build more houses, it is not like Southern England is running out of land like Singapore.
I think London is a great place and it will become even greater if we get a big influx of Eastern Europeans… there is not going to be an assimilation problem. The Polish community assimulated just fine (I know a lot of Poles in London and so know of what I speak).
I was referring to libertarianism, not some impracticable, weirdo offshoot, which owes more to anarchy than to the libertarian idea, two totally incompatible philosophies.
Your assertation that there was no movement from East to West upon unification, is fallacious. The influx to the West has, and still does, cause much argument, with East Germans still regarded as inferior foreigners.
Your idea of a self-selection process amounts to no more than a desire for people to move to where the grass is greener, and where they would not have to work to create the type of community that they so obviously envy. They are looking for an easy ride…if all these emigres were so smart and motivated surely they would contribute to creating their own piece of heaven in their own countries, instead of jumping on someone else’s bandwagon.
Nice to see that your idea of ‘good’ expansion is directly related to the amount of profit involved, and that you are honest enough to admit it. I would respectfully suggest that your perspective of London, from the ‘nice’ area in which you live, is more akin to the ‘tourist’ experience, than to the resident reality. I think that you would be nearer the mark if you compared London to Los Angeles, New York or Sao Paolo, all places where there is plenty of surrouding space, but never-the-less, very overcrowded. I have never found quantity to equate with quality, and I think this applies doubly to cities. One of the nicer cities is Paris, hardly a vast metropolis.
So you do not see assimilation as a problem, that the Polish community has taken the best part of half a century to be fully assimilated doesn’t seem excessive to you, bears out my point that immigration will bear little worthwhile positive results before the end of this century,, and in the meanwhile will cause no end of disruption and mayhem.
I am not averse to immigration, but I do think that your idea of accepting the best and brightest should rely on a little more than willingness to move home a thousand miles to the west. If these wonderful entrepreneurs are as good as you suggest, then some form of financial qualification would not be too hard for them to provide.
As you say, you ‘call it as you see it’, – good for you, – but that does seem to be a rather narrow perspective, and does not make your ideas automatically correct.
Thank you for your reply.
Quite a lot of libertarians are self-described anarchists. You are simply incorrect to see the anarchist strain as not being libertarian. I am not one myself (I am a minarchist and am rather indifferent to the libertarian label, though I suppose it serves a purpose) but I do see the true anarchos as ‘fellow travellers’.
I would like to see (and probably will see) a London of 20 million people eventually. I am all for paving over Kent all the way to Dover. The fact I live in Chelsea does not mean I have no experience of the rest of the city, however comfortingly you might like to think that makes my views easy to dismiss. I am very much involved in the economy.
Yes, it is indeed all about profit for me. The fact that driver/energetic/dynamist personalities from across Europe see the UK in general and London in particular as a land of opportunity mean more profit for me… and for them too. I have no problem with that.
I have been pretty familiar with London’s Polish community since I was a child (though I am of Anglo-Celt-Norman origins myself) and if you think it has taken 50 years for the Polish to assimilate in London, you do not know what you are talking about, I mean you really are talking through your hat… unless you have a very different idea what ‘assimilate’ actually means, which is always possible I suppose.
Eastern European rarely have any more difficulty supporting themselves than locals (less difficulty if anything), do not congregate into multi-generational ‘ghettos’ in any meaningful sense of the term, find it easy to have relationships with the local population, invariably learn English, are easy to employ and educate and often set up their own businesses (the first generation are self-selecting high initiative people). There is no problem!!!
If you say so Perry – if you say so!