I am all for diversity but........

DaveS2 said:
Just another case of 'soft touch' Britain, being exploited.

I'll stop there, as I can feel the anger starting to 'kick in'.

Dave
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Come here, contribute to the economy, get the benefits of doing so. Not sure how paying benefits to someone paying uk taxes is being a soft touch?
 
boyfalldown said:
Come here, contribute to the economy, get the benefits of doing so. Not sure how paying benefits to someone paying uk taxes is being a soft touch?
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I thought the issue was one of paying Child Benefit, for children not resident in the UK, was it not?.

Dave
 
DaveS2 said:
I thought the issue was one of paying Child Benefit, for children not resident in the UK, was it not?.

Dave
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But the parent (I assume the other is looking after the child) is paying UK tax and NI..seeing as the they are happy to come and contribute to the economy then why does it make people so angry they take out as well as put in ?
 
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boyfalldown said:
But the parent (I assume the other is looking after the child) is paying UK tax and NI..seeing as the they are happy to come and contribute to the economy then why does it make people so angry they take out as well as put in from it as well?
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I feel that child benefit should only be paid out if the family are in the UK.....but more to the point why is the UK only one of four euro countries that provide this service......? Why not all euro countries?
 
archangel said:
I feel that child benefit should only be paid out if the family are in the UK.....but more to the point why is the UK only one of four euro countries that provide this service......? Why not all euro countries?
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The first bit is where we differ. If someone wants to come and work in the UK they have every responsibility to contribute to that society, but they also have every right to the privileges as well. All euro countries do provide that service, as do many others we have an agreement with. The UK pays CB at one of the higher rates in the EEA though. One of the top four, which I suspect is where the confusion comes from
 
archangel said:
more to the point why is the UK only one of four euro countries that provide this service......? Why not all euro countries?
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As I said earlier, 'soft touch' Britain, and the rest of the world know it.

Mind you, I guess that having worked for 45 years, and apart from child benefit for my two children, have never claimed a penny benefits, and of course am still paying tax on my pension, why should I feel unhappy about foreign workers claiming UK benefits for their children back home. Silly me :rolleyes:

Dave
 
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archangel said:
I feel that child benefit should only be paid out if the family are in the UK.....but more to the point why is the UK only one of four euro countries that provide this service......? Why not all euro countries?
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You are Nigel Farage and I claim my five pounds :)
 
boyfalldown said:
The first bit is where we differ. If someone wants to come and work in the UK they have every responsibility to contribute to that society, but they also have every right to the privileges as well. All euro countries do provide that service, as do many others we have an agreement with. The UK pays CB at one of the higher rates in the EEA though. One of the top four, which I suspect is where the confusion comes from
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I cannot claim child benefit in Romania or Estonia among other countries for my kids in Britain even if I do work and pay local taxes......
 
boyfalldown said:
But the parent (I assume the other is looking after the child) is paying UK tax and NI..seeing as the they are happy to come and contribute to the economy then why does it make people so angry they take out as well as put in ?
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As a UK Tax and NI payer, my contributions to the economy and the child benefit received for my kids residing in the UK, gets spent in the UK so the money goes towards our economy. If someone from another country is working here and claiming child benefit for children residing in another country, then it's that country that gets the "economy boost" not ours.
 
These claimants - how much do they contribute to the UK exchequer in tax? How many of them are higher-rate taxpayers doing specialist work? How much do they contribute in their NI payments? (The NHS would lose another 26% of its doctors, and 11% of all staff, if immigrants were unable to work for the NHS). Many of these people will have children and, quite rightly, be entitled to child benefit.
 
nilagin said:
As a UK Tax and NI payer, my contributions to the economy and the child benefit received for my kids residing in the UK, gets spent in the UK so the money goes towards our economy. If someone from another country is working here and claiming child benefit for children residing in another country, then it's that country that gets the "economy boost" not ours.
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So that's a double whammy for the migrants country of origin then. Not only does the migrant no longer get the tax from that worker they also lose again by having to pay benefits for them as well. If £55m makes an "economic boost" then heaven help the reciepents
 
archangel said:
You must continue to pay national insurance to the UK to get continued child benefit......
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Which is what I've said all along. However that was simply disproving your misplaced assertion that this doesn't work the other way
 
That's not clarification. That's a remarkably one sided article that makes little or no mention of the conditions that must be met for child benifit to be paid. How much tax and ni do those migrants generate?
 
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boyfalldown said:
So that's a double whammy for the migrants country of origin then. Not only does the migrant no longer get the tax from that worker they also lose again by having to pay benefits for them as well. If £55m makes an "economic boost" then heaven help the reciepents
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But it's the UK paying the benefits, not the migrants home country. The home country are on to a winner, each person that comes here to work is one less unemployed they have to worry about.
 
archangel said:
Okay dokey.... clarification.....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...benefit-paid-to-children-living-overseas.html


Better said then I have may have done.....

No matter which way you look at it it is still a lot of money leaving this country.....
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Lots of money leaves the country every day. This is a pointless datum unless you can quantify it. How much to the parents of these children contribute? Unless we know that, it's impossible to say whether this (claimed) sum represents a good investment.

A more balance article, that has been evidenced and quotes data that can be checked at its primary source below. Those are important points, conveniently ignored by irresponsible newspapers wishing to make a political point.

Precis: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24813467

Study: http://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/CDP_22_13.pdf
 
nilagin said:
But it's the UK paying the benefits, not the migrants home country. The home country are on to a winner, each person that comes here to work is one less unemployed they have to worry about.
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That's a very big assumption. Would they be unemployed in their home country? In many or most cases I doubt it. So they've lost that persons tax provision.
 
boyfalldown said:
That's a very big assumption. Would they be unemployed in their home country? In many or most cases I doubt it. So they've lost that persons tax provision.
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The fact they are working over here is more likely to leave a position open for someone in their home country, thus reducing unemployment.
 
nilagin said:
The fact they are working over here is more likely to leave a position open for someone in their home country, thus reducing unemployment.
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I think you're making assumptions that can't be supported and I can't agree with. It assumes that all migrants are unskilled and easily replaced which isn't true. I really would like to see (& I doubt it exists) a neutral cost/benefit analysis of our eu membership, rather then, what seems, petty rhetoric on the papers part.

So that said I'm going to respectfully leave it there.
 
boyfalldown said:
I think you're making assumptions that can't be supported and I can't agree with. It assumes that all migrants are unskilled and easily replaced which isn't true. I really would like to see (& I doubt it exists) a neutral cost/benefit analysis of our eu membership, rather then, what seems, petty rhetoric on the papers part.

So that said I'm going to respectfully leave it there.
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No one has said the immigrants are unskilled though, that is your assumption. Regardless of their skills base they are likely to have learnt their trade in their home country so jobs must exist there. If they are not filling those jobs in their own country, someone else is and likely to be from that country too. Thus unemployment will be lower.
 
nilagin said:
No one has said the immigrants are unskilled though, that is your assumption. Regardless of their skills base they are likely to have learnt their trade in their home country so jobs must exist there. If they are not filling those jobs in their own country, someone else is and likely to be from that country too. Thus unemployment will be lower.
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I've not assumed anything, but if the immigrant was say a doctor, then those skills can't be replaced as easily as you say. Anyway way ot now
 
boyfalldown said:
I've not assumed anything, but if the immigrant was say a doctor, then those skills can't be replaced as easily as you say. Anyway way ot now
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You must have done, no-one else has made the assumption by mentioning it. You are also assuming a doctor can't be replaced easily. Either way other countries economies are getting a share of the millions of pounds of child benefit which isn't feeding back into our economy.
 
...and 2,000,000 Britons are working in EU countries, and many more millions outside the EU, which balances things up a bit. More have retired to other countries, and are benefiting from reciprocal medical care, or simply using the facilities on offer. We live in a time when barriers, thankfully, are being lowered and people are less likely to have to live behind arbitrarily drawn boundaries. Today, people can go pretty much where they like. Sadly, some people want to stop evolution and take us back in time to when little tribes huddled together, living in fear of their neighbours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_diaspora
 
If an immigrant worker has a skill that this country needs, then they should be welcome here, but not at the expense of a UK citizen with the same skill, who could fill that position.

My grandson was taken on as an apprentice with a local company, and was paid two pounds something an hour, on what was to be two year apprenticeship. Six months into the apprenticeship, the company decided that they no longer support the apprentice scheme, and the apprenticeships were terminated. They each left with a good reference. However, my grandson has been unable to secure employment since, despite having a good record and CV.

My son works as an engineering supervisor at a local company, that employs some 300 production-line workers, being a mix of semi-skilled and un-skilled workers. 95% of this workforce are Eastern European migrant workers. The company actively recruits from Eastern Europe.

We have a significant level of youth unemployment in this area, and yet in this one workplace alone, of the 300 strong workforce, 285 of these positions could have been filled with local labour, instead of migrant labour. We are talking about un-skilled and semi-skilled positions here, not specialist skills that might be in short supply.

So are migrant workers from Eastern Europe taking jobs that would otherwise be filled by an unemployed UK worker, well in this particular case, the answer is a resounding YES!!.

My son tells me that a significant number of these migrant workers have a family back home, and so it is highly likely, going back to the the original subject of this 'thread', they will be claiming Child Benefit from the UK benefit system, and sending it home. You can't blame them for doing this, as none of us would not "look a gift horse in the mouth".

Dave
 
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nilagin said:
You must have done, no-one else has made the assumption by mentioning it. You are also assuming a doctor can't be replaced easily. Either way other countries economies are getting a share of the millions of pounds of child benefit which isn't feeding back into our economy.
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No but you've implied it. Maybe you could explain how that sort if skilled role (degree + several years training) is replaced as easily as you make out.


The millions you talk about is what % of our total benefit bill? It's a tiny amount in the scale of things
 
Isn't it simply a case of that you can't dictate what people do with their entitlements. If they want to take it out of the country great, if they want to spend it on booze/fags/smack great, if they want to use it to support their child great....I'm not a fan of Child Benefit at all, however under the law you can't have one rule for citizens and another for residents.....Don't see how this is any different to British citizens having their children living abroad....
 
DaveS2 said:
If an immigrant worker has a skill that this country needs, then they should be welcome here, but not at the expense of a UK citizen with the same skill, who could fill that position.
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What about British people who live outside of Britain? Should they be banned from moving away if they have a valuable skill?

The number of non Brits living here isn't much different to the number of Brits living abroad.


Steve.
 
You can look at it what ever way you like Steve, but like it or not, migrant workers from the EU, are working here in East Anglia, while we have a significant number of unemployed UK young people.

Whether this is happening in other parts of the UK, I wouldn't know, but its certainly happening here

I'm not blaming the migrant worker, but the companies that actively recruit them from Eastern Europe, perhaps because they will work for lower pay, I don't know

As my son tells me, they are hard working people, but never the less, each one in a job here, is one less job placement for a British worker.

Nowhere have I said that a skilled worker should be banned from moving away, it is you that said that. What I did say was that a UK citizen, with the same skill, should be given preference for a UK job, over a migrant worker.

As for Brits going abroad, and taking a job that could filled by an equally suitable worker from that country, then that's the same situation in reverse to what is happening here, and equally wrong.

Of course there are jobs that the British worker is not prepared to do, such as planting and harvesting vegetables in all weathers, and that industry could not function here in East Anglia without migrant workers from Eastern Europe.

However, that doesn't alter the fact that where my son works, there are almost 300 positions filled by migrant workers, that could have been filled by unemployed UK citizens in this area.

We are not talking about those they don't want to work, and are happy to live on state benefits, but people that want to work, but can't secure employment because there aren't enough jobs available, or because of age discrimination.

This one one of the issues that is responsible for the surge in UKIP's popularity. God help us is they ever got into government, but if the main parties don't do more than pay 'lip service' to the concerns of the British people, it might just happen.

Dave
 
@DaveS2 so the real question, to me, would be why? Why are employers picking foreign labour over locally available labour force? Sure it can't be just lower wages as there is a bar under which it would become illegal to do that. And if that is the case we have a whole different discussion.

I don't know the answer, but has your son approached those companies and asked them why he isn't deemed good enough and how he could make himself more of interest to companies such as themselves.
 
They'll work longer hours, for less money.
IMO many of our own unemployed see semi or unskilled jobs as "beneath them".
 
DaveS2 said:
You can look at it what ever way you like Steve, but like it or not, migrant workers from the EU, are working here in East Anglia, while we have a significant number of unemployed UK young people.
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So do we in Wiltshire, a huge Polish community, who are hard working, reliable and have a better work ethic than those who refuse to do such work. The ones I directly know are involved in agriculture, where the young aren't interested in doing the hard manual labour. We also have a polish cleaner, who is excellent after having three British cleaners who were shoddy. Another example is the 3 families who work/run the local car wash. They've set up the business, employ 3 families there so it's always busy and they do a great job, inside and out for £12.

Sorry the jobs are out there, but the theres a lot of the UK youth today expect everything handed to them on a plate.
 
Byker28i said:
How do you feel then about British people living abroad yet still claiming pensions from the UK govt? That's money leaving for abroad to be spent overseas?
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This is not about anyone British or any other nationality who has paid their taxes etc and are reaping the benefits of a pension whilst retiring to another country.....this is about an amount of British tax payer money that is being siphoned from this country to a family in another......I have no problem with other Europeans coming to this country and working....I employ 3 Europeans from various countries on a casual basis.they are hard working and the do a good job better. This thread is not about immigration which I welcome with open arms as long as the individual has a job and can support their family without claiming child benefit and shipping it to a family that resides in another country.....
 
Byker28i said:
So do we in Wiltshire, a huge Polish community, who are hard working, reliable and have a better work ethic than those who refuse to do such work.
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We need more people like that, not fewer - regardless of where they come from.

No one here is pure, 100% British. People have moved around the planet since people have existed so everyone is descended from immigrants somewhere down their family tree.

My view is that we all live on planet Earth. We shouldn't have any artificial boundaries (or countries as they're called).


Steve.
 
archangel said:
This is not about anyone British or any other nationality who has paid their taxes etc and are reaping the benefits of a pension whilst retiring to another country.....this is about an amount of British tax payer money that is being siphoned from this country to a family in another......I have no problem with other Europeans coming to this country and working....I employ 3 Europeans from various countries on a casual basis.they are hard working and the do a good job better. This thread is not about immigration which I welcome with open arms as long as the individual has a job and can support their family without claiming child benefit and shipping it to a family that resides in another country.....
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Why not? It's money leaving the country, into another that isn't being spent within our country. Same thing really. It's still money being 'earnt' through the rules that currently apply, leaving the country to be spent elsewhere, i.e not coming back into the local economy. It's exactly the same.
 
I could be wrong of course, but I suspect all of those here supporting the influx of migrant workers, while a significant number of UK citizens remain unemployed, are in full-time employment. Your 'rose tinted' glasses might take on a whole new shade if you were one of the unemployed.
As the subject of agricultural work and migrant workers has been again raised, I will re-iterate what I said earlier, and that is here in East Anglia the vegetable growing sector of agriculture, could not function without migrant workers from Eastern Europe. The reason being that the UK workers don't want to do this back-braking work, for the 'minimum wage' or less.

JP said "I don't know the answer, but has your son approached those companies and asked them why he isn't deemed good enough and how he could make himself more of interest to companies such as themselves.". It is my grandson that is unemployed, having been made redundant from an apprenticeship scheme, with a company that decided to discontinue the scheme, making all of the apprentices redundant.

My Son works for the company (American owned) that I referenced earlier, as an engineering supervisor. Here the production staff are in excess of 95% Eastern European migrant workers. The company does not offer these jobs to the local job market, but recruits directly from Eastern Europe. No problem with these people, as they are apparently hard working and reliable. However, so would be a lot of the local unemployed be, if they were given the chance to work. Not all UK workers, young or old, are in the 'don't want to work, I'm happy to live on State Benefits group, as some posts here imply.

Yes, if I was to move abroad, my state pension would go with me, albeit it would no longer qualify for indexed linked increments. However, I paid NI for 45 years, and other than child allowance for my two children, have never claimed a penny in benefits, so having seen programs like 'Benefit Street', and others showing the blatant abuse of our benefits system, my conscience would be clear.

As for being British, I can only trace my English ancestry back to the 1500's, so further back than that, it could be Viking, Norman French, or even Roman, albeit my surname is of Anglo Saxon origin. So, given that I can go back a little over 600 years, I think I am well qualified to class myself as ethnic English, or as I prefer, British, and one that has paid into the 'system' all of his 45 year working like, and is still doing so (income tax) in retirement.

Dave
 
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