Over recent years many people have tried to raise their concerns about mass immigration, not immigration (this country has always had a history of acccepting immigrants and asylum seekers). Unfortunately we have had the situation were anyone who has wanted to talk about immigration, has been shouted down as racist. In the recent election we had the Tories and Labour clamouring over themselves to talk about how tough they were going to be, but in reality not really doing anything and not having any coherent policy. The simple truth is this, and forgive me if I am repeating myself, there is nothing any party can do about immigration as long as we are part of the EU, if the whole population of Poland wanted to move to this country tomorrow there is nothing we could do about it. That is the problem.
In the last 10 years we have seen our population grow by about 5 million, since 2005 we have seen about 1.2 million Poles settle in this country, and many other Eastern Europeans settle as well. The Government under David Cameron is now talking about a cap on immigration from outside of the EU, David Cameron is maybe thinking this will make him sound tough on immigration, unfortunately he is not tough on this issue. As I have stated above there is nothing he can do about the issue of immigration; last year about 24,000 immigrants arrived on our shores from outside of the EU, about 163,000 arrived from inside the EU, I think this situation cannot continue. Our population is expected to hit 70 million by 2029, that is a city the size of Bristol every year for the next 19 years. England would take 90 per cent of this growth. I want to look at a few arguments that have been put to me over the years to try and persuade me that my opinion is wrong, and I want to counter those arguments.
1. Immigration is good for this country and our economy, as the majority of those people immigrating to the UK are doing the jobs people don't want to do.
The situation at the moment is this; there are currently 2.5 million people unemployed in the country, a percentage of these people don't want to work but a large percentage of them would love a job, so why on earth are we letting anymore people into the country, when we don't have enough work for those here already? There are a group of people in this country who have traditionally done work which requires no skills and no qualifications, it is what we would term as menial work. Many of those people are never likely to get any other job because they are not able to do it, for them mass immigration has had a huge impact upon them. Let me illustrate what I am saying, this is a story from my own experience:
In 1996 I decided to move to Diss because I had met Val and wanted to live in Norfolk rather than Grays, so I decided to look for a job. I was 25 and my experience up until that point was in unskilled labouring work, at the time I was working as a gravedigger and I had no qualifications to speak of. I started to look, but I was very limited to what I could do, I applied for many jobs that needed qualifications and experience but unfortunately because of my lack of both I didn't get anywhere. I then started to set my sights lower, I applied for a job in a chicken factory, I got an interview and went along and was chatting to the manager; he told me that 80% of his employees were of subnormal intelligence and could not get a job anywhere else. After talking to him for a while he said he wouldn't offer me the job because he thought I wouldn't last very long. To cut a long story short I then applied to work on a pig farm as a pig man and got the job.
My point is this, let's move forward 14 years and put yourself in the position of those people who, as the manager of that chicken factory said where of subnormal intelligence. Where on earth would you get a job? Most of those jobs are being done by Eastern Europeans, for the minimum wage, many of those people will never work, not because they don't want to but because there aren't the jobs out there. I look at myself and if I was 25 now with the same experience and qualifications as I had then, I wouldn't get a job. We have many young people who have no hope of ever getting a job.
The Government have announced that councils have to make 25 per cent cuts, it is very unlikely councils will cut by this amount but even so, they will have to cut some services and this means even less jobs.
Currently there are about 8 million people who are not working, many unemployed but many are on incapacity benefits. The Government is going to review incapacity benefits, and try to make it more difficult for people to claim, this will mean more people coming onto the jobs market.
The Government are raising the retirement age, this will mean we will have many more people who need work.
There are currently many people in their 50's who are quite capable of working and would love a job whatever that is, but because of their age many employers will not take them on and will employ someone younger.
If you total all these people up, we are talking many millions, why on earth are we letting more people into this country to do the work that I am sure many of these people would love to do. Surely the British Government should be looking after the rights of British people before those from outside of the UK. The Government have brought in targets for employing ethnic minorities and under representative groups, surely it is about time they brought in targets for employing British people.
2. Immigration has been good for the economy.
We are told that immigrants who come to this country work hard, pay taxes and thus contribute to the economy and wealth of this nation. I am not going to dispute that the majority of people who come to our country work hard, but the benefits to our economy are minimal. We have always had people who have come to this country and worked hard on a seasonal basis, they would come in the summer and work on farms and after they had done that would return home. We now have the situation in which they don't return home, they come with their families and set up home. This means those who have children send their children to school, after being here for a certain amount of time they can claim benefits, and if they are then made redundant can claim more benefits. Immigrants are just like you and me, they use our hospitals and other services, plus all public sector organisations have to employ a number of translators. 2 years ago a Lords select committee looked into the economic benefits of immigration to our economy and concluded that immigrants had contributed about 0.3 per cent of GDP, very little indeed. Many business men and women argue that the wave of immigration has been beneficial; of course they would say that, as they have been able to keep wages very low. It has been a boom time for many businesses as they have not had to increase what they pay their workers. I read of a situation in which a group of NHS workers where given new contracts and made to reapply for their jobs on a lower wage, of course a lot of them could not afford to do the work for the lower wage so lost out and those from outside of the UK got the jobs.
Many middle class people will rail against what I am saying, but let me ask a few simple questions, how many middle class people do menial work? How many of them when applying for a job are going up against people who will do the job for a lot less? How many of our MP's are in competition with someone from another country who is willing to work for less than the minimum wage? How many middle class people live next door to an immigrant family? I have mentioned before about the 2 Peterbourgh councillors who wrote to the 3 main party leaders at the beginning of the year about the issues of immigration in their ward. The issues of; multi occupancy housing, rising crime, rubbish spilling onto the streets which in turn brings rats and schools were as many as 27 different languages are spoken in them. Many middles class people don't ever face these issues because they can afford to live in areas were none of this affects them, they can afford to send their children to public school or live were the good schools are.
The Department for Transport forecasts the total time lost by commuters due to congestion in England will rise from 400 million hours today to 700 million by 2025.
I have told you what I think about the two main questions people give for immigration, now I am going to give you a few more more reasons why I am against MASS IMMIGRATION.
I have mentioned this one before; SPACE; England's population is now about 52 million. I spent a long weekend in The Lake District a few weeks ago, and it made me realise how crowded certain parts of our country are. The Lake District is beautiful, it has lots of open countryside and it isn't until you go to somewhere like that that you realise how crowded the rest of our small island has become. I live in an area that has still got lots of open space, but what concerns me is, as our population grows we will see more and more of our countryside concreted over, and once it is gone, it is gone.
With more people we need more housing, we need more roads, which means more cars polluting our environment. We will need more supermarkets with larger vehicles making deliveries, thus polluting our environment even more. With more people we will need to build more schools, health clinics, hospitals, railways, reservoirs, waste disposal facilities, police stations, fire stations, etc this will cost more and more money. With more people we will need more water and more sewage stations which means laying more water mains, sewage mains; many of the sewage mains and pumping stations were laid and built decades ago and were never designed for the population we now have. Replacing these will cost money, which will mean higher utility bills. With more people we will need more power, currently the Government is committed to building thousands of wind turbines all over our already endangered green belt. There is no way wind turbines are going to produce enough power for our current population, let alone another 5 million people. The Government are committed to shutting down nine of our coal fire power stations by 2015, what will we do then? Our country is in a financial mess and by no means is our economy out of the woods yet. All of what I have said above is going to cost us many hundreds of billions of pounds, either directly or indirectly, I believe we are storing up gargantuan problems for the future and if we do not do something now we will reap a harvest of misery in the not to distant future.
I am proud to be British, I love my country, I love what it stands for, and I love my culture. I am not racist and it does not make me racist because I speak out about immigration. I do not hate any other nation or people, but I am bothered about the gradual destruction of what I love. I am angry that over the last few years I have been made to feel like a racist and xenophobic for thinking or saying these things. I want my children to grow up in a country which remembers and celebrates it's history and heritage, we are very good at celebrating other peoples cultures and histories. Many indigenous cultures around the world are disappearing, and there are many people fighting to stop that happening, well, I will fight to keep my culture, heritage and history, and I will always be proud of who I am and where I come from. I will always look to protect those who are vulnerable, I will always support genuine asylum seekers, but I believe it is about time we halted the mass influx of humanity for the reasons I have stated above.
It took 57 years for our population to grow from 50 million in 1948 to 60 million in 2005. Yet the Office of National Statistics says it will grow another 10 million in less than half that time. I do not believe we should let that happen.
This is what I believe should happen. I think we need a freeze on permanent immigration, just so we can see who is in the country. We should let people work here temporarily on a work permit basis, but stop ALL permanent settlement.
For many people what I have just written will be seen as tantamount to be in league with the Nazi's, but let me ask you this, what do you want this country to be like in 10, 20, 30 years? I want my young children to grow up in a nation that is tolerant of other peoples and nations, if we are not careful we will destroy the very thing that many people were hoping to create. Many people would use the USA as an example of a nation which is a melting pot of cultures, but the simple truth is we are a tiny country in comparison, and when you put a lot of different people together in close proximity to each other you create huge problems. I believe we are on the edge of a precipice, unemployment is going to continue to rise and our countries finances will get worse, and this will bring huge pressures. If something isn't done in the very near future I believe we will see many, many, villages, towns and cities descend into rioting and racial tension. I am sorry if that sounds very gloomy but something needs to be done, and very quickly or we will be trying to shut the barn door after the horse left years ago.
