Asian man walks down the street. Is he British, low skilled/unskilled or high skilled? Is he seen as an "immigrant" with all the negative connotations it has?



White man walks down the street. Is he skilled or unskilled? Is he British? American? Australian? Should he be in the UK?



That is why there is a problem. Because the vast majority of the public cannot tell, yet the rhetoric from newspapers and policticians is that it is bad, and an immigrant must have dark skin, right?



Its interesting that the immigration route with (currently) the least control is the one where you have a lot of money, not skills. And the easiest route to get in via the apparently skilled work route is if you're paid a high salary, not a person in an important skilled job regardless of the salary.

Who are they?

Even Mr Titan won't be able to answer that one for him.

The "non-skilled" argument is misleading and is often confused with "poor grasp of the English language", they can't speak very good English so they must be thick.



I've written before about this but I'll give you two examples of my own experiences when working within two different client businesses...



1. Was in an agency when two people came to the reception desk, male and female partners, the male explained that they had literally got the bus straight from Hull to the agency to start the job that they had arranged via the phone from their home (I think they came from Poland), the male was offered a job in a factory as a picker, the female could speak very little English and was told she'd be working "in the fields" tomorrow. they both accepted these minimum wage jobs but the male then pointed out to the interviewer that his partner had a degree in engineering and was taking extra tuition to improve her English - a not uncommon experience according to the person in the agency that I was meeting with, she wasn't unskliied or thick, she just didn't have a working grasp of English - YET.



2. The next day I was at the client site where the woman had been offered the job "in the fields" and in the office that I was sat in was a young man in his late twenties speaking on the phone in an Eastern European language and making copious notes. The Lithuanian girl who I was training eventually explained that he was one of their veg prep guys, spent all day long picking out mis-shaped carrots from conveyor belts so that the supermarkets didn't reject them - they'd had an approach from a Russian business who wanted to deal with them and had asked around the workforce for anyone with good Russian skills, he stepped forward, was Polish but spoke excellent Russian as he'd studied it at University, later they found that he also had an engineering degree, he is now on their maintenance crew, he too wasn't thick or unskilled, just placed in a low skilled job by the agency.

Well indeed.



Although it's precisely the sort of assertion that is illustrative of how difficult having the discussion is.

and wtf do the two issues have in common?

Well indeed.



But it's close to a pretty standard anti-immigration approach that works primarily on the basis of simply trying to smear the 'other' side.



FWIW, I'm not convinced by some of the arguments about why we need immigration: for instance, if we need it to fun pensions, then that relies on economic activity and if we need that, then would it not first be best to ensure that everyone of working age etc who is already here is in a position to be economically active? In other words, that there are jobs available for them.



I do have concerns about the infrastructure coping too.



I also understand why some people may feel, in effect, that their culture is under threat – although I think that a lot of that is because immigration of non-white people is more visible, thus making it easier to blame immigration/migration for what has happened to English culture (and I think it's primarily some of the English who feel that their culture is under threat) for many other things that have happened in the last 30 years that have watered down that same culture, and which also come in the wake of a sense, within England, of wondering what our culture/roile is in the wake of the end of empire.



But it's particularly important to note that you[i can[/i have such concerns without getting into a state of being racist. And these are all, in my opinion, issues that need seriously talking through in a calm manner.



Whether that will ever happen remains, I think, to be seen.

What is "British Culture" though ?



What element have we historically had that has made us unique from any other culture in the world ?



And what element of the "culture" have we lost ?

migration/immigration has enriched society, far more than we realise, and as for culture, I am sure Dally/Titan think the Elgin Marbles are British. And it wouldn't surprise me to find that they'd both be shocked that none of them are described as a "golly"!!

The only lost marbles appear to be yours.

you can't even lie consistently

Indeed. I have found myself in many a heated discussion about immigration. People ranting and me putting them straight. When I tell them I am an immigrant, not from the EU either but with my Hull accent you wouldn't know, I get "well I don't mean people like you" - well who the fook do you mean then???