EU. In or out?

[Throttled]

One figure quite often quoted is how much benefits are being paid to non working non nationals. And what is the head count?

But, what of the comparative figure, as in how much taxes are being paid by the working non nationals? And what is the working number?

A comparison done in some countries suggests that while the first figure can be high the second one is a multiple meaning here is a net gain to the economy.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014 ... -ucl-study

"It says that European migrants made a net contribution of £20bn to UK public finances between 2000 and 2011. Those from the 15 countries which made up the EU before 2004, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, contributed 64% – £15bn more in taxes than they received in welfare – while east European migrants contributed 12%, equivalent to £5bn more."

So all those EU immigrants contribute way more than they cost the UK economy.

[[email protected]]

Frankly I can't understand a lot of the regional accents/dialects in the UK...

really - you cannot understand what they are saying ?

I call bullshit on that one[/quote]

The trailing ellipses at the end of the line was meant to indicate that I wasn't completely serious.

[Mawnanian]

"It says that European migrants made a net contribution of £20bn to UK public finances between 2000 and 2011. Those from the 15 countries which made up the EU before 2004, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, contributed 64% – £15bn more in taxes than they received in welfare – while east European migrants contributed 12%, equivalent to £5bn more."

So all those EU immigrants contribute way more than they cost the UK economy.[/quote]

Agreed, but while overall I want to stay in the EU I don't think financial contribution is the most important issue regarding immigration, more important is the pressure on infrastructure and housing. It's a question of numbers.

[Throttled]

^...Those figures are wrong. There aren't 1 million Brits living in Spain. The official number is about 400,000. The unofficial number is 750,000 but that takes into account seasonal residents, i.e. they don't permanently live there, such as bar workers who work there for the summer season or people who have a second home that they use for the winter.

I checked and yes, that graphic showing 2.2 million Brits in the EU is the maximum living during the summer including seasonal workers. I wonder of the numbers being given for EU workers here is the same and it includes seasonal workers? When I first moved to Argyll many seasonal workers were Australians, by the time I left many were Polish.

[AndyB]

Andy wrote
I've got to be honest and admit that I struggle with certain local dialects and the further you get out of towns the worse it gets. I'd mention Norfolk as being a prime example but someone might get moody about it


How dare you have a go at Norfolk, wonderful place, I have lived here for 40 odd years and they have nearly accepted me now :side: just don`t mention inbreeding and webbed feet :whistle:

Have you got an alarm that sounds when the word Norfolk gets posted?

[Throttled]

"It says that European migrants made a net contribution of £20bn to UK public finances between 2000 and 2011. Those from the 15 countries which made up the EU before 2004, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, contributed 64% – £15bn more in taxes than they received in welfare – while east European migrants contributed 12%, equivalent to £5bn more."

So all those EU immigrants contribute way more than they cost the UK economy.

Agreed, but while overall I want to stay in the EU I don't think financial contribution is the most important issue regarding immigration, more important is the pressure on infrastructure and housing. It's a question of numbers.

If we removed all the immigrants and especially took back all the expats, we would still have a housing issue. We do not build enough houses and there is plenty of land to do so.

https://www.statslife.org.uk/social-sci ... -countries

"It has been estimated by the World Bank that between 4.5 million and 5.5 million Britons live abroad, that's around 7-8% of the UK population. To put that in context, only about 0.8% of Americans, 3% of Spanish and 2.1% of Australians are expats."

As for pressure on infrastructure, read London in particular. UK policies to get companies to leave London and move elsewhere are helping to solve that. Otherwise infrastructure pressures pull and push. The drop off of the birth rate has caused many schools to close. The financial crash has caused many services to cut back.

None of the above is particularly affected by EU membership either way.

[Scott_rider]

So all those EU immigrants contribute way more than they cost the UK economy.

Maybe they do financially but they have an impact on other matters as well, as follows ...all quoted from the official report on EU imigration to the Home Office.

Public services are creaking under the weight of the additional demand.

Many schools are unprepared and unable to accommodate children for whom English is their second language.

Hospitals are full of EU patients who have failed to register with their local GP.

Social housing lists grow ever longer.

Private housing shortage - the situation is close to a full-blown crisis

Integration - native British residents and a significant number of the existing large non-native community complain that newer imigrants simply don't integrate.

Negative impacts on national identity - perceptions of Britishness are diminished.

Negative impacts on cohesion. Imigration negatively affects neighbourhoods and how people get along with each other.

[AndyB]

All of this debate about immigration is in the most part unaffected by our membership of the EU. A lot of people are going to be left very confused if we leave the EU and they then find all of the immigration issues we have now remain as issues.

The EU immigrants here now are due to our membership of the EEA. We do not know if the UK will leave that or not.

We had opted out of the EU's quota for refugees, so we have hardly any from Syria and decided alone how many we would take.

Non EU immigrants have nothing to do with the EU.

I wouldn't disagree with anyone who says immigrants from non EU countries often find it harder to settle and probably tend to stay in their own groups (race, religion or whatever) far longer than anyone would like to see but as far as I'm aware all EU school kids learn English and the adults try to get back whatever they've forgotten as soon as possible.

It's not as if we're signed up to allow the EU to dictate how many refugees we take because we kept out of that one and hopefully our government will help as many as possible but without simply opening the door wide open.

[rlkat]

Overall immigration figures are only really valid if you look at the complete picture which will obviously include the 250k foreign students who arrive here to study each year and the unspecified number who come here to do work our own people turn their noses up at.

It's nice to see that the number of nurses we could employ has been brought up because the Typhoon (Eurofighter) cost about £4K per hour of flight and that doesn't include buying it or the weapons it carries. A pointless figure in this discussion but so was the one about nurses

Hardly pointless. We need all the money we can get to effectively run a country for the benefit of its citizens. I object to paying money to the the EU. It's federalist, one size fits all, agenda conflicts hugely with my idea of democracy, self determination and independence.

[daytona-supersport]

whenever a government tries to keep information out of the hands of anybody that does not agree with their policies, you can bet 100% that the reason is that they want to cover up the truth and feed you a pack of lies.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... -eu-papers