1991 - My Mother and Father moved to the UK from Portugal bringing their four very young children (including me) along with them in search of a better life for themselves and a more promising future for their children. They knew only very basic English, having only worked a couple of summer seasons in Jersey prior to the big move, but this wasn't going to put them off the chance of having a better future.
The kids went to state schools and my parents found jobs both working as cleaners, at times working 2 or 3 jobs each just to make ends meet in expensive London. Some time later their careers progressed very well in different directions and a lot of hard work later my parents managed to buy our first family home. A few years went by and then my parents decided to open a business.
2015 - Over 10 years on and the business is still running well. Parents working, kids working, immigrants paying into the system - great!
This is a very brief story of my immigrant family. I'm sure many immigrant families have similar stories to mine.
Is immigration really that big of a problem as made out to be by parties like UKIP and those following in their footsteps?
Is immigration really that much of a bad thing when Immigrants contribute 20 billion pounds to the UK economy?
Yes immigrants may take 'your' jobs but what about the tens of thousands of jobs still being advertised today?
Their are some immigrants that scrounge off the government just as much as their are some British that scrounge off the government. These few are made out to seem like many by the UKIP party and much of the media when in fact it is the total opposite.
Their are hard working immigrants out there that deserve to be appreciated and not made to feel like they are not welcome in this country - political parties should be careful as not to scare off the hard working immigrants that actually benefit the UK economy. A simple 1,2,3,4 or 5 year ban on claiming benefits isn't the right answer to fix the 'problem' with immigration.
If the UK can clamp down on British benefit scroungers then I'm sure they can do the same to clamp down on EU benefit scroungers.
The UK should impose a more subtle 6 month ban on immigrants claiming benefits from the time they enter the UK. Their should also be a medium-term unemployment benefit ban on those who have been in receipt of unemployment benefits for longer than 3 months within the first 2 years of entering the UK.
I believe this is a more progressive and fairer approach to dealing with immigration - giving the people that want to work hard and make a good life for themselves a fair chance and giving those few that want to scrounge off the UK no chance.
What is your opinion?
Comments
Post a Comment