Foreigners

Thinking about it, that's a whole new theme.
How is it that 40% of UK workers earn less than £18,600?
I find that quite a staggering statistic.

I was talking to Danish family members at the weekend.
They cannot understand how, in a country as rich as ours, we allow there to be such a disparity in wages. They cannot believe how many people get high salaries yet pay the minimum to their workers. There are some very rich people in Denmark, but not that many. It's a much more equal society, even with a conservative government as they have now.

dd - I do understand and know about people whose work takes them away from home but the only point I am trying to make is about non immigrants moving for a living wage job down to my area. I think we agree that is going to be a problem and I don't see any solutions to this.

£18,600, JessM, according to the article I linked to.

inews.co.uk/opinion/time-stopped-counting-foreign-students-immigrants/

Not a lot but 40% of people earn less than this.

There are very strict rules and great costs to British men who marry a foreign spouse now too - not at all straightford as it was. Some visas cost thousands and only last a couple of years.

Yes. I know of a young South African couple who were deported along with their baby who was born here as the Dad didn't earn enough. They were both working and total income added up to more than £35k and paid their taxes etc but no, they had to return to SA. Rules are rules etc -except when they're not apparently!

I think you have to earn £35 for a spouse to get a visa don't you. Not easy, particularly in poorer areas where people get paid less for equivalent work.

Rigby, I live in a high housing cost area too. It's not quite London prices (which is why we have Londoners moving here), but it's heading that way. We do have people moving here from across Europe and other parts of the country, although there is no industry, because people have high disposable wealth. Therefore, they are still able to spend money on services, most of which are poorly paid. As I mentioned earlier, they tend to share housing or board. It's classic pull economics.

Nevertheless, I agree with you about the supply of people willing to do low paid jobs. I don't know what will happen.

As for people working away from home, fishermen, sailors, divers, armed forces have always worked away from home. Workers on infrastructure projects, such as roads, almost inevitably have to work away from home, if they want to stay unemployed, because the demand moves, as do IT contractors. I'm sure you remember 'Auf Wiedersehen Pet' or the people who have worked in the Middle Eastern oil fields over the years. I live not that far from Stansted Airport and it's relatively common for business people, scientiosts and researchers to commute to Europe.

People always have worked away from their families. Its nothing new at all. Accommodation costs are certainly an issue though. It seems to me that economic migrants are more likely to go where there is work and share accommodation costs by living in groups. Not lovely but its a start. My experience of this is that the men (and its always been men) live like that and send their earnings home to Romania or Bangladesh for example.
There's 'foreigners' and 'foreigners' of course. Highly qualified people like doctors and nurses are a different matter and have earnings to reflect that. This enables them to live a more comfortable and settled life and they are more likely to stay permanently. The Polish, Romanian and Bangladeshi people I know are all planning to return 'home' one day.

Also I still think it's a shame if people have to work away from their families

dd - apologies for not being clear. What I was trying to say, linked to earlier points I made was that people can and of course do move for jobs but that I can't see people moving from areas of high unemployment to my area to do living wage jobs because of housing costs if nothing else so who will do these unskilled jobs if such immigrants who now do them are stopped from coming? Long sentence - sorry again

The married couple rule seems harsh , but maybe it was brought in to clamp down on sham marriages, which has been a bit of a racket for ages. Not necessarily the most effective way of dealing with that problem.

Why would it be, Rigby? If the job had been very low paid, why would he have done it?

Thousands (if not millions) of people work away from home and leave their families behind.

It makes sense to work in an area where pay is high and live in an area where rents are low.

?

Jalima- was that for a very low paid job?

DH worked away for most of our married life, for years it was for months at a time and the 25 years before he retired away all week in various parts of the country!

That is how thousands of people live! Especially if you want the DC not to have to move schools constantly.

Not only difficult, but impossible. It also depends on whose living wage. Apparently the national living wage is going to go down because of Brexit.
The proper living wage is decided next week, in Living Wage week.

I don't think it's a God given right but I do think there should be more equitable employment opportunities throughout the country. I moved a lot for jobs but it was always for promotion and therefore a choice - I think it's different chasing living wage jobs when you are unemployed.

Do you think it should be a right for a married couple to live together in the country of their choice, suzie, and not have artificial barriers put in their way?

I don't think it s a god given right for people to live or work in the immediate area they were born, people have always upped sticks and got on their bikes in search of work. My eldest Dd has worked in about 4 locations, 3 different countries for her job. I'm sure every family has similar stories.

Maizie, this is from the first bit of the article.

'Paul Saunders was stunned when, after marrying a Cuban earlier this year, he discovered they were banned from living together in Britain. The problem was simple: he does not earn enough as a taxi driver, so under discriminatory rules that restrict poorer people from bringing in foreign spouses, the couple must live apart.

Yet many workers in his home city of Hull earn less than the £18,600 bar set by government. And how repellent to have regulations that target only less wealthy members of society. As Paul says, this is the kind of “heartless, unfair and illogical” edict that causes huge pain for those caught in the snare.

An estimated 33,000 Britons fail to earn enough to bring their spouses from overseas to this country. I have spoken to several, all living in regions where incomes are low and who are being cruelly punished for comparative poverty after falling in love with a foreigner.

The threshold is too high for four in 10 British citizens, hitting women especially hard. This vile rule was introduced four years ago by the then Home Secretary Theresa May as part of her doomed effort to reduce net migration to “tens of thousands” a year.'

33,000 more immigrants could have come here before the Tory party invented this cruel law, splitting up families even more than in this country, Rigby.

I don't think that has anything to do with immigrants, Rigby.
Three times in our married life my husband lived away from the family for up to a year, because he was in danger of being made redundant as an architect.It was to do with the economic situation in the country. Building is usually the first occupation to feel a downturn.

I think there's a difference between immigrants coming here for whatever reason and a society in which there are such huge disparities in employment opportunities for indigenous citizens . I felt really sad talking to a man delivering our new wheelie bins several years ago that he had to work away from home (Cornwall) all week to be able to keep his family properly. I know lots of people are in similar situations but that doesn't make it acceptable.

Well, she could dj, but she refuses to do so. It makes me wonder if she is hell bent herself on perpetuating the anti-immigration feeling.

Why?

inews.co.uk/opinion/time-stopped-counting-foreign-students-immigrants/

This is how May gets the number of immigrants down.

I think weve gone down to sixth recently. But I live in inner London and there are plenty of Polish, Lithuanian,Somalian, Turkish you name it here who live in social housing, shared flats etc who are happy as its better than they had at home.