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> My impression is that another upside Silicon Valley has over the UK is that the US is genuinely a country of immigrants. Whatever hoops you have to jump throu

> My impression is that another upside Silicon Valley has over the UK is that the US is genuinely a country of immigrants. Whatever hoops you have to jump through to get in or stay, I don't get the impression people are looked down on because they are foreign, once actually on the ground. Which is not so much the case in Brexitania. The UK is easily among the most tolerant and least racist of European countries. In international studies, the UK scores very highly on all such measures, usually much better than continental European countries. See e.g. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/least-racist-countries https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/least-rac... I don't understand this compulsive need of pro-EU voters to construct massive straw men about brexit voters and Brexit Britain. It is possible and reasonable for a country to decide it doesn't want to be a part of the European "project" without being a racist xenophobic hellhole. On the original article, it is strange it never covers how easy it is for someone in India or the Uk or Africa to immigrate to Germany. The UK has mass immigration still from all over the world - when you have considerably more potential immigrants than you can reasonably accommodate is when countries start getting picky and having rules.

rich_sasha 5y ago
> I don't understand this compulsive need of pro-EU voters to construct massive straw men about brexit voters and Brexit Britain. It is possible and reasonable for a country to decide it doesn't want to be a part of the European "project" without being a racist xenophobic hellhole. No one is taking that right away. No one is saying UK is a xenophobic hellhole. But the "foreigners" en masse are saying they don't like it, and are more likely to give the UK a miss. Either you don't mind, or if you do, don't pin your hopes of a booming start-up industry on those very same foreigners.
- JetSetWilly 5y ago
  I've not noticed any decline in UK immigration as yet. If there is a decline and it is a problem, then the UK has the ability to address it as needed. If there is not a decline then there's not a problem. Speaking for my own workplace the effect of brexit has been to replace European migrants with more Indian migrants, not to actually reduce migration. Unless you believe that continental Europeans have some unique ability to found startups, I'm not sure there's much to worry about.
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    Noticed the empty shelves at the supermarkets? Something to do with no one being around to drive lorries? But ultimately, if you don't mind, that's good news to you. One thing less to worry about in a stressful world.
    - JetSetWilly 5y ago
      I haven't noticed any empty shelves i have to say. There's is not a labour shortage of lorry drivers. There is increased demand, reduced supply (due to a pandemic on both counts) - but plenty of people who can drive a lorry and are licensed - who don't because salary is not competitive. If your argument was that wages were kept depressed due to cheap labour from abroad, and how terrible it is that we now have to pay lorry drivers and fruit pickers competitively, I'm not sure that's much of an argument.
      - alibarber 5y ago
        I'm a remain-er as much as the next guy (so much so I remain, as a Brit, in another EU country) but: "...but plenty of people who can drive a lorry and are licensed - who don't because salary is not competitive" Is really the crux of the issue. Getting a licence, whilst involving some moderate challenge, isn't exactly the most difficult or expensive thing to do. It's been a crappy job for a while and relying on it being filled by immigrants who had no better alternatives isn't a sustainable solution anywhere.
      - atsjie 5y ago
        > There's is not a labour shortage of lorry drivers. There is increased demand, reduced supply (due to a pandemic on both counts) - but plenty of people who can drive a lorry and are licensed Not sure what you mean by that, BBC mentiones a lack of 100.000 drivers just a few days ago: https://www.bbc.com/news/57810729 https://www.bbc.com/news/57810729 That's a shortage, no matter how you turn it regardless if people are not available or simply don't want to do it. Sure, pay can increase but so will the price of goods and components, having a knock-on effect on the rest of the economy and making UK less competitive as a result. Companies want to move stuff and they see no profitable means to do so. I'm in The Netherlands, there's a driver shortage here too but it's mostly eastern europeans filling the void. With an unemployment rate of 3% why bother with a boring away-from-home job? Unless Trucking is your hobby essentially. I imagine most people in the UK feel the same way; there's better jobs available now with the economy opening up.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  From another EU country I don't feel represented by the EU commission at all. This has nothing to do with immigration and I think any potential immigrant would have to accept and understand that.
mytailorisrich 5y ago
I would add that even for immigration procedures and paperwork the UK is actually quite good, straightforward, and helpful compared to some of its neighbours.
mmarq 5y ago
> The UK is easily among the most tolerant and least racist of European countries. In international studies, the UK scores very highly on all such measures, usually much better than continental European countries. The point is not that the British society is more or less tolerant than the Italian society (and it certainly is more tolerant). The problem is that as a European I’ve never experienced xenophobia until 2016, while for some years after that every single Briton I talked to felt entitled to share with me some uneducated opinions about immigration and about my immigration status. These would range from some form of “you are a good migrant (sic) so you can stay”, to “only English people should live in England”. Some friends and colleagues, especially women who mixed with locals from the lower classes, have experienced more extreme forms of xenophobia, such as a doctor friend who stopped working outside of London because half of her patients were telling her to go back to her country (she was already naturalised then) on a daily basis. The locals trying to burn European flags (and failing miserably) weren’t really sending a welcome message. Edit: poor migrant fix typoz
- JetSetWilly 5y ago
  I'm sorry, I have extreme doubt to what extent these anecdotes are true and have no choice but to reject them when there's no corroborating evidence. In my experience, I see about 100x as many people trying to shame folk with the "brexit=racist xenophobe" brush than I witness actual incidents of such behaviour. At the end of the day it is all anecdotes from people who have an ideological axe to grind. I'd be more interested to see actual data that suggests any permanent effect - like changes in all the many studies into the tolerance of countries towards immigrants, or even a substantial increase of hate crimes - but so far all that is strangely lacking and all we are left with is anecdotes.
  - thefounder 5y ago
    There are centainly some racist/xenophobe people and they were pretty loud during and after the Brexit campaign. However the main issue is that the mainstream leadership took cues from them and the dialog about immigration has changed. Now it's pretty much native vs immigrants, England vs Europe. It's no longer a family/love story. "Once Britain is free of the EU’s shackles, there’s nothing it cannot achieve". This kind of slogans extend to simple immigrants as well because "they" are the reason UK is no longer an empire...(so they said).
thefounder 5y ago
The UK has great PR, that's a sure thing. >> without being a racist xenophobic hellhole. Well if that's the bar UK has set for itself then it's all good but it tries to have its cake and eat it too.
aaomidi 5y ago
I'm someone who has lived both in UK and now in the US. UK has a huge issue with racism that people don't even want to acknowledge. The prejudice, micro aggressions, general nastiness from people is extremely off-putting in UK. In the US nearly every city with over 1 mil in population is open to conversations about racial discrimination, and individuals generally do a good job and admit fault when some behavior is called out. The opposite of this holds for UK. Pointing out racist behavior becomes denial. Everyone thinks that because they're not the US they're saints and have no racial issues. This has been the experience of a bunch of my brown European friends as well. US is genuinely better when dealing with other people.
- native_samples 5y ago
  You appear to be redefining racism as "willing to agree with me when I assert everything is racist". You aren't naming any specific problem you saw with actual racism, only that people react badly when you claim it's everywhere. But as you use words like micro-aggressions we can safely assume you're the type of person who led to lists like this: https://twitter.com/titaniamcgrath/status/1281023987242487808?lang=en https://twitter.com/titaniamcgrath/status/128102398724248780... Don't conflate woke identity politics with racism. They are fundamentally different. British people are right to reject your America-centric obsession with finding racism in everything, given the UK's excellent track record.
  - aaomidi 5y ago
    > Don't conflate woke identity politics with racism. They are fundamentally different. British people are right to reject your America-centric obsession with finding racism in everything, given the UK's excellent track record. Again, this is what I mean by British people refusing to engage with my experiences as a brown person living in UK. Building up a strawman, then assuming I'm part of that strawman, then dismissing it does no one any good. In Primary school in UK I (and all the non-white) kids were segregated in seating. I was always assigned seating near other brown kids. When out shopping with my parents, in smaller stores we were "stalked" to make sure we didn't steal anything. This did not happen to our white friends that we asked to keep an eye out for this behavior. In school plays, the non-white kids were always assigned the side-roles and the "peasant" roles. E.g. I was assigned to be a "chimney cleaner", which involved the makeup people spreading black ink all over myface and essentially making me do blackface. But sure, this is just woke politics and you know everything about our lives.

rich_sasha 5y ago

> I don't understand this compulsive need of pro-EU voters to construct massive straw men about brexit voters and Brexit Britain. It is possible and reasonable for a country to decide it doesn't want to be a part of the European "project" without being a racist xenophobic hellhole. No one is taking that right away. No one is saying UK is a xenophobic hellhole. But the "foreigners" en masse are saying they don't like it, and are more likely to give the UK a miss. Either you don't mind, or if you do, don't pin your hopes of a booming start-up industry on those very same foreigners.

JetSetWilly 5y ago
I've not noticed any decline in UK immigration as yet. If there is a decline and it is a problem, then the UK has the ability to address it as needed. If there is not a decline then there's not a problem. Speaking for my own workplace the effect of brexit has been to replace European migrants with more Indian migrants, not to actually reduce migration. Unless you believe that continental Europeans have some unique ability to found startups, I'm not sure there's much to worry about.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  Noticed the empty shelves at the supermarkets? Something to do with no one being around to drive lorries? But ultimately, if you don't mind, that's good news to you. One thing less to worry about in a stressful world.
  - JetSetWilly 5y ago
    I haven't noticed any empty shelves i have to say. There's is not a labour shortage of lorry drivers. There is increased demand, reduced supply (due to a pandemic on both counts) - but plenty of people who can drive a lorry and are licensed - who don't because salary is not competitive. If your argument was that wages were kept depressed due to cheap labour from abroad, and how terrible it is that we now have to pay lorry drivers and fruit pickers competitively, I'm not sure that's much of an argument.
    - alibarber 5y ago
      I'm a remain-er as much as the next guy (so much so I remain, as a Brit, in another EU country) but: "...but plenty of people who can drive a lorry and are licensed - who don't because salary is not competitive" Is really the crux of the issue. Getting a licence, whilst involving some moderate challenge, isn't exactly the most difficult or expensive thing to do. It's been a crappy job for a while and relying on it being filled by immigrants who had no better alternatives isn't a sustainable solution anywhere.
    - atsjie 5y ago
      > There's is not a labour shortage of lorry drivers. There is increased demand, reduced supply (due to a pandemic on both counts) - but plenty of people who can drive a lorry and are licensed Not sure what you mean by that, BBC mentiones a lack of 100.000 drivers just a few days ago: https://www.bbc.com/news/57810729 https://www.bbc.com/news/57810729 That's a shortage, no matter how you turn it regardless if people are not available or simply don't want to do it. Sure, pay can increase but so will the price of goods and components, having a knock-on effect on the rest of the economy and making UK less competitive as a result. Companies want to move stuff and they see no profitable means to do so. I'm in The Netherlands, there's a driver shortage here too but it's mostly eastern europeans filling the void. With an unemployment rate of 3% why bother with a boring away-from-home job? Unless Trucking is your hobby essentially. I imagine most people in the UK feel the same way; there's better jobs available now with the economy opening up.
raxxorrax 5y ago
From another EU country I don't feel represented by the EU commission at all. This has nothing to do with immigration and I think any potential immigrant would have to accept and understand that.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

I would add that even for immigration procedures and paperwork the UK is actually quite good, straightforward, and helpful compared to some of its neighbours.

mmarq 5y ago

> The UK is easily among the most tolerant and least racist of European countries. In international studies, the UK scores very highly on all such measures, usually much better than continental European countries. The point is not that the British society is more or less tolerant than the Italian society (and it certainly is more tolerant). The problem is that as a European I’ve never experienced xenophobia until 2016, while for some years after that every single Briton I talked to felt entitled to share with me some uneducated opinions about immigration and about my immigration status. These would range from some form of “you are a good migrant (sic) so you can stay”, to “only English people should live in England”. Some friends and colleagues, especially women who mixed with locals from the lower classes, have experienced more extreme forms of xenophobia, such as a doctor friend who stopped working outside of London because half of her patients were telling her to go back to her country (she was already naturalised then) on a daily basis. The locals trying to burn European flags (and failing miserably) weren’t really sending a welcome message. Edit: poor migrant fix typoz

JetSetWilly 5y ago
I'm sorry, I have extreme doubt to what extent these anecdotes are true and have no choice but to reject them when there's no corroborating evidence. In my experience, I see about 100x as many people trying to shame folk with the "brexit=racist xenophobe" brush than I witness actual incidents of such behaviour. At the end of the day it is all anecdotes from people who have an ideological axe to grind. I'd be more interested to see actual data that suggests any permanent effect - like changes in all the many studies into the tolerance of countries towards immigrants, or even a substantial increase of hate crimes - but so far all that is strangely lacking and all we are left with is anecdotes.
- thefounder 5y ago
  There are centainly some racist/xenophobe people and they were pretty loud during and after the Brexit campaign. However the main issue is that the mainstream leadership took cues from them and the dialog about immigration has changed. Now it's pretty much native vs immigrants, England vs Europe. It's no longer a family/love story. "Once Britain is free of the EU’s shackles, there’s nothing it cannot achieve". This kind of slogans extend to simple immigrants as well because "they" are the reason UK is no longer an empire...(so they said).

thefounder 5y ago

The UK has great PR, that's a sure thing. >> without being a racist xenophobic hellhole. Well if that's the bar UK has set for itself then it's all good but it tries to have its cake and eat it too.

aaomidi 5y ago

I'm someone who has lived both in UK and now in the US. UK has a huge issue with racism that people don't even want to acknowledge. The prejudice, micro aggressions, general nastiness from people is extremely off-putting in UK. In the US nearly every city with over 1 mil in population is open to conversations about racial discrimination, and individuals generally do a good job and admit fault when some behavior is called out. The opposite of this holds for UK. Pointing out racist behavior becomes denial. Everyone thinks that because they're not the US they're saints and have no racial issues. This has been the experience of a bunch of my brown European friends as well. US is genuinely better when dealing with other people.

native_samples 5y ago
You appear to be redefining racism as "willing to agree with me when I assert everything is racist". You aren't naming any specific problem you saw with actual racism, only that people react badly when you claim it's everywhere. But as you use words like micro-aggressions we can safely assume you're the type of person who led to lists like this: https://twitter.com/titaniamcgrath/status/1281023987242487808?lang=en https://twitter.com/titaniamcgrath/status/128102398724248780... Don't conflate woke identity politics with racism. They are fundamentally different. British people are right to reject your America-centric obsession with finding racism in everything, given the UK's excellent track record.
- aaomidi 5y ago
  > Don't conflate woke identity politics with racism. They are fundamentally different. British people are right to reject your America-centric obsession with finding racism in everything, given the UK's excellent track record. Again, this is what I mean by British people refusing to engage with my experiences as a brown person living in UK. Building up a strawman, then assuming I'm part of that strawman, then dismissing it does no one any good. In Primary school in UK I (and all the non-white) kids were segregated in seating. I was always assigned seating near other brown kids. When out shopping with my parents, in smaller stores we were "stalked" to make sure we didn't steal anything. This did not happen to our white friends that we asked to keep an eye out for this behavior. In school plays, the non-white kids were always assigned the side-roles and the "peasant" roles. E.g. I was assigned to be a "chimney cleaner", which involved the makeup people spreading black ink all over myface and essentially making me do blackface. But sure, this is just woke politics and you know everything about our lives.