4 ms·

>Politicians promised that Brexit would allow us to take control of our borders You mean the EU was in control of your borders before? I think you don't know

>Politicians promised that Brexit would allow us to take control of our borders You mean the EU was in control of your borders before? I think you don't know how the EU works and what it can and can't do with your borders.

curtisblaine 3y ago
Wasn't the agreement that anyone from the EU could stay and settle without job / visa? During that period, borders were effectively non-existent between UK and the rest of EU.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Isn't that what EU freedom of movement means? And the borders didn't magically evaporate. UK still had border checks in palace and could refuse entry to all non-EU members.
mytailorisrich 3y ago
The UK was the EU country that saw the highest number of immigrants from Eastern Europe after those countries joined the EU. Ironically that is in big part because the UK (along with Ireland) was the only EU country not to restrict it although there was a special provision that allowed it temporarily. It is that influx of migrants that really changed the country's mood on free movement, which indeed the government could do nothing about. Then, Merkel's "open door" policy in the year just before the referendum scared people as well.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >The UK was the EU country that saw the highest number of immigrants from Eastern Europe after those countries joined the EU. Ah yes, those evil eastern European coming to take the poor jobs nobody wants and pay taxes, while the unemployed Brits sleep in late in council houses living on benefits. Check out the series 'Benefits Street' on YouTube. >Ironically that is in big part because the UK (along with Ireland) was the only EU country not to restrict it although there was a special provision that allowed it temporarily. That's some major bullshit. The UK had the maximum possible 7 year restriction in place on Romanians and Bulgarians. They joined in 2007 but we're only allowed to work in the UK all the way 2014. I remember the British media made a huge scaremongering about that back then waiting in the airports in January 2014 for the "invasion" that failed to materialize. >It is that influx of migrants that really changed the country's mood on free movement, which indeed the government could do nothing about And now they have a lot more immigrants except not from the EU, while loosing all the EU membership privileges. It's massively hypocritical of brexiters to bitch about the EU free movement when they themselves massively made use of it for work, travel and study. So what did they gain with this anti-Eastern European movement? They now have even more migration but without the EU benefits.
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    That's a snark that does not bring anything to the discussion. People were dissatisfied with the fact the country could not control immigration from the EU. That's how it was and trying to understand those concerns rather than mocking them might have avoided Brexit in the same way as that might prevent hard-line parties from winning across Europe. > That's some major bullshit No... They implemented the allowed restrictions on the second batch of Eastern European countries because they had not put any restrictions on the first batch (Poland, etc) in 2004 and got a massive number of immigrants from those countries.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      >That's a snark that does not bring anything to the discussion. Where's the snark? I was being dead serious. >People were dissatisfied with the fact the country could not control immigration from the EU. What for? The UK's major problems were all self inflicted by it's own crooked political class not by the Eastern Europeans coming to work and pay taxes. They were just the scapegoats in a xenophobic driven witch-hunt because blaming some powerless foreigners who can't vote is always the easy way out. Also, if the UK didn't want any Eastern Europeans all they had to do was veto their EU membership when those countries applied to join. Simple no? And now, how did Brexit fix the migration issue? Now you have even more migrants than before except they're not eastern European. Is that better now? How was it all not low-key xenophobia.
  - kypro 3y ago
    > Ah yes, those evil eastern European coming to take the poor jobs nobody wants and pay taxes, while the unemployed Brits sleep in late in council houses living on benefits. Check out the series 'Benefits Street' on YouTube. No one wants them because mass migration suppresses wages. For example in the UK we systematically suppress NHS wages to the point no Brit would want to work in the NHS anymore. We achieve this by importing hundreds of thousands of workers from parts of the world with lower per-capita income. And I'm not being critical here. I'm highly in favour of this because it reduce healthcare costs in the UK. But on the flip side it's then absurd to argue that Brits don't want those jobs since we're actively suppressing wages. Like in the past Brits would work in the NHS if we allowed for labour competition. If the NHS was forced to pay more to attract labour then Brits would obviously want to work for the NHS again.
kypro 3y ago
> You mean the EU was in control of your borders before? To some extent yes. EU citizens did have the right to live and work in the UK prior to Brexit. Would you disagree with this? > I think you don't know how the EU works and what it can and can't do with your borders. To be clear, I didn't vote for Brexit for immigration reasons. I hold no opinion on immigration. I'm a hard-core libertarian so in my ideal world borders wouldn't even exist. But even if I did vote for brexit to reduce migration my point is that if politicians promised us that post-Brexit net-migration would be reduced (something which they would indisputably have the power to do), then again, why would it wrong to vote for that? Is it simply that it's naive to think that politicians will do what they say, or do you believe UK politicians cannot control UK borders so could not have made that promise? It seems you're making a different point – that the UK could have controlled their borders without leaving the EU – which even if true would be a different argument.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >To some extent yes. EU citizens did have the right to live and work in the UK prior to Brexit. Would you disagree with this? That was the free movement agrement within the EU which the UK agreed to when it joined the EU and when it voted to allow all other new members in. The EU didn't have direct control of your borders. The UK still had sovereignty to kick out all illegal people which had no right to enter the UK. I'm still baffled by the lack of understanding of Brits over their own borders.
  - kypro 3y ago
    > That was the free movement agrement within the EU which the UK agreed to when it joined the EU > The UK still had sovereignty to kick out all illegal people which had no right to enter the UK I promise I'm not trying to misrepresent you here so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is your argument is as follows: The UK agreed to join the EU which as a requirement of it's membership means all EU citizens the right to live and work in the UK – we agree on this. But next I start to lose you. I think what you're saying is because we choose to join the EU and accept free move, we could therefore always choose to leave. So really we always had power to control our borders because we could always choose to leave the EU and not allow free movement? But the issue I'm having is that you also think it's silly to vote to leave the EU to control our borders? Additionally you added: > The UK still had sovereignty to kick out all illegal people which had no right to enter the UK. But what's your point here? EU citizens had the legal right to enter the UK as you noted above? Sorry if I'm being dense here lol.

curtisblaine 3y ago

Wasn't the agreement that anyone from the EU could stay and settle without job / visa? During that period, borders were effectively non-existent between UK and the rest of EU.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Isn't that what EU freedom of movement means? And the borders didn't magically evaporate. UK still had border checks in palace and could refuse entry to all non-EU members.

mytailorisrich 3y ago

The UK was the EU country that saw the highest number of immigrants from Eastern Europe after those countries joined the EU. Ironically that is in big part because the UK (along with Ireland) was the only EU country not to restrict it although there was a special provision that allowed it temporarily. It is that influx of migrants that really changed the country's mood on free movement, which indeed the government could do nothing about. Then, Merkel's "open door" policy in the year just before the referendum scared people as well.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>The UK was the EU country that saw the highest number of immigrants from Eastern Europe after those countries joined the EU. Ah yes, those evil eastern European coming to take the poor jobs nobody wants and pay taxes, while the unemployed Brits sleep in late in council houses living on benefits. Check out the series 'Benefits Street' on YouTube. >Ironically that is in big part because the UK (along with Ireland) was the only EU country not to restrict it although there was a special provision that allowed it temporarily. That's some major bullshit. The UK had the maximum possible 7 year restriction in place on Romanians and Bulgarians. They joined in 2007 but we're only allowed to work in the UK all the way 2014. I remember the British media made a huge scaremongering about that back then waiting in the airports in January 2014 for the "invasion" that failed to materialize. >It is that influx of migrants that really changed the country's mood on free movement, which indeed the government could do nothing about And now they have a lot more immigrants except not from the EU, while loosing all the EU membership privileges. It's massively hypocritical of brexiters to bitch about the EU free movement when they themselves massively made use of it for work, travel and study. So what did they gain with this anti-Eastern European movement? They now have even more migration but without the EU benefits.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  That's a snark that does not bring anything to the discussion. People were dissatisfied with the fact the country could not control immigration from the EU. That's how it was and trying to understand those concerns rather than mocking them might have avoided Brexit in the same way as that might prevent hard-line parties from winning across Europe. > That's some major bullshit No... They implemented the allowed restrictions on the second batch of Eastern European countries because they had not put any restrictions on the first batch (Poland, etc) in 2004 and got a massive number of immigrants from those countries.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >That's a snark that does not bring anything to the discussion. Where's the snark? I was being dead serious. >People were dissatisfied with the fact the country could not control immigration from the EU. What for? The UK's major problems were all self inflicted by it's own crooked political class not by the Eastern Europeans coming to work and pay taxes. They were just the scapegoats in a xenophobic driven witch-hunt because blaming some powerless foreigners who can't vote is always the easy way out. Also, if the UK didn't want any Eastern Europeans all they had to do was veto their EU membership when those countries applied to join. Simple no? And now, how did Brexit fix the migration issue? Now you have even more migrants than before except they're not eastern European. Is that better now? How was it all not low-key xenophobia.
- kypro 3y ago
  > Ah yes, those evil eastern European coming to take the poor jobs nobody wants and pay taxes, while the unemployed Brits sleep in late in council houses living on benefits. Check out the series 'Benefits Street' on YouTube. No one wants them because mass migration suppresses wages. For example in the UK we systematically suppress NHS wages to the point no Brit would want to work in the NHS anymore. We achieve this by importing hundreds of thousands of workers from parts of the world with lower per-capita income. And I'm not being critical here. I'm highly in favour of this because it reduce healthcare costs in the UK. But on the flip side it's then absurd to argue that Brits don't want those jobs since we're actively suppressing wages. Like in the past Brits would work in the NHS if we allowed for labour competition. If the NHS was forced to pay more to attract labour then Brits would obviously want to work for the NHS again.

kypro 3y ago

> You mean the EU was in control of your borders before? To some extent yes. EU citizens did have the right to live and work in the UK prior to Brexit. Would you disagree with this? > I think you don't know how the EU works and what it can and can't do with your borders. To be clear, I didn't vote for Brexit for immigration reasons. I hold no opinion on immigration. I'm a hard-core libertarian so in my ideal world borders wouldn't even exist. But even if I did vote for brexit to reduce migration my point is that if politicians promised us that post-Brexit net-migration would be reduced (something which they would indisputably have the power to do), then again, why would it wrong to vote for that? Is it simply that it's naive to think that politicians will do what they say, or do you believe UK politicians cannot control UK borders so could not have made that promise? It seems you're making a different point – that the UK could have controlled their borders without leaving the EU – which even if true would be a different argument.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>To some extent yes. EU citizens did have the right to live and work in the UK prior to Brexit. Would you disagree with this? That was the free movement agrement within the EU which the UK agreed to when it joined the EU and when it voted to allow all other new members in. The EU didn't have direct control of your borders. The UK still had sovereignty to kick out all illegal people which had no right to enter the UK. I'm still baffled by the lack of understanding of Brits over their own borders.
- kypro 3y ago
  > That was the free movement agrement within the EU which the UK agreed to when it joined the EU > The UK still had sovereignty to kick out all illegal people which had no right to enter the UK I promise I'm not trying to misrepresent you here so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is your argument is as follows: The UK agreed to join the EU which as a requirement of it's membership means all EU citizens the right to live and work in the UK – we agree on this. But next I start to lose you. I think what you're saying is because we choose to join the EU and accept free move, we could therefore always choose to leave. So really we always had power to control our borders because we could always choose to leave the EU and not allow free movement? But the issue I'm having is that you also think it's silly to vote to leave the EU to control our borders? Additionally you added: > The UK still had sovereignty to kick out all illegal people which had no right to enter the UK. But what's your point here? EU citizens had the legal right to enter the UK as you noted above? Sorry if I'm being dense here lol.