What is your experience of living in an area with high levels of immigrants?

Question

"Migrants to the UK bring valuable skills and ideas with them and help to fill job vacancies where Britons are unable or unwilling to do so."Their taxes help pay for our public services and our pensions, long after many migrants have returned home." Quote from ITN.

What do you think? In my area I see organised criminal gangs who have travelled here on false passports and with fake id's have managed to fraudulantly acquire mortgages - install all their gang members and turn a brand new development into a crime ridden, unsociable lawless area in 6 months. I can't see that they are contributing anything positive at all, either financially, economically or socially. Unfortunately what I see and experience is the destruction of a community, and I can see it in other areas of London too, it's not a race issue, it's attitude and many come here to commit crime. Some cultures are clearly more driven to be successful, honest and hard working than others - what is your experience?

Answer 1

Are you talking about legal or illegal immigrants?

In my area, the legal ones are benifiting the community. They are hard workers and contribute just as much as any other person around them. As long as they aren't sending the money to family south of the border for the money to be spent there, I am happy. As far as I am concerned, they are Americans the same as the rest of us.

On the other hand, the illegals are posing a big problem that I don't like. I work in a county jail/correctional facility so I get to have my fair share of run ins with them. People do not realize that it costs money each day to just house these inmates. That money goes to electricity, water, food, and several other things. When they are arrested for a crime, they are brought into jail and sit there until they have court and then get to sit in jail or prison until their time is served. Do you know how much that costs us hardworking Americans in tax dollars?

Aside from the justice system, most people only hear about the problems that they pose with the educational system, the health care system, and the economy. So of course they are a slow destruction to a community. People just don't get to see it cause the effects of it aren't where everyone can see it, nor do people want to pay attention to it.

Answer 2

I live in Longsight, Manchester, one of the most mixed areas of the city. It has the same kind of problems that any inner city area does, though things seem to have improved over the years. We had loads of empty houses before, fires every night, the whole place was falling apart, but now it's pretty thriving. Even the weather seems a bit better (global warming???).

Some immigrants are scumbags; some locals are scumbags. Most immigrants have given up a lot to try and make a better life for themselves in an honest way, and they put up with a lot of cr@p for not much reward.

It's amazing if you ever get on a really early bus, like 5am, almost everyone on it is African, the Brits are tucked up warm in bed mostly, or if they are going to work they've got nice cars.

There are criminal immigrants. The answer is not to bash immigrants, but to tackle all criminals properly. If I get mugged, or hit with a beer bottle, or whatever, do you think I really care whether the crim is an immigrant or not? and by the way, immigrants are far more likely to be victims of crime than Brits - they're vulnerable, live in the most dangerous areas, do the riskiest jobs, and get picked on by yobs and bigots.

Give immigrants a break - they're no different than the Brits that live in other countries, except they're usually.

Answer 3

I can't speak for other countries (UK, etc.) but in the US, there is too much ILLEGAL immigration and not enough done about it. This has to make the LEGAL immigrants very angry. Currently, the problem seems to be centered upon the Mexican immigrants. This country can not handle, financially, the ILLEGALS. They are bringing the system down (i.e. using the emerg. med. systems, etc. for free) and the LEGALS are paying for it. We are going broke. To top it off, most of the above mentioned Illegals seem to think that this is OK? OK for them, they know a good deal when they see it. What they seem to want to do is come to the US and then continue to act as if they were in Mexico. They take advantage of the benefits (they wouldn't come here if there weren't any) but still insist on speaking spanish, flying the Mexican flag, etc. as if they were still living in Mexican. Well, you can't have it both ways although it seems that they can as they are getting away with it right now.

How can you reason with someone who doesn't want to be reasonable? We do not owe Illegals anything. They have no rights if they are illegal. Where did this idea come from? If Mexico is so great, then go back.

I disagree with the argument that the illegals will do the work that legals won't do. Alot of students need some of this work to survive. The ACLU takes their (Illegals) cause and the taxpayers (legals) pay their salary. You don't think that the ACLU does this for free do you? So much more to say and not enough time or room here.

I know that this answer will not be well received and will get alot of thumbs down reports. Know this: my grandparents were immigrants (legal). They realized that to make it in the US (lots of opportunity here), they had to learn the language and start working hard to move up. They did just that. They were never rich, wealthy people but they didn't do so bad. Their families receive the benefits (me included). They didn't insist that their children be taught in school using their original language. They didn't insist on continuing to live in their former culture although we knew where we came from.

ILLGEALS are just users. Starting a new life in a new country by breaking the law doesn't seem too smart. Unfortunately, the Mexican government encourages this. They are very corrupt and they benefit from the US money that is sent back to them. Who cares if it is legal or not?

OK, bring on all of the arguments. I expect them...I also expect, as usual, that they not make sense.

Answer 4

My parents moved here in the 1950's when England was seen as a land of opportunity to work hard and make money. Nowdays it feel as though people move here for a meal ticket.
I have lived here all my life and work hard for what i've got. We bought our house 2 years ago in London (the rough part) because we wanted a house not a flat and couldn't afford anywhere else.
It makes me sick that the majority of people that live round me don't work and seem to have newer cars and better things then me when most of the time my taxes pay for them!
I think this is why racism is on the up again. When i go out now i get told to go back to my own country and things like that all because of my dark hair and appearance (you can see that i am not English) and these comments have started because of migrants coming here to milk the system!!

Answer 5

I think you will find the Brits are much more into crime than immigrants, as they are usually here to earn cash to send back to the family in Poland etc. Yes, some organised gangs do exist but you need to keep a sense of proportion and treat news headlines with a pinch of salt - or should that be spade?

Answer 6

We have over a million people not working (possibly a lot more, because of the sneaky ways that the government calculate these figures), 60 million people crammed into mostly cities, causing them to become hellholes (London in particular), an NHS which can't cope with what we have now, police and justice system which is not doing what people want it to (lock up scumbags for LONG periods of time - not serve 5 years for brutal murder) and we are STILL importing more and more people. Why? Where will it end? How will end?

Answer 7

I live in the US and I feel your frustration. There are many illegals here, not only from Mexico. What bothers me most about them is that many don't try to fit in. They don't appreciate this country and are not shy to say so. It's our governments fault though. They don't keep track of those who came as tourists and then stayed.
In the UK, I understand, it's also a big problem. The laws who protect even the legal immigrants have to be changed to protect your culture and the survival of your country.

Answer 8

All you have to do is change the name of the country and you have the USA ..Except 10 to 12 million illegal aliens don't even try to falsify documents to sneak across our under guarded borders.They use the same propaganda about doing jobs Americans wont do.After they are here they are either hired to work for cash(so no taxes taken out) or they steal,buy,borrow,and duplicate ID including social security cards to work "legally". And obtain public entitlements such as welfare.Because they accept wages far below what a legal American will accept and demand no benefits,unscrupulous employers will hire them, even tho it is a federal felony to do so.It seems our government turns a blind eye to theses illegal aliens.Although the illegal aliens insist its only about race (more than half of the illegals are Hispanic)it is simply about the damage and the costs to our city's,our states and to our country.This so called "cheap labor" costs billions to this nation each year.We here in the USA welcome legal immigrants from all nations but the illegal aliens from any where are not welcome and must be deported and not given amnesty as they were in 1987.
Within 5 years after that amnesty we had twice as many more illegal aliens as we had that were given amnesty.America is drowning under this tidal wave of unwanted,unwelcome,unneeded illegal aliens.God help both our nations before they both become 3rd world country's.

Answer 9

The town I live outside of is apparently one of the most racial in all the UK.(I didn't know this when I bought my farm). Apparently, when non-whites move into the area, mysterious fires happen. This has been corroberated by more than a few people in the local. There's two chippies, two chinese, and a pizza place, but apparently none of the owners live there. I have an Indian (4th gen.Brit) friend near one of my rental properties and he refuses to meet me for a beer in my town. You never see non-whites out for a drink. I don't know if this is good or bad. We do have yobs though, but they only drink in the cheap pub(it's a dump), so it's fairly peaceful.

Answer 10

I live in a fairly immigrant rich place in Finland- there are somalian women walking around in their burkas a lot, and I frequently hear french, english, russian and swedish on the metro.

It's a place with cheap apartments, yes. But I've seen no criminalization of foreign minority groups, and the criminal minded people I see are most likely natives.

Of course, if one would rate the loud playing of horrible Turkish disco music as a crime, then it might be a different matter!
As for hard working successful cultures- Finns are right at the top of all efficiency lists, higher than any other European ethnicity group.