The Left Wing Immigration - Unemployment Paradox

In a conversation with a left leaning friend of mine I raised the idea that two main left ideas may well be incompatible.

Basically we were discussing unemployment and particularly his belief that most people who were unemployed wanted a job but that there were simply not enough jobs available for them - and therefore that Labour's new jobs for kids policy is set to magically solve unemployment. This led me to question another conversation we had at an earlier date that immigration is not detrimental to the UK, particularly the lower paid sections of the country.

My argument went that if as he claimed the majority of people that are unemployed want to work and are therefore unable to work as there are no jobs available then it stands to reason that one contributing factor is immigration, in fact with unemployment standing at 7.1% and foreign born (Employable) residents of the UK standing at 11.5% it necessarily follows that unemployment would be solved if it wasn't for immigration.

However if Immigration isn't an issue and the immigrants are coming here and doing jobs that nobody else wants then it necessarily follows that the unemployed are at least partly unemployed by choice. It should be a case that it is always easier to hire local staff over foreign staff as they have the language, cultural and society awareness that will aid in training and working life. 

Is Immigration Good or Bad for the UK?

With the opening of the EU to Bulgarian and Romanians there is a great deal of talk over immigration and the argument always seems to fall on the question of "Is immigration good or bad for the UK?" 

Personally my answer to this would be Yes, of course immigration is both good and bad for the UK, after all just about everything that happens will have a positive and negative effect depending on who you are and what you are looking at. Immigration brings many wonderful things with it it terms of diversity and bringing in hard working people that are able to contribute to our society. However there is also potential for it to have negative effects especially for people who are out of work and now have a wider pool of competition and there will obviously be strains on a local economy if we have a situation where there are not enough houses being built for the demand, it is obvious increasing demand would have a negative effect if supply is not also increased.

I do think it is quite funny however when I read articles like this one from Left foot forward and they make the claim that immigration is not a bad thing as

2) Migrants from Eastern Europe are less likely to claim benefits than indigenous Britons
*Not a direct quote as I spell checked it first

Now this "fact" doesn't surprise me at all as I have never believed that people will travel halfway across the world just to live on benefits as after all being an Immigrant takes guts and determination and these are not the qualities of people who want a life on benefits, I think it is much more likely that the migrants who are on benefits came here looking for a better life but instead were sucked into our welfare poverty trap.

My issue with the fact is that if they are saying migrants are less likely to claim benefits than indigenous Britons then are they saying that those indigenous Britons are claiming benefits instead of working, as a life choice? Surely if we are to look at the fact that migrants are in work and not claiming benefits as a success then we should surely recognize that the swing side of this is that indigenous Brits are choosing not to work.
After all if British people are being forced onto benefits due to immigration then this benefit bill needs to be offset against the tax revenues paid by migrants (If the unemployed British were working then the tax revenues would be the same.)

To be honest this backs up what I have found from my own experience so I am not surprised however I have often read from Left Wing commentators that nobody wants to be on benefits but there aren't enough jobs to go round - surely this would therefore create a direct negative to having migration.

Unfortunately I think the truth is that many people who hold both of these incompatible opinions is that:

Migration is good as migrants tend to vote for left wing parties and unemployment is good as the unemployed tend to vote for left wing parties.

For my two-pence worth, I think migration is a great thing and should be encouraged and the answer to the concerns of overcrowding is that we should be getting out there ourselves and understanding a bit of the world outside our own borders. 

Movie Review: Mosters

Final film I am going to review today (Or the first if you are reading the posts as displayed on the blog) is for Monsters, There have been many comparisons between last years District 9 and Monsters, both stories are about a world where Aliens have arrived and are looking to be contained, there are obvious parallels looking at the subjects of racial disharmony (District 9 being a reflection of South African racial tension) and of illegal immigration (Mexico is being decimated by the Monster Attacks whilst the US has built a giant wall to keep them out) however Monsters is much more a film about the relationship of two strangers during a stressful time rather than a film about the Aliens, it is in fact this interplay that is explored along with (Apparently unintentionally) the subject of Cross border Immigration.

Gareth Edwards Directs in what is his biggest released movie to date, although still was filmed with a very small budget and staring real life couple and relatively unknown actors Scott McNairy and Whitney Able the film was mostly shot with just the two leads, a sound engineer and the Director and it is this intimacy which comes across in the filming as the giant octopi blending into the background of the story and being more the catalyst of the story rather than the story itself. The main issue with focusing so much on the story however is that the plot has holes bigger enough for the hundred foot squid aliens to walk easily through.

Firstly McNairy is told by his boss that he has to ensure that Able gets safely back to America, we are led to believe that Able’s father is a media mogul and that she is wearing an engagement ring that is worth over ten thousand pounds. There is also at no point any kind of information given that any of these aliens can fly. Both of these points lead me to question why on ensuring that she is safe and with Monster activity in the area why would he decide that the best way to ensure her safety was to head as close to the infected zone as possible to place her on a ferry, whilst an important plot point as if they are not there how would they end up having to try and cross the zone over land, surely the smart money would have been to head south to an airport and fly back to the states. There are constant Air Force flights taking place over the infected zone but even so there must be some kind of domestic flights which go around the zone? Eventually they enter into the zone and are carried across most of the zone until being left on their own after a monster attack; luckily they have a great sense of direction so are still able to find their way to the wall that marks the border in a very short amount of time. On arriving at the wall you start to think that their troubles have only just started as the wall is a few hundred feet tall and stretching as far as the eye can see, one of their guides a little earlier when talking about the wall states that in fact America is actually more like a prison trapping themselves in rather than keeping others out (Again the Director says that he did not intend it to be a commentary on immigration, which I find hard to believe.) However it is nothing like a Prison after all they can still get to Canada or the rest of the world – And as I say there must be a way to get to Mexico even if you have to fly around the zone. Anyway having made it to the wall they walk for what appears to be half an hour and find a massive gap in the wall where there is a small check point and after climbing about 12 feet (keep in mind this fence was built to keep out 100ft tall Aliens) they are able to walk into America only to discover the shocking news that this part of the US has been over run (or possibly lightly stepped over.)

The film has a few very good visuals of the Aliens right at the end although the tentacles searching the room shows that this film is not completely immune to Hollywood fashions (Skyline and War of the Worlds to name just a couple.) I would say that the main performances make this a worthy attempt at a compelling story but that I do not believe that it was not intended as a commentary on American immigration policy (Although if it was the final message appears to be that if you let immigrants in they will destroy your country and have sex in your petrol stations.) and the story that was used to add background was not thought out well enough to hold the plot in place, the small focus during a big event is very popular at the moment but unfortunately Edwards is not M. Night Shyamalan.

I would say however I disagree with the comment made by the person sat behind me in the cinema “That was the worst movie released this year.” But I guess he never saw The Other Guys!