Post-Brexit immigration: mission accomplished? • Hacker News Board

Re: Post-Brexit immigration: mission accomplished?

#41

Post by bb123 » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:09 AM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #15

That's by design, border control was a selling point of Brexit, as brexiters saw only the bad side of immigration. Which to be fair, is no seamless nor without challenges or cost. I suppose the rational is: • Diminish the friction that multi-culturalism and diversity integration can bring. • Free jobs for the local population. • Having to share less of lands, resources, and infrastructures. And I see the point, but i…

A couple of counterpoints (offered in good faith):

> - the UK needs the import/export flow it was used to pre-brexit to keep their current life style.

That is about goods, which are totally separate to immigration.

> - the current british population doesn't seem very motivation to take back the job they delegated to immigration.

Motivation has nothing to do with it. The employers offering these shitty jobs have gotten used to being able to pay poor wages to cheap imported labour. They need to pay more, and the jobs will be filled. Look at the wage growth of truck drivers as an example.

> - the UK education system sucks.

Disagree here. The UK punches way above its weight in terms of high end education institutions per capita (trailing only the US) The UK also has more STEM grads per capita than any European country.

Re: Post-Brexit immigration: mission accomplished?

#42

Post by adamcharnock » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:10 AM UTC

secretsatan wrote: post #18

Speaking as a UK immigrant to Switzerland, even though it is not in the EU, Brexit is just a massive pain. Switzerland has a somewhat strained relationship with the EU, but does have lots of bilateral agreements, like free movement in the Schengen zone, now I'm not even sure if I need a passport to cross the border to France for a day trip. Not to mention job prospects, it used to be Swiss, then EU then the rest of t…

> One of the stranger conversations you can have with uk expats is those that supported brexit and are now perplexed that they suffer consequences.

I had some of these conversations in Portugal in the lead-up to the Brexit vote. "Turkeys voting for Christmas," was a phrase that came to mind.

Re: Post-Brexit immigration: mission accomplished?

#43

Post by rich_sasha » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:10 AM UTC

klelatti wrote: post #12

The UK Home Office has long had a 'hostile environment' [1] policy so what's changed is essentially its extension to a wider group of people (EU nationals). When you combine this approach with administrative incompetence (eg but not limited to Windrush [2] where people who legally had the right to stay were deported to countries where they had never lived as adults) you get some very unpleasant situations indeed. Not…

Windrush was particularly cruel and frankly taking the piss. People were asked to justify their right to live in the UK with a piece of paper ("Landing card") that their parents may have received 50+ years prior on arrival to the UK.

Leaflets given to people deported to Jamaica (their parents' homeland) said things like "attitudes to foreigners can vary abroad, try to >, don't emphasise coming from Britain".

Re: Post-Brexit immigration: mission accomplished?

#44

Post by frereubu » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:10 AM UTC

beardedman wrote: post #30

A palpable amount of entitlement coming from the author. I like it (sarcasm). > can you account for all your international travels over the past 10 years Well, absolutely. > It has now become a long and challenging obstacle race It has, or is it maybe quite normal? > But it’s not only the UK — the United States has also made it difficult for founders to immigrate and settle in Silicon Valley. Like the new post-Brexit…

Just because someone has written about these difficulties, it doesn't mean that they're unaware of other people's difficulties. In fact I think it quite likely that they're a proponent of less border controls for people from developing countries.

Re: Post-Brexit immigration: mission accomplished?

#45

Post by reedf1 » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:12 AM UTC

klelatti wrote: post #12

The UK Home Office has long had a 'hostile environment' [1] policy so what's changed is essentially its extension to a wider group of people (EU nationals). When you combine this approach with administrative incompetence (eg but not limited to Windrush [2] where people who legally had the right to stay were deported to countries where they had never lived as adults) you get some very unpleasant situations indeed. Not…

The hostile environment policy is truly dystopian. I'm sure the design of this policy felt reasonable to a bureaucrat somewhere, but in effect the only practical way to tell if someone "might be foreign" is their race.

Re: Post-Brexit immigration: mission accomplished?

#46

Post by CaptainZapp » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:13 AM UTC

moogly wrote: post #27

> demands that are almost impossible to meet (can you account for all your international travels over the past 10 years?) Yes, easily. That's some hyperbolic braggadocio. If you're a maniacal globetrotter, sure, I can see it being annoying or maybe even difficult, but "almost impossible"? Get a grip.

I can account for all my intercontinental international travelling since 1980, since I kept all my passports.

But how would I ever be able to account for international trips, where id was sufficient (so no stamp) or didn't need id in the first place, which is mostly the case since 2008?

Re: Post-Brexit immigration: mission accomplished?

#47

Post by cameronh90 » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:13 AM UTC

rich_sasha wrote: post #4

Sad but true. I think the most fundamental change of Brexit is the overwhelming "you're not welcome" message. Visas, papers, bureaucrats, people can deal with. But the idea that you're at best tolerated so long as you pay your taxes is really off-putting (even for me, now UK citizen and long-time resident). Also, all these schemes forget that moving for a job is so much more than that - it is moving a life. Can you m…

As an alternate data point, my partner is a non-EU immigrant living in the UK. The immigration process was relatively straightforward, visa renewal was easy and she's rarely felt any hostility, unwelcoming or anyone looking down on her for being foreign.

We do live in London, however my family are from elsewhere so we've spent plenty of time in other parts.

Surveys generally say the UK and US attitude to immigrants is pretty similar, for example [1].

I'm not a fan of Brexit and wish it hadn't happened, but on the other hand I feel like the idea that there's been a huge anti-immigration shift in the UK to be exaggerated. If anything, our attitudes towards immigration have continued their trend of softening since the vote.

Most other countries around the world get to apply discretion over which immigrants can settle there - why is it wrong if the UK also gets to do that? The upset seems to be mostly from rich western EU citizens, bothered that they are no longer an exception and are now treated exactly as any other country. Many of our ethnically Indian citizens, for example, voted for Brexit.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/03/14/around-the-wor...

Re: Post-Brexit immigration: mission accomplished?

#48

Post by bserge » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:13 AM UTC

moogly wrote: post #27

> demands that are almost impossible to meet (can you account for all your international travels over the past 10 years?) Yes, easily. That's some hyperbolic braggadocio. If you're a maniacal globetrotter, sure, I can see it being annoying or maybe even difficult, but "almost impossible"? Get a grip.

He probably means proof. I can remember where I've been, I have very little evidence though.

Re: Post-Brexit immigration: mission accomplished?

#49

Post by collaborative » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:13 AM UTC

frereubu wrote: post #36

collaborative wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to hear that this happened to you. Brexit also put a lot of psychological pressure on my wife. She's from a Baltic country, but during Brexit, she'd constantly be asked if she was Polish for no reason at all. -"Hi, nice to meet you" -"Hi, are you Polish?" Nothing against Polish people of course, but it made her start to gradually lose it. Each new instance would bring tears for days Luckily, it seems Brexit…

There is a divide between attitudes to continental Europeans in the UK though. I'm British and my wife is Spanish, and although she feels much more unwelcome now it's nothing compared to some of the racially-charged rubbish that I've heard people openly say about people from eastern European countries.

True. I am Spanish myself and feel super welcome, unlike my wife (although I have an American accent which makes it easier for me to disguise I guess). My ears cringe each time I hear things like "Beast from the east", let alone "PIIGS". It's a cultural/media problem

Re: Post-Brexit immigration: mission accomplished?

#50

Post by rich_sasha » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:14 AM UTC

JetSetWilly wrote: post #31

rich_sasha wrote: post #4

Sad but true. I think the most fundamental change of Brexit is the overwhelming "you're not welcome" message. Visas, papers, bureaucrats, people can deal with. But the idea that you're at best tolerated so long as you pay your taxes is really off-putting (even for me, now UK citizen and long-time resident). Also, all these schemes forget that moving for a job is so much more than that - it is moving a life. Can you m…

> 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 i…

> 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.