German And EU Immigration

He [Ukip's Nigel Farage] told a Ukip hustings: “What we have got is a massive oversupply in the labour market which has driven down wages. We have literally made this country now the cheap labour economy of the European Union."

He added that migration had benefited the rich and multinational firms because it meant “cheaper chauffeurs, cheaper gardeners and cheaper nannies”.

An academic study today calculated that migrant workers from the EU had contributed far more in tax than they had claimed in benefits over a decade.

It found that immigrants who arrived since 2000 were 43 per cent less likely than UK-born workers to receive state benefits or tax credits and seven per cent less likely to live in social housing.

And it suggested the newcomers were more highly educated than the UK average.

It is rather logical that migrants worker over a decade contribute more in tax than they claim in benefits. Migrant workers are usually young and healthy and finished their education.

A "native"person got child benefits until 18? then benefits to study, money for sickleave, for being unable to work, when retire the list is long.
It is a pro migrant statistic. One should compare a migrant worker and a "native " worker with the same job and living conditions.

But how about the migrant worker and the average worker in his own country?

Does this statistic work the other way too? A British migrant worker is better educated than the average native worker ?
I think it does.

Immigrants from the 10 countries that joined the EU in 2004 contributed more to the UK than they took out in benefits, according to a new study.

They added £4.96bn more in taxes in the years to 2011 than they took out in public services, the report produced by University College London (UCL) found.

We've had waves of immigration since the 1950s, but they've mostly been to cities. People living in the leafy shires who vote Conservative have been unaffected. Now East Europeans are moving into areas where David Cameron's voters live and he's running scared.

Despite the current debate surrounding immigration and national identity, England has for centuries been “nonchalant” about its "Englishness" and tolerant of other cultures, according to a major new history.

The conclusions, published tomorrow in the first single-volume history of England to be produced on this scale in almost a century, suggest that since Anglo Saxon times, the country has been reluctant to assert English nationalism. It says immigration is as much a part of the nation's psyche as “thatched cottages and cream teas”.

Renowned historian Professor Robert Tombs, who wrote The English and Their History, which delves back over the past 1,300 years, told The Independent that in recent decades “the English have largely accommodated the changes brought by moral pluralism and multi-ethnicity, incorporating them into new varieties of Englishness.
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According to his new book, the rhetoric of Eurosceptics also stands in stark contrast to historical fact. Only between King Alfred and King Cnut, and then during the Tudor period (along with Wales), did England operate as an isolated political entity, he points out in his book.

Commenting on the prominence of immigration as a political issue, the historian said: “Political extremism, alienation, cynicism, xenophobia - all feed off pessimism, the idea of England in decline, drifting out of control. Our history shows us that we have been a lucky and successful country. We are not a country in decline.” The past “should remind us that our fortunes have always been made by openness to the world”.

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