Brexit just keeps getting better
February 18, 2020 7:49 PM   Subscribe

UK to close door to non-English speakers and unskilled workers, headline from the Guardian. According to the article, the plan would be for a points based system for work visas, with the ability to speak English worth 10 points out of the required 70.

A graphic in the article shows the breakdown of non-UK workers by industry, with construction and factory work taking the lead at 21%. The article mentions an older article, where Pret-a-Manger pointed out that only 1 in 50 applicants in their shops are British.
posted by Ghidorah (161 comments total) 39 users marked this as a favorite
 
Take that, Wales!
posted by Sys Rq at 8:04 PM on February 18, 2020 [42 favorites]


“If anyone’s going to do our nation’s shit work, it’s gonna be Britons!”

Hmmm, well, it might hasten the Revolution.
Carry on then.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 8:27 PM on February 18, 2020 [6 favorites]


Australia has the same points system, including the requirement for a particular grade on the IELTS English exam. Having a degree in English from an Australian university doesn't exempt you if your passport isn't from one of a small list of countries.

I'm surprised UK has waited this long. Whenever people panic about it I bitterly laugh because punitive measures like these have been in place across the world for decades but people never get past the initial week of OUTRAGE to actually do anything about changing the system.
posted by divabat at 8:28 PM on February 18, 2020 [20 favorites]


Canada has a points system, too, in which language (either English or French) counts for a lot (though the language bit can get complicated).
posted by clawsoon at 8:34 PM on February 18, 2020 [9 favorites]


Canada has a points system, but we also have a multitude of systems for "temporary foreign workers", migratory farm workers, provincial (regional) programs and targeted measures. Skilled workers/points entrants get one set of standards, the low skilled jobs are much more precarious and get filled by migrants and people who aren't allowed to stay. The TFWs (and others) are largely Mexican and SEAsian populations.

There is sometimes a way to convert a TFW into permanent status. It often depends on how generous the government of the day is feeling. It's one of the major things governments like to monkey with.
posted by bonehead at 8:35 PM on February 18, 2020 [11 favorites]


bonehead: the low skilled jobs get filled by migrants and people who aren't allowed to stay. The TFWs (and others) are largely Mexican and SEAsian populations.

I read recently that the Canadian system for whether agricultural workers had a straightforward path to citizenship magically changed from "yes" to "no" right around the time that the majority of them started coming from the Caribbean and Latin America instead of Europe.
posted by clawsoon at 8:41 PM on February 18, 2020 [16 favorites]


O mo chreach! Mar sin chan urrainn dhomh a dhol thairis air an uisge?
posted by speug at 9:02 PM on February 18, 2020 [16 favorites]


there's no official competition for Worst Country in the World but tell that to the entire Anglosphere
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:19 PM on February 18, 2020 [87 favorites]


This was one of the reasons Brexit was pushed. Cruelty to immigrants, and nativism they couldn’t get away with before.
posted by azpenguin at 9:34 PM on February 18, 2020 [28 favorites]


Good luck getting those bedpans changed on a timely basis, lads.
posted by praemunire at 9:43 PM on February 18, 2020 [26 favorites]


Canada has a points system, but we also have a multitude of systems for "temporary foreign workers", migratory farm workers, provincial (regional) programs and targeted measures.

Ah so you get to have an exclusionary immigration system while enjoying the benefits of exploiting a permanent underclass! Ingenious!

We do the same thing in the U.S. but on a strictly informal basis.
posted by chrchr at 10:27 PM on February 18, 2020 [33 favorites]


As a British national with extended family there, I can only see the self-imposed, racist demise of the UK as not only inevitable, but something that might help save people's livelihoods — and souls — by forcing them to look inwards, after a series of one horrible Tory decision after another. Once the economy collapses, my hope is that something new and better might rise from the ashes, and that my fellow Brits will never ever again support right-wing extremists and con artists, who have dragged a once-great nation with many possibilities straight into the mud.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:30 PM on February 18, 2020 [8 favorites]


Canada's TFW program is a bit better than this -- the permit is for 7 years, and is renewable. While people used to be tied to a single employer, I think that's been dropped, so there's less opportunity for exploitation. There's separate categories for agricultural workers and seafood cannery workers and child care/elder care workers: the latter one often winds up with people getting PR.

There is a 'Canadian Experience' line towards permanent residence, but it's skewed towards people with high-level skills. Getting a Canadian post-secondary education will open that door too.
posted by jrochest at 10:46 PM on February 18, 2020 [5 favorites]


Preparing for the apocalypse -

it’s all about the upcoming masses of climate refugees
posted by growabrain at 10:55 PM on February 18, 2020 [12 favorites]


I'm surprised UK has waited this long.

There was that pesky brexit thing that effectively needed to happen first. There were also good reasons so many of us opposed (and oppose) it so vehemently.
posted by Dysk at 11:05 PM on February 18, 2020 [7 favorites]


As a British national with extended family there, I can only see the self-imposed, racist demise of the UK as not only inevitable, but something that might help save people's livelihoods — and souls — by forcing them to look inwards, after a series of one horrible Tory decision after another.

"one horrible Tory decision after another" is pretty much what we've had since 2010. In response to this, Britain looked inwards and found racism and brexit.
posted by Dysk at 11:09 PM on February 18, 2020 [37 favorites]


Normally in these circumstances, they go "whoops, we fucked up, this guy is an obvious nut, we've fired him".

Here is how he got hired in the first place, and there are plenty more like him, just waiting to be weeded out, or of course promoted into positions of power and influence.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 11:22 PM on February 18, 2020 [1 favorite]


uh, China has lifted 800 thousand Chinese out of poverty in the last 30 years.

I saw what you did there.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 11:52 PM on February 18, 2020 [3 favorites]


It's partly racism but mainly just xenophobia. The English have never much liked foreigners. I know several Canadians -- former students and friends -- who went to the UK, studied, worked, fell in love, got married and had babies, only to be told after many years that they were no longer welcome and had to get out. This usually resulted in the English husband or wife abandoning the UK for Canada, of course.
posted by jrochest at 11:58 PM on February 18, 2020 [7 favorites]


Once the economy collapses, my hope is that something new and better might rise from the ashes

Dunno, a pretty typical thought progression seems to be "things are bad, and one party is proactively blaming lazy people, tax cuts, and foreigners! Sounds good to me." Or "things are bad, must look out for myself and to hell with anyone else." I mean, the state of the NHS was used as a major pro-Brexit argument by the same people who've been defunding it all along, and some of the same are using its resultant weakness as an argument to get rid of it altogether.

Is there a table somewhere comparing different countries' rules on immigration and paths to citizenship?
posted by trig at 12:09 AM on February 19, 2020 [6 favorites]


Border control will no longer accept ID cards from countries such as France and Italy. This, it is understood, is an attempt to clamp down on non-EU workers beating the system with forged or stolen ID cards.

These are valid forms of ID in both countries! Many people have only an ID card and not a passport *facepalm*
posted by ellieBOA at 12:20 AM on February 19, 2020 [3 favorites]


Just as it’s often not clear from the articles: the UK has had a points-based immigration system since 2008 for people outside of the EU (or more exactly the EEA). This is an overhaul of that to apply to all and to amend some of the rules in light of stopping free movement in the EEA.

I think (accepting Brexit) both of those were necessarily going to happen. Of course the implementation is ridiculous, and seeing people purely as economic units is a black mark against our age, but there you go.
posted by Hartster at 12:49 AM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


They are going to wreck the UK, and they know it, they aren't even hiding it.
Why would anyone do that? Well, the first purpose is to sell out all remaining valuables belonging to the government/the people just like in the east after the fall of the Sovjet Union. NHS is top of that list. Someone will get to be oligarchs out of that scheme.
The second purpose is to create a lumpenproletariat, who will take any jobs at any wages. The upper class has never recovered from losing their servants after the wars, and now they will put an end to that humiliation.
With those two in place, the long term strategy is the Singapore on the Channel tax haven plan we've heard so much about.

They know Brexit will be a permanent blow to the economy, but they don't care. They see how their friends in the US and in Russia and other failed states can have very comfortable lives while the proles are struggling.

This isn't news. The odd thing is why so many people voted against their own interests.
posted by mumimor at 12:54 AM on February 19, 2020 [50 favorites]


It's partly racism but mainly just xenophobia

Bugger off with that "just" - it isn't a lesser or less serious bigotry, and frankly, not cleanly separable from racism.
posted by Dysk at 12:58 AM on February 19, 2020 [40 favorites]


This isn't news. The odd thing is why so many people voted against their own interests.

Well, it's very reductive to say that a lot of British people (particularly English people) are stupid and xenophobic - but after you cut through a huge amount of post hoc rationalisation, it turns out mainly that a lot of British people are stupid and xenophobic, and quite a few are racist too.

E.g. random brexiteer on twitter: "Absolutely disgusting service at Schipol airport. 55 minutes we have been stood in the immigration queue. This isn't the Brexit I voted for."
and
"I didn't vote to stand in a queue for over an hour why some jobsworth checks our passports. I spent more time at immigration than I did in the air getting to my destination."

(Amsterdam hasn't implemented any Brexit-related travel changes yet, because of the transition and Freedom of Movement is still in effect and it was actually because of staff training, but this will no doubt be a regular occurance once Brexit is implemented - "I didn't vote for this bad thing I was warned about, I'm English and thus *special* and foreigners should act like it!")
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 1:08 AM on February 19, 2020 [42 favorites]


Like, good luck trying to explain how people from Ireland, since they might share a skin colour with people of British heritage, can't have been victims of racism. All of it is "just" xenophobia.
posted by Dysk at 1:10 AM on February 19, 2020 [3 favorites]




my hope is that something new and better might rise from the ashes, and that my fellow Brits will never ever again support right-wing extremists and con artists, who have dragged a once-great nation with many possibilities straight into the mud.

I kind of get this feeling too. At this point I get the feeling Britain, and England in particular, needs to suffer something terrible to learn its lesson.
posted by Chaffinch at 1:34 AM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


When the fuck did half of mefi become accelerationists?
posted by Dysk at 1:45 AM on February 19, 2020 [58 favorites]


Accelerationist implies I want it and will do nothing to stop it
posted by Chaffinch at 1:52 AM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


my hope is that something new and better might rise from the ashes, and that my fellow Brits will never ever again support right-wing extremists and con artists, who have dragged a once-great nation with many possibilities straight into the mud

There would certainly have been many Germans in the 1940s hoping for the same thing.

"Never ever again" generally turns out to be "in about three generations".
posted by flabdablet at 1:53 AM on February 19, 2020 [27 favorites]


Accelerationist implies I want it and will do nothing to stop it

That is what suggesting that it is necessary means, yes.
posted by Dysk at 2:07 AM on February 19, 2020 [5 favorites]


And with the EU said to be adding an Elgin Marbles clause to the trade talks, "taking back control" turns out to mean "handing back the plunder".
posted by epo at 2:11 AM on February 19, 2020 [10 favorites]


it turns out mainly that a lot of British people are stupid and xenophobic, and quite a few are racist too.

Yes, but. I think many people are ignorant rather than stupid, and while theoretically everyone in a democracy has a duty to be informed, practically that can be difficult when media and politicians are not acting in good faith. It turns out that all of our institutions are built on the fundamental premise that most of our leaders and our sources of information are mostly truthful and doing the best they can to keep us all safe and comfortable.
Recently I read a Trump supporter commenting in some random comments section that "obviously the President has access to information we don't" (explaining why he was doing something that is obviously idiotic) and suddenly I could see how the world looks from the perspective of a person who is uninformed and trusts the system.
No democracy in the West (apart maybe from Germany, for obvious reasons) is prepared to deal with someone like Johnson, who literally doesn't care at all about the people who voted for him or about the UK. It's not about left or right. Thatcher was in my opinion an evil woman, with bad politics. But I believe that she herself thought she was doing the best for the UK, and that she respected the institutions of democracy. People who voted for Thatcher got what they voted for. People who have voted for Brexit at the referendum and for the Tories at the GE have no idea what they voted for and they will be shocked by the coming wreckage. But they still may blame the foreigners rather than the government.
posted by mumimor at 2:11 AM on February 19, 2020 [27 favorites]


So, a native Welsh speaker from Argentina wouldn't get those points?
posted by acb at 2:22 AM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


When the fuck did half of mefi become accelerationists?

We're not the ones driving the bus Dysk. I can understand why people would hope that when it all crashes horribly - and it absolutely will with this lot in charge - there will be a sudden cathartic outbreak of sanity and realisation that This was a Bad Idea.

I don't think it will. The mindset that lead to Brexit is that "Others" are responsible for most bad things; "elites" i.e. people in London and anyone with a better job, "foreigners" for "taking" houses, benefits, jobs and Dr's appointments away from them, "scroungers" who just sit lazy on benefits all day, "EU bureaucrats" for pettifogging rules telling us what to do etc etc

When it all goes to shit in oh, about 10 months, the blame isn't going to go on the people that actually caused this all (including themselves) it's going to be focused even harder on the blameless. The EU for 'punishing us', immigrants for existing, remainers for sabotaging brexit from within because they're not properly British, mandarins in whitehall undermining the govt etc etc etc. We've already seen all of this already, and it will get worse. The leaders of Brexit have harnessed a really dark side of the country, and I doubt those who've already neatly divided the world into Us And Them are suddenly going to realise they've been had for fools.

Take for example, Priti Patel's comments this morning.

"In a round of television and radio interviews, she said 8 million people between the ages of 16 and 64 were “economically inactive” and could be given the skills to do jobs in sectors where there were shortages as a result of the new points-based system."

The actual unemployment rate is under 1.3 million. Most of her 8 million are students, people in training, those caring for dependents and unable to work more, the disabled etc. Of the actually unemployed, a number are only temporarily unemployed, others are in areas with few jobs (or only shit 0-hours ones), and some are just, well, unemployable.

The idea that 20%!! of the working-age population is sitting there waiting to be trained up to work 12 hours a day picking turnips or wiping bums or whatever is just so literally wrong to be laughable. But of course, it will be business' fault, lazy benefit claimants fault etc when the inevitable worse staff shortages bite in hospitals, agriculture, the care industry etc not the government's new draconian immigration system, of course.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 2:22 AM on February 19, 2020 [51 favorites]


mumimor, they *will* blame the foreigners rather than accepting that voting for Brexit in the referendum wasn't thought through because it was, for the most part, sticking two fingers up to Cameron's Tories over austerity.
posted by epo at 2:27 AM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


When the fuck did half of mefi become accelerationists?

Sharks like Trump and Putin (and their cadre of oligarchs) are already circling the chum bucket that is now the UK. There's nothing to accelerate, which a very slight minority of British hadn't already chose for themselves — and everyone else.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:36 AM on February 19, 2020 [3 favorites]


It has been noted, that if you wanted to cut the NHS and adjacent social services off at the knees then THIS is a great single swipe way to achieve that.

Once the creaky health care infrastructure starts crumbling then those already primed can carve it up into Nice Profitable packages and sell it off to their business friends.

Earning Figures from the tweet of a Doctor in Oxford [UK]

Under Boris Johnson’s new rules anyone earning less than £25.6k is an unskilled worker.

NHS starting salaries:

Nurse £24.2k
Paramedic 24.2k
Midwife £24.2k
Radiographer £24.2k
Care assistant £17.6k
Physiotherapist £24.2k
Occupational therapist £24.2k



So this has the compound multiple effects of being hideously racist, economically stupid, will demonstrably decrease the quality of life for people who need social healthcare AND horribly undermining the NHS
posted by Faintdreams at 3:04 AM on February 19, 2020 [56 favorites]


That is what suggesting that it is necessary means, yes.

As a possibility, not a wish. Seeing the bus head for the cliff and knowing what might happen doesn't make me want it.
posted by Chaffinch at 3:34 AM on February 19, 2020 [3 favorites]


Tweet by David Henig:

Non-expert comment - the government's proposed immigration system is attempting to apply a simple system to a highly complex issue and will therefore either fail or become irrelevant through multiple exemptions and special cases
posted by epo at 3:41 AM on February 19, 2020


Meanwhile, in Scotland ...

(Sturgeon: New UK immigration rules ‘devastating for Scotland’—the Scottish government has been screaming for more immigration for years and has been totally sidelined by the Tories.)

Sigh. Yet another incentive to vote "leave" in IndyRef2.

(Edit for clarification: Polling now puts support for Scottish independence in the range 50-53%, and as we now know, a 52/48 majority in a non-binding referendum mandating massive constitutional change means case closed, get it done! ... but that was before the reshuffle, and this shitbaggery, and all the rest of the toxic eugenic seepage leaking from the Tory collective subconscious. I'm calling it for 60% support for independence within a year if they carry on like this. The only way to prevent it will be to liquidate the Scottish government, which would be ... well, Yugoslavia 1991-92 comes to mind.)
posted by cstross at 3:42 AM on February 19, 2020 [29 favorites]


The accelerationists are in the government. I think we are all horrified and depressed by what is happening now.
A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress

By Walter Benjamin, a German philosopher and Jew in 1940
posted by mumimor at 3:47 AM on February 19, 2020 [12 favorites]


I don't think the Tories are hoping to make everything so terrible that a socialist revolution becomes inevitable...

Of course not. Some of them are hoping everything becomes so terrible an authoritarian takeover becomes inevitable.
posted by mumimor at 3:57 AM on February 19, 2020 [14 favorites]


The future is (map of Russia); it's just not evenly distributed yet.
posted by acb at 3:59 AM on February 19, 2020 [7 favorites]


Of course not. Some of them are hoping everything becomes so terrible an authoritarian takeover becomes inevitable.

I dunno, it's the authoritarian takeover that's making everything shit. They don't need to ruin everything first - the ruin is the consequence, not the precondition.
posted by Dysk at 4:08 AM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


Looks like I got my indefinite leave to remain just in time. Of course, now I'm a permanent resident of the littlest of Englands. I feel like Bad Luck Brian.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:10 AM on February 19, 2020 [9 favorites]


To be fair, the murdocracies seem to be leading the race towards Putinist authoritarian kleptocracy. Continental Europe is still safe for now, though this may change (looks anxiously at the Nazis being the second-highest-polling party in Sweden, and AfD making inroads in Germany).
posted by acb at 4:16 AM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


You have to assume stupidity not malice for most of the political actions of conservatives - there’s the occasional bad actor, motivated by ego, but mostly these actions come from a place of genuine concern and a belief in the ideology of neoliberal capitalist wealth being Good.

Also please stop ghoulishly wishing for the break-up and violent revolution of the UK. To quote a hero of the boomer age: this is not going to go the way you think it’s going to go.
posted by The River Ivel at 4:23 AM on February 19, 2020 [4 favorites]


I totally agree that most Tories are ignorant. ButJohnson is not. Cummings is not ( Well, he is, but not in the sende that he doesn’t know where this is going
posted by mumimor at 4:27 AM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


Also please stop ghoulishly wishing for the break-up and violent revolution of the UK. To quote a hero of the boomer age: this is not going to go the way you think it’s going to go.

I'm not hoping for the violent breakup of the UK: I'm hoping for the peaceful federalization of the former English empire. (Failing that I'll settle for peaceful secession and EU re-accession for Scotland and Northern Ireland; Wales, too, if they want it.)

England ... I've given up on the English, I'm afraid: there are too many angry racists addicted to the spectacle of cruelty to contain at this point given a broken electoral system and fascist-sympathetic media environment.
posted by cstross at 4:28 AM on February 19, 2020 [19 favorites]


I was born in England, too: I left, 25 years ago, because of the xenophobia.
posted by cstross at 4:35 AM on February 19, 2020 [23 favorites]


Under Boris Johnson’s new rules anyone earning less than £25.6k is an unskilled worker.

The threshold is lower for shortage occupations so most NHS workers (but not care assistants) will clear it.

The thing is that this is not a real point based system. A number of requirements including the English language requirement and the job requirement are absolute, you have to have to them or you do not pass go. (by the way, this is in the linked article).

50 of the 70 points will therefore be "automatic" in the sense that you can't even apply if you don't have those.

A points system is not a way to reduce immigration. A quota system is much more effective for doing that.

Countries that do have points based systems are sparsely populated countries with labour shortages that want to attract large numbers of people (like Scotland, which doesn't control its own immigration policy). Australia has much higher net inwards migration than the UK has ever had and that is by design. It gives less control than the existing quota based systems because you cannot predict how many people will clear the points threshold.
posted by atrazine at 4:44 AM on February 19, 2020 [5 favorites]


Government by the kind of people who comment on Slate Star Codex posts.
I worry sometimes that Cummings and I are secret siblings. We're about the same age, both from the North of England, we clearly read the same books at a formative time.
I like to think the difference is that when it was time to go to college I headed north for a bracing dose of Scottish empiricism, while he went south to the educational equivalent of the Emerald City. Why, oh why, is Oxbridge allowed to ruin so many young minds?
Of course, he's running the UK government and I'm an unemployed oil worker in Texas. Poor life choices all round.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 4:53 AM on February 19, 2020 [8 favorites]


"one horrible Tory decision after another" is pretty much what we've had since 2010. In response to this, Britain looked inwards and found racism and brexit.

I think it's fair to say that the terrible decisions of the Tories have not yet had any significant net negative impact on the rich. But this policy is just economically and industrially illiterate, primarily because the powerful Tories don't really believe that anywhere outside London exists, with the exception of a few prosperous areas of the Shires and Cotswolds. How on Earth do they expect British agriculture to survive without migrant labour? Do they really think the urban unemployed are going to want to spend a month or so in Dorset, while paying the rent on a private rented flat at home, and doing gods know what with their kids (up a chimney? Is that the idea?). This is not going to happen, and given the food price bump we're already going to see next year, along with the high likelihood of global recession, the consequences offer the best chance of stagflation since the 70s. The damage to our economy will be brutal.

Or the care sector. It already operates on perilously narrow margins, and the English language requirement is going to fuck recruitment, even if they designate these jobs as shortage occupations. If we're getting rid of cheap overseas labour, who is going to foot the bill for the significant increase in our medical and social care delivery costs, apart from the taxpayer?

As immigration policy this is immoral, but as economic policy it's insane.
posted by howfar at 4:57 AM on February 19, 2020 [8 favorites]


Greece demands Elgin Marbles for EU trade deal (Bruno Waterfield, The Times)
posted by ZeusHumms at 5:02 AM on February 19, 2020 [11 favorites]


Greece demands Elgin Marbles for EU trade deal (Bruno Waterfield, The Times)

Britain is going to be absolutely fucked in this trade deal.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 5:06 AM on February 19, 2020 [6 favorites]


Do they really think the urban unemployed are going to want to spend a month or so in Dorset, while paying the rent on a private rented flat at home, and doing gods know what with their kids (up a chimney? Is that the idea?)

As long as they want to starve less than they want to do that, everything works according to plan.
posted by acb at 5:09 AM on February 19, 2020 [3 favorites]


I don't see that it is much different to any other rich country's immigration policy. Which isn't to say that I agree with rich country immigration policies, and isn't to say that the UK can immediately resort to them, but that is basically what this is.

The problems with it are, of course, that it's part of a continued "fuck you" to every EU national who lives here, every EU national who's ever lived here and every EU national who's ever aspired to live here.

Even going by the (hateful) premise that there is a reason to end EU freedom of movement, then there's no justification at all for not having transition arrangements so that e.g. minimum income requirements for EU nationals coming to the country start at a low floor (e.g. 20 hours/week minimum wage) and then rise year by year until after 5 years they match Rest of World nationals, and things like that. Because things like that are indicators of good faith, and imply that there will be due process applied with impact assessments and all the other things that are seen as red tape, but actually are the basis of stable government.
posted by ambrosen at 5:09 AM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


The problems with it are, of course, that it's part of a continued "fuck you" to every EU national who lives here, every EU national who's ever lived here and every EU national who's ever aspired to live here.

As an EU national who lives here, I do not feel like that at all.

First of all it doesn't apply to any EU nationals who already live here. Nor does it apply to EU nationals who have lived here in the past.

Yes, it does apply to EU nationals who aspire to live here and do not meet these qualifications but I don't see how it's a "fuck you" anymore than the existing rules were a "fuck you" to people who were not EU nationals.

It is a statement to EU nationals who do not speak English and who have lower earnings potential that the UK will be harder for them to move to. Ok, so what? Is the United States telling me "fuck you" over my breakfast every morning because I'm unable to move there without a job offer? Am I daily being goaded by the governments of Japan and Argentina because they haven't invited me to come and live there?

I think it's a perfectly respectable position to say that there shouldn't be borders and in fact to be deeply suspicious of the nation state or even of all state power. I incline that way myself. I also accept that most people don't share my views and that if borders continue to exist between states, then those states will make decisions about who gets to cross them and for what purpose. There is no way of making those decisions which does not create a set of people who "should" be allowed to cross in someone's view but are not.
posted by atrazine at 5:38 AM on February 19, 2020 [6 favorites]


I don't see that it is much different to any other rich country's immigration policy.

Thinking about this, I'm not sure I agree. If we look at high income countries outside of the EU, what do we have? US migration policy isn't really comparable (particularly once you consider the very odd relationship the US has with illegal migration); places like Switzerland, Gulf states, Singapore etc tend to have large legal populations of low wage migrants;New Zealand is entirely dependent on migrant labour; Canada has a fairly extensive low wage migrant worker programme; even Australia is heavily dependent on New Zealand, as well as a large number of illegal migrants. Is there really anywhere in the world that actually has a system such as this, without legal and/or extralegal loopholes that enable it to actually function? I'm not *certain* I disagree with you, so I'd welcome examples of places that actually make systems like this work without fudging.
posted by howfar at 5:45 AM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


Yes, have your own immigration policy to keep out EU citizens but then no, do not get unfettered access to EU markets (which has beem demanded from day one from the UK gov't and anything else is unfair/punishment/something something 'we just want what other countries have!').

The negotiation tactics are what separates any other rich country from the UK at the moment.
posted by romanb at 5:49 AM on February 19, 2020 [6 favorites]


First of all it doesn't apply to any EU nationals who already live here. Nor does it apply to EU nationals who have lived here in the past.

Not yet. Did you not pay attention to Windrush?
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 5:52 AM on February 19, 2020 [21 favorites]


The negotiation tactics are what separates any other rich country from the UK at the moment

Yep. Moronic tactics. Given that the EU was willing to allow no deal on a withdrawal agreement in order to protect the policy positions of Ireland, I cannot imagine why the Tories think we can throw our weight around now. They will call our bluff because to do otherwise would, in the reasonable collective view of the remaining powerful (and now much more powerful since we left) EU states, be the beginning of the end of the EU, at least as an institution they can control.

The chances of major economic collapse just increase by the day, don't they?
posted by howfar at 6:00 AM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


Thinking about this, I'm not sure I agree. If we look at high income countries outside of the EU, what do we have?

Not much. All the high income countries in the world are either:
-In the EU
-Low population density settler states (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand)
-Petro states
-Small entrepôt city-states
-Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan

Of those, the last category is probably closest to the UK but it still doesn't really match that well.
posted by atrazine at 6:07 AM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


People keep suggesting that I apply for jobs in the UK given the paucity of jobs on the academic market in the US (there are several that have come up recently that I could apply for). It's like ... yes, I speak English, and yes, I currently live in a racist hellhole of a country, but there's nothing good or ethical or better about exploiting other people's racism to get a job in some other racist and xenophobic place.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:26 AM on February 19, 2020 [14 favorites]


Yeah, I guess Japan is as close to what is being imagined as one can get. But even Japan now has a low wage migrant programme. Making ourselves less migration friendly than the most insular nation in history seems distinctly odd

I don't even see how we can realistically settle on this policy before trade negotiations with the rest of the world. One of the problems with setting your own immigration policy seems to be that powerful trading partners may well expect to be cut a deal on particular kinds of migration.
posted by howfar at 6:27 AM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


Greece demands Elgin Marbles for EU trade deal (Bruno Waterfield, The Times)

The best way to guarantee entry to Britain under the new points based immigration system, and then not get deported is to be old marbles. Just trying to work out a way to get my parents to become exhibits at the British Museum. (from Nish Kumar via Twitter)
posted by inflatablekiwi at 6:28 AM on February 19, 2020 [13 favorites]


I'm just imagining the situation reversed, all British ex-pats in the Costas need a Spanish language test.....Hmm...
posted by Wilder at 6:40 AM on February 19, 2020 [28 favorites]


Seems entirely sensible to be honest, someone who can speak English is vastly more likely to be successful from day 1 in an English speaking country vs someone who can't. Without language ability they may well find themselves stuck in badly paid work in the small section of jobs that require no great communication skills and advantage of unscrupulous employers.

I don't know where to start...

Look, our economy needs people to do low wage and low skill jobs. The UK isn't proposing to do away with these jobs, it's creating scarcity that will make it harder to fill those jobs. While that might seem great from a worker's perspective, if it causes wage inflation, price inflation and economic stagnation, which is the most likely consequence, it's really not going to matter a damn whether or not people are able to speak English because our economy will be Fucked with a capital Fuck. And more importantly, we're not going to let in anyone to do a low wage, low skill job. You can't get more than 50 points that way, even if you speak perfect English. So there's no way for the linguists you imagine making their way into society to even get into the country.

It's not the Prets of this world that will be hurt, its the shady restaurants who import kitchen staff from their home countries as essentially indentured workers.

Do you have any evidence for this claim? Because at the moment it just seems kinda racist, if I'm honest. Pret employs vast numbers of EEA workers. How are they not going to be affected by this change?

The kind of exploitation you describe is already illegal. Can you explain how you think this will make any difference?
posted by howfar at 6:42 AM on February 19, 2020 [7 favorites]


Self-promotional, I know, but still: The Case for Open Borders
posted by chavenet at 6:42 AM on February 19, 2020


Winnie Mandela was fluent in Afrikaans, but refused either to speak it or to respond when it was spoken to her.

I speak four languages, three of which aren't English, and maybe from now on I should pick one of those when engaging with brexiteers.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 6:49 AM on February 19, 2020 [8 favorites]



Look, our economy needs people to do low wage and low skill jobs. The UK isn't proposing to do away with these jobs, it's creating scarcity that will make it harder to fill those jobs.


There is a vast supply of mithering millennials gen-Zers who, since having been stripped of their European citizenship, are no longer able to study on Erasmus in Groningen, party in Ibiza, go interrailing, or spend a few years in Berlin as a DJ/barista/tattoo artist, and are sitting around the UK doing nothing. They can be press-ganged into doing the low-paid shitwork recently expelled Lithuanians used to do. A bonus is that Daily Mail readers are no longer confronted with having to buy their Pret sandwich from a Grażyna or Vytautas, meaning lower blood pressure and better health outcomes.
posted by acb at 6:55 AM on February 19, 2020 [5 favorites]


As a bigot pleasing policy it's possible, as an economic prospect it is disastrous.
posted by howfar at 6:56 AM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


I'm just imagining the situation reversed, all British ex-pats in the Costas need a Spanish language test

That will never happen because they're not migrants but expats. They are the Mighty Lion-Race of Albion, who conquered a third of the globe, and Johnny Foreigner instinctively recognises this and defers to it, even if his manner may be somewhat rude and resentful.
posted by acb at 6:57 AM on February 19, 2020 [13 favorites]


There are no "low skill" jobs. There are jobs with lower training/education periods required before one can get the job. Generally this means that one trains up to a required level of skill (to keep the job, or to be able to make a living at it in the case of, eg. piecework or agricultural labor) on the job, or that the skills required are not explicitly acknowledged and thus not compensated fairly (eg. emotional labor skills in service industry jobs).
posted by eviemath at 7:07 AM on February 19, 2020 [49 favorites]


Seems entirely sensible to be honest, someone who can speak English is vastly more likely to be successful from day 1 in an English speaking country vs someone who can't.

A lot of us on metafilter are the children or grandchildren of people who moved to English-speaking countries without speaking the language, fwiw. Some of us might even have done so ourselves. This isn't an impersonal, abstract issue for everyone.
posted by trig at 7:09 AM on February 19, 2020 [39 favorites]


No one wants change sheets in a hospice or drive a delivery van for minimum wage. Food service, cleaners, farm workers, the list goes on.

The small businesses that I know if in Canada have all had to raise what they pay for labour. If they could get cheaper immigrant labour they would, but access to those pools are often highly restricted. Prices for many things go up.
posted by bonehead at 7:11 AM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


 … Johnny Foreigner instinctively recognises this and defers to it, even if his manner may be somewhat rude and resentful

JF also know just how much piss can go in a beer without an expat being able to taste it.
posted by scruss at 7:16 AM on February 19, 2020 [12 favorites]


I'm an immigrant. I was brought to the UK in the 1960s as a child from a Commonwealth country. I don't look like an immigrant, I don't speak like an immigrant and, immigration rules being what they were in the 1970s, when I got my first passport, it was a UK passport. I am still a citizen of my birth country, but I have no family there any more.

I had to renew my UK passport in January 2019 and in the ten years since my last passport, rules had changed and I was terrified I'd be caught up in the 'Windrush' group of people, because the way people were classified as qualifying, or not, to stay in the UK was so tenuous and woolly that I just couldn't work out if I'd be caught or not. And I was too scared to ask in case it flagged me on some Home Office computer. The two weeks I had to wait for my UK passport were so stressful and I almost cried with relief when my passport (still in its EU colours) finally arrived.

I never thought I'd ever have the feeling that the country I grew up (and where I've worked and paid tax since the age of 16) in might decide to reject me 50-odd years after I arrived and send me half-way across the world. But at least when the UK implodes I have the option of being able to leave and 'go back to where I came from'.

I am still so fucking sad about Brexit.
posted by essexjan at 7:18 AM on February 19, 2020 [66 favorites]


someone who can speak English is vastly more likely to be successful from day 1 in an English speaking country vs someone who can't.

Well, that depends. If you're looking to move to an English-speaking country and then look for a job, then yes, you're narrowing your options if you don't have functional English skills. But the government's ruling that possibility out here anyway: no sponsoring employer, no visa. And if you have to have a sponsoring employer, then surely it's up to that employer to decide what sort of language skills are needed for the job you've been offered. The language of your team at work is not necessarily the language of the country you're working in; and that doesn't necessarily mean you're being exploited.

(Speaking here as someone who worked productively, at non-exploitative salaries, in both Japan and the Netherlands, with zero functional language skills in either country on day 1.)
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 7:19 AM on February 19, 2020 [13 favorites]


There are no "low skill" jobs.

Thank you. I think you are correct that this is a misleading phrase with strong connotations of class contempt. I am sorry for using it.
posted by howfar at 7:26 AM on February 19, 2020 [16 favorites]


Johnny Foreigner instinctively recognises this and defers to it, even if his manner may be somewhat rude and resentful

as Dylan points out.
posted by flabdablet at 7:29 AM on February 19, 2020 [3 favorites]


Mod note: A couple comments deleted. If you're defending a policy that suuure-looks-racist-on-the-surface, you're taking on a really quite large burden of proof and need to do better than rely on the idea of "success," "maximizing the benefit the country gets" and other notions that're pretty obviously already heavily influenced by racism and xenophobia.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:09 AM on February 19, 2020 [16 favorites]


And very well done to them but the a somewhat brutual [sic] question is would they have succeeded faster if they spoke English and were immediately able to integrate? Yes, they can learn a language in a few years but for the country receiving them, why not let in the other guy who can right now. My point is prioritizing people who are more likely to succeed hardly seems unreasonable for a country and the UK's goal is to maximize the benefit it get's [sic] from incoming immigrants in any way it can.

My non-English-speaking ancestors who migrated here to Canada undoubtedly succeeded faster than their English speaking countrymen would have. That's because they had the difficult to learn relevant work skills in steppe farming, while their countrymen who spoke English were mostly university professors and doctors and the like; there's nothing wrong with academia, but as a class academics are sort of shit at growing wheat. There are a hell of a lot of things that are harder to learn than basic English, especially living in an English speaking country.

In other words, to quote from the first of your links:
The authors conclude that although language proficiency is important, so are pragmatic skills and opportunities to interact with those who speak English or French.

Wage gaps of up to 45%(!) for second generation if English isn't spoken at home.

Those articles are about here in Canada, a country that already has a language-based points system for immigration. Strong proof that immigration language requirements don't force people to be "immediately able to integrate".
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 8:13 AM on February 19, 2020 [6 favorites]


Seems entirely sensible to be honest, someone who can speak English is vastly more likely to be successful from day 1 in an English speaking country vs someone who can't.

Define successful. I've been hearing this shit my whole life and AFAICT it's basically just parroting unexamined Neoliberal xenophobic bullshit from the Thatcher years. Especially nasty when talking about the United Kingdom, which last I checked includes a big-ol' chunk of speakers of Gaelic languages.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:23 AM on February 19, 2020 [7 favorites]


last I checked includes a big-ol' chunk of speakers of Gaelic languages.

This would sound more authoritative if you'd said Celtic languages, given that significantly more than 90% of speakers of Celtic languages will be Welsh speakers.
posted by ambrosen at 8:46 AM on February 19, 2020


A minor question, which may reveal that I don't understand this system as presented:

If the first three criteria (job offer, job at appropriate skill level, and level of English) are all individually mandatory, are the value of points assigned to these three criteria (20, 20, and 10) actually meaningful?

You have to have every one of these three criteria and you can't sub in anything else, i.e. they are not "tradeable" under the UK government's statement.

It seems like this is the equivalent of saying:

- You must have a job offer, a job at appropriate skill level, and speak English
- In addition to this, you must have 20 points (from the salary, shortage occupation or education qualification criteria)

In other words it seems like it doesn't really matter how they assign points to the mandatory criteria -- it could be 1 point for job offer, 1 point for skill level and 48 points for English, which in practicality would have exactly the same effect.
posted by andrewesque at 8:47 AM on February 19, 2020 [5 favorites]


That's nothing like the Canadian system. There's no mandatory qualifications per se, just points. There are points for language, level of education/job skills, level of past experience, etc..., but there's also a significant amount of points to be had for previous student and work time in Canada, accompanying family, age and family unification, with family already in resident in the country.
posted by bonehead at 8:55 AM on February 19, 2020


cstross: England ... I've given up on the English, I'm afraid

Look, I'm sympathetic to this sentiment, I'm the first to call out the English for the xenophobes they are. But those types are still in the minority, albeit a very vocal and powerful minority.

What about those of us that can't up and leave? Are we to be thrown under the bus, just like that? And if so, what happens when the neo-nationalist English come for Scottish, Welsh or Irish sovereignty? You think they'll let the other nations just leave? You think other nations with secessionist movements will come to your defence?

I'm hardly an activist but I can assure you the people of Liverpool won't go down without a fight, and I'm right behind them. The writing is on the wall; we need solidarity, not separatism. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't shed a tear for the British state should it be consigned to the dustbin of history. But there are people's lives at stake. Divide and conquer is the Tory modus operandi. Don't play into their hands.

First they came for, etc...
posted by Acey at 8:55 AM on February 19, 2020 [15 favorites]


In other words it seems like it doesn't really matter how they assign points to the mandatory criteria -- it could be 1 point for job offer, 1 point for skill level and 48 points for English, which in practicality would have exactly the same effect.

You've understood correctly. It is not a real point based system and this whole thing is political theatre.

Seems entirely sensible to be honest, someone who can speak English is vastly more likely to be successful from day 1 in an English speaking country vs someone who can't.

Maybe. It can't hurt, sure. The things is, there are already minimum income and job offer requirements (and these are absolute, they're not just for points). If someone has a job offer with a qualifying salary, aren't they already showing that they're going to be "successful"?

I really think that given how they have structure this supposed "points based" system the English requirement is purely political. There is almost no way to have the required 70 and not also speak English as an incidental.

Ignoring the language requirement, you need Would get a job offer at an appropriate skill level (20+20=40) and then get 30 points from elsewhere. Let's see what happens if we get rid of the English requirement and only have to get 20 additional points.

Most of the jobs which pay enough to get any points (up to max 20) from salary level will require English. How many jobs in this country pay more than £25k but do not require English proficiency? Not many.

There's 20 points from shortage occupations but if you look at the list on the home office website, I cannot see a single one where someone could realistically do that job in the UK without being proficient in English.

How many people have PhDs, and job offers in this country and cannot speak English? None.

So I cannot see how there is any difference between 70 points with English mandatory and 60 without that requirement since anyone who meets the latter will in-practice also be proficient in English. Conclusion: this is a purely political inclusion that will only lead to unfair edge cases.

It will be politically very effective though among Tory voters.
posted by atrazine at 9:09 AM on February 19, 2020 [3 favorites]


So Brexit is the prequel to "V for Vendetta", right?
posted by SonInLawOfSam at 9:10 AM on February 19, 2020 [4 favorites]


Greece demands Elgin Marbles for EU trade deal

We’ll be forced to rename Waterloo Station, too.
posted by Segundus at 9:41 AM on February 19, 2020 [3 favorites]


First they came for, etc...

First they came for those with minds of their own; but I have no mind of my own, so I said nothing.
Then they came for those with human empathy; but I have no human empathy, so I said nothing.
Then they came for the competent; but I am not competent, so I said nothing.
Then they came for me - and now I'm a goverment minister.

(courtesy of the Guardian comments section)
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 10:45 AM on February 19, 2020 [12 favorites]


We’ll be forced to rename Waterloo Station, too.

And Blenheim Palace.

And all children previously called Guy will be renamed Bill.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 10:46 AM on February 19, 2020


As a big fan of The Archers, I'm looking forward to hearing who's going to work the polytunnels on Home Farm once they lock out the Eastern European seasonal laborers who are the backbone of that endeavor.

Xenophobia is all well and good until the soft fruit business takes a hit.
posted by sonascope at 12:01 PM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


So my constituency MP has just put up a Facebook post condemning the immigration changes. The comments are in two camps: people from this and surrounding constituencies who fully support his position (which is presumably why he got re-elected) and people not from local constituencies who don't seem to understand the constituency system at all, insisting that period voted for less immigration and that this is dooming us to tories forever. Nevermind that he is an elected Labour MP, with a proven record of appeal with his current positions, and no direct involvement in party leadership, the shadow cabinet, or setting national Labour Party policy.

But if you're losing 8-0 in a football match you change tactics, so better get a racist in that the locals here won't vote for.

Fucking idiots.
posted by Dysk at 12:39 PM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


I've given up on the English, I'm afraid

Looks like all those Hollywood films were on to something after all.
posted by Segundus at 1:00 PM on February 19, 2020


The points system is theatre designed to appeal to "taking back control" simpletons. 50 of these points are mandatory as they are supposedly non negotiable preconditions. The remaining 20 points could be any numbers you like, divide by 10 to make it seem like you are being approachable, multiply by 10 to make it seem like you are being firm.
posted by epo at 1:01 PM on February 19, 2020


This would sound more authoritative if you'd said Celtic languages
Mea Culpa, "Insular Celtic" is the broader term. But not meaning to be authoritative, just a reminder that there are other languages endemic to the increasingly-less-United Kingdoms.
posted by aspersioncast at 1:19 PM on February 19, 2020


You have to assume stupidity not malice for most of the political actions of conservatives - there’s the occasional bad actor, motivated by ego, but mostly these actions come from a place of genuine concern and a belief in the ideology of neoliberal capitalist wealth being Good.

I don't understand why one should "assume" stupidity not malice. They are saying the malice part completely aloud. And as for the occasional bad actor....well in my memory there have never been so many occasions!
posted by srboisvert at 1:20 PM on February 19, 2020 [13 favorites]


Making ourselves less migration friendly than the most insular nation in history

It's probably not very important, but I suspect that was Albania rather than Japan. I doubt whether many people wanted to migrate to Hoxha-era Albania, though. From, yes. To, no.
posted by Grangousier at 1:51 PM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


Only those who can speak the twisted sounds of the holy runes SOV, RUN and TEH will be allowed to pass through the iron gates of Dover.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 1:58 PM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


The whole thing reminds me of Georgia’s (the US state) asinine immigration bill in the early 2010s which aimed to get any undocumented immigrants out of the state. The state government got to look all tough on border control, and then the next season, suffered millions in losses because there was no one to pick the fruit. Of course, in the face of such ridiculous losses, the government tried to use prison labor (which, holy fuck, former slave state, be a little more blatant why don’t you) to harvest the produce, which didn’t work, either, since it turns out that harvesting crops is an incredible skilled field.

As far as Japan’s attempt to attract workers, the plan isn’t working. The workers who might have taken those positions have seen the various schemes that Japan has tried (especially the nursing bullshit, which was essentially a scam where companies and hospitals got three years of cheap labor from Vietnamese and Filipino nurses under a program that allowed them to be paid trainee wages but with barriers for success so high that something like 3 out of the 100s in the program passed, but none of them elected to stay), that they know they’ll just be exploited while their here, and are staying away.

Not a lot of young people in Japan have full employment, lots of part time or contract work, but even so, they just do not want to do the service industry work, so non-Japanese are filling that void. Britain is setting itself up for industries being unable to operate due to a lack of staff. You don’t just magically convince underemployed people to take jobs you’ve spent generations demeaning as work best left to immigrants just because you told immigrants to fuck back off to their own countries.
posted by Ghidorah at 2:19 PM on February 19, 2020 [15 favorites]


I'm just imagining the situation reversed, all British ex-pats in the Costas need a Spanish language test

It'd be like a whole bunch of Brits auditioning for the part of Manuel on Fawlty Tours. ¿Qué?
posted by inflatablekiwi at 2:42 PM on February 19, 2020 [3 favorites]


"I speak Spanish... I learned it, from a book"

Sorry can only do French, not Spanish...
posted by Windopaene at 3:13 PM on February 19, 2020


Is there an inverse of English As She Is Spoke?
posted by acb at 3:20 PM on February 19, 2020


Making ourselves less migration friendly than the most insular nation in history

It's probably not very important, but I suspect that was Albania rather than Japan.


North Korea welcomes careful drivers.
posted by biffa at 3:21 PM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


Someone upthread mentioned "wage inflation" for service / working class jobs as if that was a bad thing? Am I on crazy pills or isn't that a GOOD outcome? Aren't American leftists advocating for exactly that via legislative fiat?
posted by nicolas léonard sadi carnot at 7:06 PM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


None of this will ever result in white, British, English-speaking workers taking over low waged jobs previously done by brown, foreign, or anything-else-speaking immigrants; nor will it result in wages for those jobs going up to make them attractive; nor will it result in the work not getting done. I don't know why anyone in this thread is even deigning to waste their keystrokes discussing such implausible scenarios. The gods of the free market and unfettered barrel-scraping capitalism could never accept such outcomes - even if some government were to seriously pursue them, which this abominable shower could never even pretend to attempt.

All of that unattractive and unappreciated work will simply be outsourced at arms length to whichever shady agencies bid the lowest for it, and a blind eye will be turned by all involved to the origins, arrival routes and legal status of the foreign workers they will mysteriously supply to do it: both by the companies and the customers who demand that the work be done, somehow, at the costs they are accustomed to; and by the government, which will see no advantage in interfering, although they will surely brief the press endlessly about how terrible it is, and how hard they are cracking down on it, and how tragic the deaths of that container of desperate humans were the previous week, and the one before, and the one before.

And the racists and xenophobes will be perfectly happy with this arrangement, because they are actually just fine with "foreign" workers, so long as they can look down on them and spit on them and know that they are powerless and fearful and have no rights of their own. Was that not always the promise for them, of restoring the glory of the British Empire? In all this, the common bigots are perfectly aligned with the capitalists, who could not care less who they exploit, and thus is the alliance that brought us here.
posted by automatronic at 7:16 PM on February 19, 2020 [16 favorites]


there's no official competition for Worst Country in the World but tell that to the entire Anglosphere

I know it feels that way. But c’mon. Hyperbole. Brexit is slow motion suicide. But the UK isn’t the worst country in the world. Or people wouldn’t want to go there.

In terms of immigration friendly countries English speaking nations are still, despite all this shit, in the top dozen easiest to move to and work with in.

India
Spain
Italy
Australia
Canada
France
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
Russia
Germany
Saudi Arabia
United States of America

There they are. The most immigration friendly nations on earth.

I mean. C’mon. Have any you natives of the anglosphere ever tried to work or move to non-English speaking nations outside the top ten?

I have. It’s crazy how strict and even down right paranoid most nations are about immigration policy.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 8:17 PM on February 19, 2020


UAE? Saudi? I'm sure it's easy to get stints there. But that's not immigration.
posted by ocschwar at 8:39 PM on February 19, 2020 [3 favorites]


But that's not immigration.

You’re welcome to dive into a few google searches yourself. But that’s what I found.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 8:41 PM on February 19, 2020


I would not call Australia immigration-friendly in the slightest, having gone through their processes multiple times even under a not-as-right-wing government - and it's getting worse and worse. For god's sake, they currently have a federal anti-refugee campaign literally named "You Will Not Make Australia Home".
posted by divabat at 9:22 PM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


"Move to and work within" is not what people are talking about here - getting naturalized in the UAE is actually quite difficult. It's relatively easy to visit, for the exact reason that they are propped up by an underclass of migrant workers who can be deported at any time. Several of the other states on your list are similar. In fact that's essentially what several comments upthread were predicting for the UK.

Except since it's not a petrostate it's very unlikely to work out that way, because honestly the isles have fuck-all left in terms of natural resources, and really ah christ we don't need to go into this again I'm very sorry that this is the world we're dealing with.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:28 PM on February 19, 2020 [4 favorites]


There's basically two types of immigration policy -

You have countries like Malaysia who explicitly have a policy of exploiting millions of low wage workers from poorer countries to work their farms and factories - as an engine of economic growth, the export of palm oil and manufactured products. Immigration thus lowers Malaysia's average education and income level.

Then you have countries like Australia who are the polar opposite - if you want to be successful at migrating to Australia, you need to be highly educated (tertiary or better), have excellent command of English (band 8+ IELTS in all modules), and have proven work experience in a field of existing skill shortage. Immigration thus increases Australia's average education and income level.

This all explains why Australia is much easier to get into compared to Malaysia if you're highly educated and work in a profession that's in demand, and infinitely harder if you're not.

I do like the fact that in Australia you can definitely earn more money working a manual trade in construction, (traffic control, electrician, plumber, carpenter, bricklayer, roofer) than working in an office skyscraper in finance or IT. I actually earned more per hour working retail on weekends in my first year compared to my finance job in my first year.
posted by xdvesper at 9:29 PM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


There they are. The most immigration friendly nations on earth.

When was this list drawn up though? Recently enough to take the recent Tory victory and brexit into account? And, you know, brexit hasn't happened yet really - we're still in the transition phase. Saying "here is a thing from some time in the past showing that the UK was easy to immigrate to" (a list which looks a little suspect, and is unsourced) is not really a rebuttal to "everything will be terrible when this policy comes into force".
posted by Dysk at 9:44 PM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


"Move to and work within" is not what people are talking about here

Honestly, I think we may be talking past each other here, if that's the case. Freedom of movement, of labor being able to move to where the jobs are, is what's being taken away. The proposed system in the article is talking about work visas, not naturalization. People having been moving to work in the UK because jobs were available (going unfilled because Brits wouldn't take them) and wages were higher than back home. Other than outright refugee type need, I'd imagine that the largest portion of visas being granted around the world are for work, and those exist because demand for labor makes moving to another country worth the risk involved.

Hell, I wouldn't be in Japan if I had known of any other way to pay back my university loans. That I stayed after they were paid, and that I don't really intend to ever leave, that's not what this policy is about. It's about preventing people from coming to England from anywhere not-England. It's about closing your eyes really tight and dreaming that you'll attract the best and brightest to your blighted hellscape of understaffed vital industries.
posted by Ghidorah at 9:52 PM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


Honestly, I think we may be talking past each other here, if that's the case. Freedom of movement, of labor being able to move to where the jobs are, is what's being taken away. The proposed system in the article is talking about work visas, not naturalization.

And for EU citizens, what the work visas are replacing is something that is not but is in many ways more akin to naturalisation. The rights under a work visa are significantly curtailed compared to what we enjoy currently. So while the proposed system is about work visas, I don't think it's unreasonable to compare that to something more like naturalisation.
posted by Dysk at 11:06 PM on February 19, 2020


I would not call Australia immigration-friendly in the slightest, having gone through their processes multiple times even under a not-as-right-wing government - and it's getting worse and worse. For god's sake, they currently have a federal anti-refugee campaign literally named "You Will Not Make Australia Home".

Unless you're a white farmer from South Africa, in which case the government want to fast-track your citizenship so you can form part of their voting base.
posted by acb at 1:10 AM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


The Metro, the UK's highest circulating paper btw, decided to go with the headline:
"BAN ON CHEAP EU WORKERS"

Such a sorry state of things. These are actual people, living and working in the country. This is an indecent way of referring to them, all for the big headline. Fuck the British press.
posted by vacapinta at 1:32 AM on February 20, 2020 [6 favorites]


Our neighbours, coworkers, friends, partners, &c., have overnight been relegated to insufficiently indentured servants.
posted by acb at 2:39 AM on February 20, 2020


I can only hope that the rest of Europe realise that British kids are not responsible for this and treat them generously. (Well actually, they are kind of responsible, if the complacent 18-30s had got off their arses and voted in the election and referendum it would have been a very different outcome.)
posted by epo at 2:54 AM on February 20, 2020


"Move to and work within" is not what people are talking about here - getting naturalized in the UAE is actually quite difficult.

It's basically impossible. The occasional very wealthy businessman who has had family connections there for 2-3 generations manages it.

I would not call Australia immigration-friendly in the slightest, having gone through their processes multiple times even under a not-as-right-wing government - and it's getting worse and worse. For god's sake, they currently have a federal anti-refugee campaign literally named "You Will Not Make Australia Home".

I don't think any immigration bureaucracy is easy and I suspect that only a minority of people in this thread have ever had to go through it and they might be shocked at how difficult and inhumane the process is in their own countries. There's loads of countries that don't even offer any official pathway to permanent residency and/or citizenship. As unpleasant as the Australian process is, I don't know where comparatively would be easier. Canada, maybe?
posted by atrazine at 3:00 AM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


As an Australian who moved to the UK and then to Sweden, I can confirm that Sweden appears to be a lot less onerous. Assuming that I stay here and remain employed for the next four years, I should be eligible for Swedish citizenship then. (They're talking about putting in a Swedish language proficiency requirement for citizenship—which, I think, is sensible, given that citizenship of a democracy involves engaging with social issues—though, amazingly, no such requirement currently exists.) In contrast, it took me 9½ years and thousands of pounds (just under half of that being visa fees, the rest being the fees of bureaucracy-sherpas assisting in navigating the notoriously unforgiving forms) to get British citizenship.
posted by acb at 3:48 AM on February 20, 2020


xdvesper: my family migrated from Bangladesh to Malaysia as part of a group of professionals invited by the Government in the 70s. While we were nothing like the migrant blue collar labour common from the 90s onwards, national policy around Bangladeshis still affected us - for example, it deeply compromised our ability to get citizenship (I only got it on my 26th birthday and I was born & raised there), my school threatened to expel me every other year for having the "wrong visa" (I was a permanent resident), and basically the only reason we weren't COMPLETELY screwed over is because my parents have enough financial privilege to mitigate the worst of it. Hence me and my sister moving overseas, even if the countries we moved to still sucked immigration-wise. Your idea of Malaysian immigration policy is short-sighted.

And hey, I've been an Aussie PR for about 6 years now, lived in this country on and off for 13 years, still struggling to get a stable job because bridging visa hell still haunts me. But at least I don't have to deal with Malaysia's racial quota hiring system that doesn't include us Others - though I don't know if that really is that much of a difference.

Honestly, I wish people who haven't had to experience the immigration system directly (which includes things like work visas and student visas) should really stop speculating about what the process is like because 99.999999% of the time you're dead wrong. Especially if your passport isn't green and the worst visa you have to get is an ESTA.
posted by divabat at 4:11 AM on February 20, 2020 [7 favorites]


(and yes, this includes your beloved Scandinavian countries - their policies are virulently racist. The only reason Sweden wants a language policy now is so that that have an excuse to deny entry to poorer Global South immigrants - that's historically why language tests are implemented anywhere. Get the brown people out.)
posted by divabat at 4:14 AM on February 20, 2020 [4 favorites]


There is a distinction between permanent residency and citizenship. Both entitle you to live somewhere indefinitely (though the former can expire if one moves abroad for over a year or two), though citizenship of a democracy is more than just the right to live in a country, but carries with it a deeper engagement with the social contract, including (in theory) the duty to stay abreast of issues in the society and engage in the democratic process, at least by voting informedly, though that's the bare minimum. As such, there is a case for there being a language requirement for citizenship in a democracy that can't be made for permanent residency, or indeed work visas.

The other option is to declare English to be an official language and require all official materials, from government forms to party campaign platforms, to be made available in it. Then we move to a world where languages other than English are mere dialects, what old people speak in their homes.
posted by acb at 4:33 AM on February 20, 2020


As a Scandinavian, I can confirm that we have horrible immigration policies, and I believe I've mentioned before that my best friend who looked "brown" was already harassed by the police in the seventies when we were on interrail, when we reentered our own country where he was born and raised. Even though we were a group and the rest of us got a "welcome home".
Sweden is the least worst, though.
The thing is, as in the UK, demographics are staring us all in the face. For industry it isn't too bad, because of high wages and taxes Scandinavian companies have been good at productivity for ages. But there's a limit to how far you can go with robots in healthcare, farming and a lot of services and we are very close to that limit.
Responsible politicians on both sides of the aisle are beginning to say out loud that we need immigration beyond what the freedom of movement can offer.
Interestingly, after I moved to a tech university, I have found that here the management say it out loud, while the other universities whisper. At a point, the populist Danish People's Party insisted that all teaching had to be in Danish. While the dean at my former workplace just ducked her head and hoped the storm would pass, my current dean went out and said loudly that such a rule was the straight road to future poverty as the result of both lack of engineers and lack of diversity and international cooperation. And you can feel that attitude everywhere on campus.
posted by mumimor at 4:43 AM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


In Sweden, a lot of industry uses English as the official language. This is certainly the case in most of the tech sector, though apparently even companies like H&M use English as their internal language, just because otherwise it would limit their hiring pool. Also, pretty much everybody between the ages of 10 and 60 can speak good English, and often are keen to practice their English in conversation. Civic and cultural life, however, is generally in Swedish, though, and as an English speaker, you do get the impression of being a well-remunerated gastarbeiter and/or expat-bubble habitué rather than a potential citizen. Hence it helps to learn Swedish.
posted by acb at 5:05 AM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


As such, there is a case for there being a language requirement for citizenship in a democracy that can't be made for permanent residency, or indeed work visas.

No, there isn't much of a case for this, or not as strong as you may think. At least not one that doesn't involve nationalism and the idea that the definition of a nation is one where people are united by race, culture and language.

The US for example has no official language. You can take the citizenship test in Spanish - my mom did. Government forms are usually printed in English, yes, but also in Spanish, Chinese etc. There's an executive order that assistance must be provided by the government to those with limited English proficiency. My mom votes, understands issues, even participates actively in local government.

The UK has Welsh speakers. Spain has Catalan speakers and Galician speakers and Basque for example. Most American countries have to serve their indigenous speakers. Most countries around the world, are a huge mish-mash of people.

It is the responsibility of the country to ensure all of its citizens can participate in their democracy. Enforcing the primacy of one specific language is not the only or best way to do this.
posted by vacapinta at 5:07 AM on February 20, 2020 [9 favorites]


I literally can't think of a country with only one language -- Japan perhaps? An Indian acquaintance of mine grew up speaking five languages.
posted by mumimor at 5:53 AM on February 20, 2020 [3 favorites]


It is the responsibility of the country to ensure all of its citizens can participate in their democracy.

How would that work in practice? Would anyone running for office have to make campaign literature available in every language any citizen speaks? Would there be a phalanx of interpreters behind each candidate at every hustings and town-hall event? Would this need a Culture-level weakly-godlike AI to babelfish everything?
posted by acb at 5:58 AM on February 20, 2020


Would anyone running for office have to make campaign literature available in every language any citizen speaks? Would there be a phalanx of interpreters behind each candidate at every hustings and town-hall event? Would this need a Culture-level weakly-godlike AI to babelfish everything?

Be careful what you wish for.
posted by clawsoon at 6:08 AM on February 20, 2020


How would that work in practice?

Typically, someone or a group of people from a particular community with a vested interest in a particular party do the campaign work themselves. Other times, candidates may themselves be multilingual. Or the party may contract a translator for the campaign literature. It's uneven, and not all communities have the same access to all the information that native speakers do, but it is a thing that happens in many countries in the world.

As a sidebar to this, the one thing that really bugs me about "immigrants need to learn the language" is the presumption that immigrants do not want to, and that's why X% do not. I can speak from personal experience that this is not the case. Most immigrants are painfully aware that social and economic advancement can be impaired by not speaking the country's dominant language, and want to learn it. It's more a question of time and money. How many classes are free? How many classes are available outside of working hours? Are the classes physically accessible if you don't own a car? For immigrants raising a family who'd like that free time for their kids, how many classes are available during working hours, and are there any government subsidies to recompense these immigrants for lost working hours? How many companies or labour unions offer such recompense? And does the teaching material actually make itself accessible; does it teach the practical use of the language, or does it dwell on grammar rules?

The language question is a complicated thing, but I think any meaningful discussion about it must begin with the assumption that immigrants want to learn the dominant language, and that the onus is on the society using their labor and tax money to do what it can to make learning the language an accessible thing.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 6:10 AM on February 20, 2020 [9 favorites]


Would anyone running for office have to make campaign literature available in every language any citizen speaks?

Yes? If they want to reach them?

The Sanders campaign has made campaign materials accessible in six Asian languages: Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Hindi and Punjabi. By ABC News' tally, that is more than any other campaign. Fluent volunteers also help craft scripted appeals to prospective voters to ensure Sanders' messaging isn't lost in translation.

"We are meeting people where they are and in the language they speak," said Anna Bahr, a spokesperson for the campaign.


You are honestly sounding like American folks who say universal healthcare can't work - Other countries are doing this just fine.

In Mexico, I know of one person who works hard translating government material into the Tarascan language in Michoacan.
posted by vacapinta at 6:12 AM on February 20, 2020 [5 favorites]


The UK has Welsh speakers. Spain has Catalan speakers and Galician speakers and Basque for example. Most American countries have to serve their indigenous speakers. Most countries around the world, are a huge mish-mash of people.

It is the responsibility of the country to ensure all of its citizens can participate in their democracy. Enforcing the primacy of one specific language is not the only or best way to do this.


Certainly a democratic country has the responsibility to ensure broad political participation. But a big part of that is education, and I think a big part of education is acquiring the language & culture that shapes the legal/political institutions & procedures. Your own examples highlight this tension, I think, given the violent history & to this day unresolved tensions in the Basque country & Catalonia.
posted by dmh at 6:15 AM on February 20, 2020


Your own examples highlight this tension, I think, given the violent history & to this day unresolved tensions in the Basque country & Catalonia.

I don't know of many Catalan or Basque people who don't also speak Spanish, usually extremely well. So I am not sure what the point is exactly...
posted by vacapinta at 6:19 AM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


The Sanders campaign has made campaign materials accessible in six Asian languages: Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Hindi and Punjabi.

That's seven languages. Now do the other 100+. And not just for high-profile hero campaigns, but for everyone running for the Senate and House of Representatives, not to mention state and municipal legislatures. Otherwise everyone who doesn't have the privilege of speaking one of a handful of popular languages ends up disenfranchised. (Why should the one person in the district who speaks only, say, Ruthenian have less access to democracy than the several thousand Tagalog speakers?)
posted by acb at 6:31 AM on February 20, 2020


It's in everyone's interest that all citizens can acces all the knowledge, and I can't see why the state/municipality/district can't deliver that. I live in a district where there are just above 100 languages spoken, and as far as I know, everyone can get relevant material in their own language if they ask. For the biggest languages the material is out there, ready to go.
In Denmark, before immigration became a big issue, we had German, Icelandic, Faeroese, Greenlandic minorities. All the Scandinavian languages and dialects were available because of some cultural agreement between those countries I don't really know, but I do know we had to learn the other Scandinavian languages in school. School children also learnt English and German or French and very basic Latin. In secondary school you could choose Russian or Italian.
All public information is distributed in the above languages + the biggest immigrant languages. It's up to the political parties wether they want to reach out.
posted by mumimor at 6:47 AM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


Otherwise everyone who doesn't have the privilege of speaking one of a handful of popular languages ends up disenfranchised

How is that problem made better by reducing it from a handful to just one?

I agree with Aye Hirano: people do want to learn the dominant language. I'm arguing though that it still remains an obligation of the state to try to bridge that gap not only an obligation of the citizen.
posted by vacapinta at 6:48 AM on February 20, 2020 [3 favorites]


Canada's most recent federal election debates were broadcast with translations into 12 languages, and we're not even a real country.
posted by clawsoon at 7:14 AM on February 20, 2020 [6 favorites]


If the encouragement to speak English in England was carrot, and never stick, I'd be right behind it. The government didn't really need to protect employers from all the workers that they chose to employ despite lacking the necessary language skills to do the job: that's covered in the hiring process, implicitly or explicitly. This will protect England from the misfits and weirdos that might be skilled enough at what they do to go there and then learn the language, or smart workers who don't do as well with formal language learning (like a former student who asked me, totally comprehensibly, "Wrinkled, am I need all this grammar?").

Regardless of the merits of a common language, we all know exactly why the Tories are doing this: xenophobia and a lagniappe for those who voted Brexit.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 7:43 AM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


The UK has, IIRC, five official languages: English, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Manx and Cornish. Theoretically, they have equality before the law, and you can interact with officialdom in any of them (though, in practice, you probably won't find many Welsh-speaking council officials in, say, Norfolk).

Sweden also has several languages with equal status; English is not one of them (though some materials are available in English out of pragmatism, as it's the default vehicular language for a lot of people), though Yiddish and Romani are.

If Britain followed the Swedish philosophy, rather than just designating native languages as official, there'd probably be cases to be made for, say, Urdu and Polish to get official status. Probably Shelta (the language of Irish Travellers) as well, though of course that won't happen because Tories gonna Tory.
posted by acb at 7:51 AM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


The UK has, IIRC, five official languages: English, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Manx and Cornish. Theoretically, they have equality before the law

Two of those have no first language speakers, and one of those is from an island which isn't even part of the UK. Can we slow it down with the "well, actually"s here?
posted by ambrosen at 8:33 AM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


I find the new immigration rules racist in a whole bunch of ways, but I am surprised that I haven't seen anyone complaining that the language requirement is for English specifically. Surely fluency in Welsh, Irish, or Scots Gaelic should count just as much?
posted by Dysk at 8:34 AM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


Isn't Welsh the only language that's actually official in law (and only in Wales)?
posted by Dysk at 8:38 AM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


I'm just imagining the situation reversed, all British ex-pats in the Costas need a Spanish language test.....Hmm...

Please can we stop doing this. Most of the 1.24 million British citizens in Europe are of working age and do not live in Spain. Many of us even speak other languages (heaven forfend). And having exercised our freedom of movement, it is now being stripped from us.

Post 31 December I will be unable to move to the next town over, will potentially be unable to move back to the country of my birth with the person I love, and will have significantly more difficulty finding work (at the same time as being made redundant, great timing!). It doesn't help that people who are supposedly on our side gloat like this, I can't imagine they make similar jokes about every EU citizen in Britain being a Polish plumber.
posted by the long dark teatime of the soul at 8:52 AM on February 20, 2020 [14 favorites]


Isn't Welsh the only language that's actually official in law (and only in Wales)?

Yup. Though English is of course the de facto official language. If we're including 'Cornish' as a UK language, we certainly should be including British Sign Language and probably Romani too (Anglo-Romani IIRC).

Post 31 December I will be unable to move to the next town over, will potentially be unable to move back to the country of my birth with the person I love, and will have significantly more difficulty finding work

I thought the crack was about the gammon pensioners in the Costas specifically, not the rest of the British diaspora. But fair point, you're getting stiffed too.

If you want to bring your EU partner to the UK, do it before the end of the transition while the old rules still apply - the expectation is that the new rules for residence for spouses will be brought in-line with those for non-EU nationals currently, i.e. pretty harsh.

Or if you can, start the naturalization process of where you are, as an existing resident; if you're married to an EU partner it usually reduces the requirements, and is far cheaper and usually simpler than doing the reverse in the UK.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 9:07 AM on February 20, 2020


Your idea of Malaysian immigration policy is short-sighted.

Honestly, I wish people who haven't had to experience the immigration system directly (which includes things like work visas and student visas) should really stop speculating about what the process is like because 99.999999% of the time you're dead wrong.


On the internet everyone is a dog, I guess =) I should have qualified where my opinion comes from -

I've been through the whole graduate work visa -> bridging visa -> independent skilled visa assessments -> permanent residency -> citizenship process as a Malaysian migrating into Australia. While most of my friends utilized migration agents / lawyers but I simply read up the documents from the government website and filled all the forms in myself, so I'd consider myself pretty familiar with the rules and processes, and I have many friends who traveled the same path on different visa entries.

I've contrasted this to the experience some friends had who've tried to get residency and work visas for westerners (American in one case, a highly qualified engineer) migrating to Malaysia... it was so difficult some of them gave up the idea of migrating there, it was mainly to be closer to family. We had a read through the specific rules and conditions on immigration and it was much more onerous than Australia's system was.

Hence my comment that it's much easier to migrate to Australia than it is to migrate to Malaysia.... as it relates to the main topic, if Britain wants to become more like Australia, that's actually not a bad target to aim for.
posted by xdvesper at 3:22 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


And in reverse, getting someone a work visa in Australia for what the government considers "unskilled work" (domestic helper) is virtually impossible, I know families who are having some personal struggles with that - getting a specific domestic helper they had in another country into Australia to continue working for them - while in Malaysia they hand out those work visas by the hundreds of thousands.
posted by xdvesper at 3:31 PM on February 20, 2020


What does this mean for foreign (university) students? Is there going to be an allowance there for people to work throughout their time here and/or summers?
posted by slimepuppy at 6:30 AM on February 21, 2020


Presumably student visas will stay the same: up to 20 hours a week of work is allowed, and I don't think that changes in the holidays.

I've no idea whether home fee status is being kept for EU citizens, which seems extremely important.
posted by ambrosen at 7:46 AM on February 21, 2020


I've no idea whether home fee status is being kept for EU citizens, which seems extremely important.

Universities are saying on their websites (based on a quick survey of three) that current EU students on home fees will stay on home fees for the duration of their course, which suggests that - unless some agreement is reached in the current negotiations over the future relationship - future EU students will be charged overseas fees. But at least no current students are facing the financial rug pulled out from under them.
posted by Dysk at 7:59 AM on February 21, 2020 [1 favorite]


I'd like to imagine that there's a near forgotten government department diligently translating all official papers into Kernewek.
It's based in a small ancient cottage in Tintagel and has a charter dating back to the twelth century. It's run by someone called the Viridian Basilisk of the Western Stanneries who has the right to raise an army if they want to.
They probably have some kind of ceremonial stick.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 6:46 PM on February 21, 2020 [1 favorite]




Steve Bullock Twitter thread: Thinking about this a bit more, no deal must be very attractive to Johnson.

The odds of no deal have shortened considerably in the past week or two. It'll be more or less certain if we pass 30 June with no UK request to extend transition, but it's already the way to bet.* Why would Johnson sacrifice his reputation among Leavers by accepting a compromise deal when he can look tough by rejecting one?

*The major betting sites don't seem to have this on their radar. All they're taking beats on at the moment is when the UK will rejoin the EU and which country will leave it next.
posted by rory at 4:52 AM on February 25, 2020


getting someone a work visa in Australia for what the government considers "unskilled work" (domestic helper) is virtually impossible

unless they're proposing to work for a mate of the Minister.
posted by flabdablet at 8:22 AM on February 25, 2020


I regret how flip my early comment on a Spanish language test on the Costas came across, but as a polyglot with the incredible luck to have been born and raised in Ireland and to have had the remarkable foresight to insist our German/Irish children take out an Irish passport, I have far more rights than other EU citizens ('cos history), but we are still faced with the possible though unlikely event my German NHS worker-bee husband be denied leave to remain after 20 years of service and tax. More negative has been the open derogatory comments I and other healthcare workers have faced since Brexit. Again as a white person these haven't been remotely as negative as my darker skinned colleagues have faced, but we have never experienced such racism in the NHS in the 20 years we've both worked there. The one difference I'm grateful for is that our colleagues are now free to share openly the comments and get back-up from management. The national Director for Diabetes still does his clinic in a relatively small town. Very complex first presentations of diabetes are seen by the most senior consultant, and while I appreciate this would not be widely known to the public, he reckons he's seen a 500% increase in the amount of patients who say openly, 'I want a British Dr not you', and when he says he's born in Rotherham, they now openly double down (he says THAT'S the main diff) and say, 'yeah but a white one......'

And since I'm fluent in Spanish and spend some time each year on one of the Costas I find it infuriating that the overwhelming comments we overheard from English retirees/migrants to Spain was in favour of Brexit, in particular one couple who loudly told their friends that they voted for Brexit for two main reasons, it would keep Gibralter British (!) and cos they'd heard that Spain felt they might have to introduce a fee for healthcare if Brexit became a reality. (so I dunno, some version of this'll teach them???)The vast majority though were of the anti-immigrant bent and appeared unaware of the irony.
posted by Wilder at 5:54 AM on February 27, 2020 [5 favorites]




By accident I ran into this video: "EU is panicking" Iain Duncan Smith on how Britain will win upcoming Brexit negotiations
Apart from the obvious lies, the level of delusion is absolutely staggering. How can he not understand simple arithmetic?
I'm posting it here because sometimes it's nice to hear the other side. And also because he talks at length about fishing. The British fishing industry is a tiny part of the British economy and most of the fish and shellfish are sold to the EU, because most people in the UK prefer a few types of fish (like cod that are often caught outside the UK waters by non-UK fishermen). Without a trade deal based on common standards, the UK fishermen will go bankrupt.
So why is Smith talking about fishing? Because it is literally the only card the UK government has in the negotiations. The EU fishing industry is very sad that they will probably loose their fishing rights in UK waters. But guess what: they know already now that the EU is not going to let the fishing industry determine how to deal with Brexit, and they are not complaining. The greater good, and all that.
Which is probably why Johnson is already now threatening to step out of the negotiations in June.
Sometimes I go all conspirational and think the brexiteers have a plan. And they probably do. But today I believe that the thing is they have a plan and it's really, really dumb. I'm so sorry.
posted by mumimor at 2:30 AM on February 29, 2020 [1 favorite]


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