News /
Should countries be boycotted for offending Poles? [60]
Foreigner4 - valid points.
Just taking a few of them - Sins of our fathers is offset somewhat by the the fact that it's those who complain the most about how England is becoming less English, and that the foreigners are taking all the jobs who are the very same who display such pride in the 'Empire' and moan about how England is no longer the power it was etc etc.
It's a minority to be sure, but sadly quite visible abroad any time I've been holidays. The rhetoric from the likes of Wilders and the BNP doesn'r really help anyone aside from stirring up xenophobia by playign on peoples perceptions and fears as opposed to facts. It is gratifying to see though that the majority seem to reject such extremism but not in as large numbers as they once did perhaps.
Regarding Dutch Business concerns, I can understand why it can be said they are looking after their own interests. After all they are in business to make a profit, not for the public good. If you take the Southern states of the US however, who enacted the type of contraversial immigration bill Wilders would like to bring in, it hit everybody hard. Both small and big business suffered and the local economy was badly hit with for example crops left rotting in fields as the labour who had previously harvested them were gone. It also had a PR impact as executives from Japan who were due to invest heavily in a car plant there had second thoughts purely based on the nature of the bill.
I don't agree with you with regards the Chinese comment. Poland has signed up to the EU with all that entails (free movement etc) and is receiving hundreds of millions of EUR in EU subsidies as a result, money which is creating jobs for Poles in a variety of areas, not least construction as the infrastructure is improved. Social Welfare rates are very low in Poland as well, so it's unlikely to suffer from the 'welfare tourism' that some countries have to deal with. Plus, similar to us Irish, it would be difficult for the Poles to complain about immigration when so many have emigrated themselves.
Immigration is a sensitive topic, there's no doubt about it. From an economic perspective, there are benefits which are easily forgotten. Immigrants need homes, food, drink etc to survive all of which must be paid for, which involves spending money in the local economy.
Typically, large numbers of unskilled immigrants are involved in areas where local workers have not been seriously interested in (hell, huge numbers of English and Irish go to Oz for a year out to do something similar, like harvesting fruit etc). This was something noted in the study carried out by the University of Rotterdam.
The number of skilled workers, while a lesser number have also had a role to play as in a srong economy there is typically a deficit in many areas whereby the number of qualified local workers are not enough to fill the economies requirement.
Perhaps a key issue is that people seemed quite happy with immigrants doing these jobs when the economy is good (doing jobs no one else really wanted for little money, resulting in lower service costs for the wider community)... but when the economy goes downhill, it suddenly raises an ethical question.
From a cultural perspective, I can more readily understand peoples' fears I guess. An influx of immigrants from a different culturual or religious background may have a detrimental impact if they refuse to integrate and accept the laws and standards of the society around them.
