He will never set foot on English soil because our government despises the poor, and especially the poor and foreign.
Unless they get married, in which case I believe it’s fairly straightforward.
A borderless world will be great... when global economic equality is acheived so that it doesn’t ruin some countries economies via brain drains and make others so expensive and overcrowded poor people can barely afford to live in them (like the UK). Freedom of movement in Europe is/was largely a positive thing but it worked (just about) because the economies were similar enough that it didn’t have too terrible an effect, though Eastern European countries certainly did suffer from their young and bright leaving for better salaries. I think the reality of the situation if we said
anyone could come here to work even on a fairly modest salary would be to make life for the already poor and unemployed in the UK a living Hell, as demand for already expensive and overcrowded housing would go up even further as would competition for jobs.
In a wider sense, I think an odd thing has happened with the whole immigration and borders debate which is that the liberal left, in the name of compassion which I believe is well meaning, have essentially become stooges for a hyper-capitalist verging on social Darwinist globalisation in which the poor and ordinary people are pitted against each other in a race to the bottom for wages that is increasingly turning people (and not just poor people) into virtual slaves.
Before the last US election, I remember watching a news item in which a local level Democratic politician somewhere near the Mexican border, arguing against Trump’s rhetoric, stated that illegal immigration is more or less essential for the economy because employers can pay illegal immigrants less. Which, when you think about it, is absolutely horrifying. I’m sure it wasn’t what she meant, but that’s basically arguing in favour of having a slave caste who have no rights under the law to be paid minimum wage, recieve healthcare benefits or really, even to go to the police if they’re the victim of a crime. That’s some pretty stiff competition for a local workforce who, y’know, actually have legal rights.
Who would an employer rather have, an employee who knows their rights or a slave with none? Which would the global elites currently sitting in Davos rather we all became? That’s the angle at which I look at the immigration debate and while I might despise the racism and xenophobia of the right I also have to shake my head at the “everyone welcome” attitude of the left because I don’t think they realize quite what they’re arguing in favour of. And it most certainly isn’t any form of socialism, because that needs to include solidarity between workers which has all but been destroyed.
Instead what we have is cut-throat competition for jobs and wages where someone from a poor country is generally willing to be paid less than minimum wage, as long as they’re better off than they were in their home country. And the corporations rub their hands with glee, because it’s not expensive to pay someone so they’re marginally better off than they were starving to death or dying in a war. But does everyone in the UK want a standard of living which is marginally better off than starving to death or dying in a war?
