The UKIP and Farage Appreciation thread

[Box-Office]

@UKBanter: #WhyImVotingUkip because I can't get a job with my 2 GCSE's so I'm going to blame my laziness on immigration

@UKBanter: #WhyImVotingUkip Because I hate all that foreign muck. I like good British food, like curry and Chinese.

They don't hate immigrants. They want people with skills coming in. Too much saturation is not good for anyone including those who themselves are of non-indigenous British background.

[HitmanHattonAY]

[techliam]

The SNP are giving me university tuition for free.

It's probably the only time I've ever had politics directly affect me.

At least people in England still vote with their heads. Voting UKIP on one policy alone is stupid.. especially when Cameron is offering a 2017 referendum for the British nationalists to be happy with anyway..

As for the SNP, most people I know who voted for them, voted NO in the independence campaign. They are practically what the Labour party used to be and so get all the votes. Even though they have their preconceived barmy notion of independence, their policies fit with Scottish principles

I voted for Lib Dem, and happy Clegg resigned

[techliam]

[Dr Rumack]

Is it a right to pursue it in a foreign country? I think, as much as anything, a lot of people who vote UKIP are just fed up with the lack of assimilation.

People have done it throughout the entirety of human history, including English people.

If there's an argument against it then it has to have some utilitarian (or consequential) basis. Do the negatives taken in their totality outweigh the benefits.

There is no economic argument against it. Not only is there an absence of evidence on which to base the belief that immigrants harm indigenous worker income, there's lots of evidence to show they grow the economy as a whole.

So if there aren't any major economic costs, you have to consider social costs. Again, it always seems funny that the people who argue against immigration are the same ones who focus purely on economic rationality when they consider public services generally, and ignore social costs.

For example, cuts to public services are justified in terms of macro-economic indicators such as debt-to-gdp and so on, and the implications for social indicators such as crime rates, educational achievement etc are ignored. But on immigration, the economic indicators are suddenly no longer relevant and those social indicators become the sole focus. It's a strange hypocrisy but maybe that's a different argument.

What are the social costs of immigration? You can argue that 'ghettoization' is one, but again you'd have to demonstrate how that actually affects real indicators like crime rates. In the UK at least, it's hard to find any evidence that this is the case.

The Oxford migration research group found that:

In 2002, the foreign born population was 8.5% and the property crime rate was 10.5%.


In 2012, the foreign born population was 13% and the property crime rate was 6.5%.


Whatever other conclusions you can take from that it seems fairly clear that immigration did not cause a rise in property crime rates.

The question you always have to ask yourself is how do we know the anti-immigration argument isn't just based on people not wanting people around who look or dress differently to them.

When you talk about assimilation, the biggest obstacle by far in any historical analysis of modern Western societies is having a different skin tone or language. The Irish, for example, were much more rapidly assimilated in 19th and 20th century USA because (1) they were superficially (largely) indistinguishable from the existing dominant population and (2) they spoke English.

This didn't prevent vicious anti-Irish racism of course, but nevertheless the assimilation of Irish people as an ethnic group happened much faster than it did for the likes of the Polish (didn't speak English), the Italians (didn't speak English and had different complexions to Northern Europeans), and of course Black people who remain the poorest ethnic group in America today.

The historical evidence suggests that the biggest obstacle to assimilation in Western countries isn't the cultural mores of the immigrants, but the discriminatory attitudes of the indigenous population. In many respects then, you could argue that UKIP have it right, in that the lighter the tone of someone's skin the faster they'll be assimilated into mainstream society. The cause, however, is where they miss the point.

[Barn]

Of course politics affects me every day. However being a young student who hasn't experienced anything resembling real life, the free tuition policy is the only thing that has had a massive direct impact on me. My family are not exceptionally well off so I wouldn't be in further education if not for this. If I wanted to continue University, the party that got in had to be a supporter of free tuition. This is a big part of my life we are talking about.

Despite this, the other main reason I voted for SNP was they'll argue for Scotland in Westminster. I didn't mean to indicate tuition was the only reason I voted for them, just that it was the main one for me.

SNP don't really align with my principles on a lot of issues but they seemed the most progressive, trustworthy and socially democratic out of everyone on my ballot. There's a real lack of a sensible left leaning party.

[New England]

At least people in England still vote with their heads. Voting UKIP on one policy alone is stupid.. especially when Cameron is offering a 2017 referendum for the British nationalists to be happy with anyway..

As for the SNP, most people I know who voted for them, voted NO in the independence campaign. They are practically what the Labour party used to be and so get all the votes. Even though they have their preconceived barmy notion of independence, their policies fit with Scottish principles

I voted for Lib Dem, and happy Clegg resigned

don't mind him.,


he's just a little schoolboy

[Barn]

don't mind him.,


he's just a little schoolboy