Foreigners

@obieone

There are also jobs in the UK which can't be filled - doctors, nurses, scientists, language teachers, engineers, technicians, etc etc. People doing seasonal work sometimes go back to their country of origin for part of the year. Careworkers and cleaners live in cramped conditions, knowing their work is temporary. These people are no different from your children.

@Jalima

Schools have, for as long as I can remember, been asked about children with English as Additional Language, so that support can be provided, BUT they weren't asked about country of birth and I don't really see why it's relevant. Unfortunately, funding for EAL has been slashed over the years, so I'm not too hopeful the questioning will result in extra support.

Widgeon3 sorry I don't know anything about where you live. If you moved up here.....Oh no, then you'd be the foreign one!
Seriously, we seem to have a very large and hard working Polish population locally. Absolutely no complaints from me!

The trouble is that the press sensationalise this kind of thing, Granny23, playing on people's fears and causing tensions where there may not have been any and stirring up on the basis of what is a tick-box exercise or for future planning.

The school forms were started in Wales before this, under a Welsh Labour administration and I have not heard or seen any objections to them, on here or anywhere.

X post dd ( although it would not seem like it by the timing!)

So can common sense now prevail on this matter?

obieone you don't have to provide private information just because someone asks, or detail your DC's skills

Jalima I've alreadey said that's fine.

Assuming that everyone here is a granny or old enough to be one, then most of us are old enough to remember the ugliness of earlier responses to supposed immigration crises - the arrival of the Kenyan Asians, for instance, or the Ugandan Asians. I expect some of us can recall the racism provoked by the arrival of the West Indian immigrants in the '40s and '50s. Of course, if we were even older (!), we would have witnessed the same hysteria over the Jews or the Irish. Now it's the turn of the Eastern Europeans and, if they ever manage to get here, refugees from the Middle East.

Where anti-foreign sentiment is concerned, there's nothing new under the sun. We seem to be experiencing another nasty flare-up, probably due to Brexit. Attacks and abuse aimed at minority groups by members of the public are, obviously, horrible for the people involved but it is even worse when the government decides that cracking down on the foreigners is the way to court popularity. You don't have to look far, historically or geographically, to see where that can lead.

I have been required on a number of forms to provide information to what I consider my ethnicity to be, frankly I find that annoying as I don't consider my ethnicity to be anyone's business except my own.

I only have to look to a town just a few miles from me to find the murder of a Polish man. The case hasn't come to trial yet, but it is known that it was carried out by a group of teenagers, allegedly because the man was speaking Polish. There were two further attacks the next day. People are genuinely scared and this is the backdrop to these new questions.

You can usually opt out of completing those forms asking for ethnicity and they're usually anonymous. They're used to monitor whether employers are appointing a diverse range of people. I don't have a problem with them.

Thanks Jalima and Eloethan.

The UK has a jobs skills shortage list, I dont know if other countries are the same. I tend to keep a bit of an eye on it.

One of the kids, the job shortage in his line of work is pretty much worldwide. He works with a huge number of nationalities.

dd
There are also jobs in the UK which can't be filled - doctors, nurses, scientists, language teachers, engineers, technicians, etc etc. People doing seasonal work sometimes go back to their country of origin for part of the year. Careworkers and cleaners live in cramped conditions, knowing their work is temporary. These people are no different from your children

Yes? But that doesnt take into account factory workers, and workers who work in the M supermarket for example. I suspect it is those that interest AR and TM?

I'm appalled by any steps taken towards discrimination against so-called foreigners who live and work in this country. Immigration enriches a country culturally and financially. My local,excellent, hospital would fall apart without the many staff who hail from lots of different countries, and that's just one example. Nationalism is divisive and potentially dangerous. What on earth is so special about this country that it can afford to be so cavalier and unfeeling about a large proportion of its population? We behave in this way at our peril.

id.38degrees.org.uk/clicks/link/13658/5j9rr4ws24ce12tg6btogz82o4dnibit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsecure.38degrees.org.uk%2Ffw-petition%3Futm_source%3D%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_campaign%3Dblast2016-10-06&member_guid=6sdddsyaLlBVCPz8Kh3ylAA

A 38 degrees petition about Amber Rudd's statement.

I am not using the Australian situation to justify anything daphnedilI was merely using my son's experience to illustrate that priority in the job market being to those 'born and bred' is nothing new.

It may be unpalatable and illegal but it's nothing new and has nothing to do with BREXIT.

Thank you durhamjen and Jalima. We've stacked all our poolside furniture as advised. Heavy thunder storms at the moment and the water level in our pool is higher than we'd like. Still not sure if it's going to be a category 3, 4 or 5 as they can't seem to make up their minds.

Good luck Smileless2012
Hope it passes quickly

i2.wp.com/voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/161006-immigrant.jpg

I also hope you're OK, smileless.

Just because there is illegal discrimination anywhere else in the world in the job market does not justify what's happening in the UK's schools and workplaces. It might have something to do with the new PM or it might not. I'm not sure. In the case of schoolchildren, it appears to have been handled insensitively, especially at a time when people are experiencing increased anxiety and, in some cases, actual abuse. It would appear from some reports that young children have been singled out in from of their classmates.

Do you mean Morrisons? We don't have them round here, so I don't know.

Are you suggesting that people are working illegally or that the supermarket is paying them a lower rate than others?

Presumably a supermarket employs the best people it can. All other things being equal, why would an employer employ people who perhaps have poor language skills and little work experience in this country, if there others who have applied for the jobs?

What percentage of foreign-born people does this supermarket employ? How does that justify treating other people who are here filling skills gaps (just like your children) with suspicion?

I suspect it's winning back Ukip defectors which is of greater interest to Rudd and her puppet mistress, May.

Up here the hourly rate for Morrison's is more than that for a qualified teaching assistant.
Both can be immigrants, at the moment.

Daphne, we may soon be told how many foreign employees Morrison's has. Name and shame, I think the phrase was.
Andy Parsons said tonight that the department for Brexit might have to name and shame itself if it has to employ lots of EU people to sort out Brexit.

As I understand it, Australia does not give their indigenous Aborigines priority for anything ...

Why should an employer be ashamed of employing legal immigrants? The Cambridge science and research companies employ thousands of them. A high percentage of my language teaching colleagues were immigrants. These people make a net contribution to the UK. Foreign students contribute about £2.5 billion to higher education budgets, which helps keep down the cost to domestic students.

Rather than spending millions on gathering data, why doesn't the government spend more on cracking down on exploitative gangmasters and doing spot checks on people suspected of employing illegal immigrants or paying below the minimum wage? This seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but of course it keeps some sectors of the public happy.

@Neversaydie

Good point! It's interesting to think what kind of country the US would be without immigrants too.