The value of the British Pound

lstar337

takman wrote: »

I personally haven't seen many of the problems immigration has caused because I don't live in a city or anywhere near one.

Neither do I, but I am not blind to the changes.

I used to live in a small town with two large employers, one in food and one in cider. Migrant workers came in to the area and local people with families were pushed out of jobs to make way for cheap labour who didn't mind living 8 men to a 2 bed flat. That is not a sensationalization of something I read in the paper, I lived in the flat below. When I left the flat because the people above were so awful (one used to regularly beat his girlfriend and one night I had to call the police because I thought she was going to die), the people who replaced me were yet more migrant workers.

The towns high street was split in two by a through road and a Polish cafe opened up in the lower half. After a while non Polish people started to get harassed and so stopped going to the lower half. It gained the nickname 'Little Poland' by locals and all the shops apart from the cafe are now available to let because the shop owners had to leave. I sometimes ask about how it is there and the feedback I get is that it is either the same or worse than when I left.

Don't get me wrong, I am not down on foreign people at all. Our current neighbours are absolutely lovely people and so considerate compared to the English couple that were before them, and since I work for a small company I deal directly with a lot of foreign parcel delivery men who are always lovely and friendly and stop for a chat.

I am also not against Polish people either, my last name has roots in Poland and I am probably descended from a Polish migrant family. It is too far into my families history for me to know for sure, but I know people in my family who are currently tracing it back for us.

My little story above was really just to illustrate how a large influx of migrant workers to a small area, can have an ill effect.