Hacker News Reader

Comment by exporectomy | Hacker News Reader

People who want unrestricted immigration for "looking for work" are completely clueless. They only think they want it because they don't know how many people will come if it's open borders with the 3rd world and what the economic and social consequences of that will be. Those unemployed people can't be allowed to starve so they must be supported by social welfare. It's easy to feel sorry for a handful of rejected migrants but only by ignoring the millions who never even tried to enter, knowing they couldn't.

View on HN

> People who want unrestricted immigration for "looking for work"

sounds like a weird strawman. Do you know of any larger group seriously fighting for that at the moment?

(People coming for a scheduled interview are not "unrestricted immigration for looking for work")

The article mentions a person coming "looking for work" being detained.

The article also mentions a French woman who was detained for attending an interview for an internship, so I think there's that too.

Imo, it's obviously very unclear as to why they're being detained, but in the case of Eugenia (Spanish woman arriving to "look for work"), it was clearly illegal per the new law.

Very very few people want unrestricted immigration, however ~50% of people want unrestricted immigration from the EU on a reciprocal basis. We had that for years, with the economic and social consequences being largely positive.

That said, I don't take it as a given that unrestricted immigration would cause problems; it has never been tried, there is no data to go on.

Support for unlimited EU immigration is not 50%, it's much lower. You're thinking of people who voted to Remain, but a significant fraction of those people were motivated by the fear of "punishment" either from Cameron/Osborne's huge tax rises or the supposed EU allies, not actual firm support of EU policies.

A breakdown is available here:

https://dominiccummings.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/screensh...

You are not entitled to any welfare as merely an immigrant. If you are a visa holder, it will usually be stamped with "no recourse to public funds". If you are undocumented, obviously you have no means to claim anything.

Asylum seekers get £40 a week. https://www.gov.uk/asylum-support/what-youll-get

People complaining about immigrants claiming welfare have usually been lied to by the press about the applicable situation.

Migrants won't be allowed to die in the streets from starvation in large numbers. People just won't tolerate it and will insist on either keeping them out or paying to support them.

>>People who want unrestricted immigration for "looking for work" are completely clueless

You're entitled to feel this way, but it's completely irrelevant to this discussion. It's a matter of fact that the Home Office says it's legal to enter without a visa to look for a job, and yet that's not what's enforced at the border.

> unrestricted immigration

I'm in the USA and this polemical strawman is standard fare on Murdoch's Fox News. It's just a lazy way of dismissing the issue without real discussion.

I was referring to the GP's statement "The brutal policy that was applied to non-Europeans".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com