Economic Migration is Fantastic!

Isn't economic migration great? As an economic migrant to Luxembourg, I have taken a skill of no particular value in my own 'home' country - speaking English - and moved to a different country where it is of, dare I say it, quite high value. Ignoring for the moment that I actually live here because I wanted to be near my little brother as he grows up, I am here, essentially, so I can earn more money.

This is, of course, also true of the other 200,000 or so johnny-foreigners that work in Luxembourg. I have not heard many complaints about us. I don't see any EU inspired strategies to curve this dangerous influx of non-Luxembourgish talent into darling little Luxembourg. And yet, economic migrants are vilified across the EU. What's the difference between them and us? Really, we have all moved countries to have better lives. What is wrong with that?

There are few more curious places to find anti-immigration rhetoric than Italy. Are they any other nationalities that have made more of migrating to other countries? None of the rest of us would have any decent restaurants if it wasn't for immigrant Italians.... and yet:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/17/familyandrelationships.roma


...in the interests of balance, this is in no way a singularly Italian problem. Ah, the UK:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/immigration


If you don't fancy sifting through all the articles, this one is particularly interesting:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/08/eu.immigration


If you look at the numbers for immigration in the UK, it's not particularly high relative to our population. Then, if you factor in the number of people that leave the UK each year (like me - sick of the rain and the food), the impact on our total population is smaller still. The jobs that are 'taken' by immigrants are more often than not, jobs that English people are not prepared to do (we are a precious people nowadays - all want to be footballers and pop stars). The UK would, quite simply, not function without economic migration.

Personally, I would solve immigration thus - for every migrant that arrives in the UK ready to work and contribute. We should exchange them for one lazy unemployed English person. After a couple of years of living in a poorer country, they'll probably appreciate the idea of being in the UK and actually do some work for their money.

To bring the blog full circle, virtually half the population of Luxembourg is made up of economic migrants. Nasty, evil, money grabbing economic migrants. Can someone point to tangible evidence that Luxembourg is worse for us being here? Are there 30 million economic migrants about to descend upon the UK? Or 29 million about to land upon the shores of Italy? I don't think so.

So, a quick question to end with, in regard to this whole economic migration thing... what's the big f*cking deal?