Schengen area = area within the EU where there are no more border controls.
Nonetheless, freedom of movement is one of the "four economic pillars" of the EU and its common market, and the UK of course had to respect this principle while it was a member of the EU.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_workers_in_the_European_Union


tldr: even before Brexit, the UK was allowed to perform border controls, but as a member of the EU, it was not allowed to deny union citizens from moving to the UK.

it's really quite fascinating how you almost automatically try to rationalise bigoty, seemingly effortlessly spinning it into a narrative that, in order to appear somewhat 'justifiable', completely ignores crucial context, using incredibly biased and simplistic descriptions of complicated issues...

Saying "wir schaffen das" and opening the flood gates does not solve those complicated issues. On the contrary as you have found out.

Romani =/= Romanian

Btw btw... 3.3% of -Romanians- are -Romani-

if you had the slightest clue what i was talking about, you'd know that not only is that irrelevant to movement inside the EU, but also that i actually agree with that sentiment - i have always been critical of merkel's handling of the crisis (not necessarily the spirit behind it, but the implementation).

Lots of the illegal immigrants simply do what they please and move from country to country unhindered to get to where the grass looks greenest to them. This is movement inside the Eu. Shopkeepers can tell you all about these guys.

Illegal immigration is one of the issues that makes people vote for anti EU parties. This shit is totally not irrelevant.

Freedom of movement of people, labor and services is indeed a very different situation from flying in a fixed amount of people, who are actually needed, with a fixed date for the plane home. If there is spinning and bias involved, it's on your part when you try to spin this meaningful, obvious and not all that complex difference into some sort of "bigotry".

I get you're quite eurosceptic (at least for a German) and are trying to defend the UK but fender is pointing out the hypocrisy of leaving the EU to end free movement when we need free movement to fill job vacancies, and not just ones that exist on the pre-requisite of coronavirus interrupting supply chains. Those are the facts.

Once/if free movement ends, we will have shortages in nursing, cleaning, farming, factory work, and so on, unless we replace it with something that basically equates to letting in as many foreigners as we did under free movement. We should have control of our own borders as a sovereign nation, which the EU doesn't allow its member states to do, but the influx of foreigners has been necessary to achieving continued economic growth.

The points based immigration system that our government love to mention every five seconds would just allow skilled immigrants to come over, which doesn't address most of our labour shortages. It's populist bullshit.

The bolded part is key here, and tbh, I'm quite sceptical that it's true. Also note that shortages on the labor market are a naturally occurring thing, they're not necessarily bad. When a certain labor market gets tight, wages and/or working conditions have to be improved. That's classical capitalism.

Sure, there will be some jobs that no meaningful number of Brits will ever want to do again, like picking vegetables on the fields, but in other ares, like nursing or factory work, better wages and conditions might very well cause domestic supply to adjust and meet the demand eventually.

Either way, can we agree that an economic model which relies on a steady influx of foreign workers to achieve or maintain growth is a shitty model in the long run?

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Apr 19 2020 03:49pm

What else are you supposed to do if you're a highly developed nation with low birth rates; be like Japan and have a decreasing population, persistent deflation and general economic stagnation?

Low birth rates in developed nations can't be easily addressed by incentivising the native population to have more children. The participation of women in the workforce to such a high degree makes having more than two kids very undesirable even with all those policies designed to incentivise them.

Needless to say, countries shouldn't just be relying on immigration to boost their economy and should actively pursue supply side policies too. I'm curious in your reasoning as to why relying on an influx of foreign workers is a shitty model?