The topic of this speech is “is immigration good for Britain?” – I will in my speech address four things, where immigration is going to have an impact. Those things are economic, social, cultural and political. However, first I will start my speech with a little introduction to immigration in Britain.
In 2004 policies such as expanding the work immigration and opening up the country to East European migration caused the immigration to reach record levels .
A lot of people have negative opinions about this level of immigration. According to a survey of more than 20.000 people, 60 percent of these people felt there were more disadvantages than advantages to foreigners coming to live in the UK . Also 77 percent of these people believed that a dramatic reduction in immigration would benefit the economy .
The government of the UK, has been criticized a lot lately, because they haven’t done their job well enough, but is that really true? – The public opinion is, that “the immigrants is putting pressure on the benefits system and public services by using them without contributing in return ” – But according to researches by OECD, the public opinion is actually wrong. OECD presented a analysis back in 2011, which said “that immigrants put more into the public purses of Western nations than they take out ”. The offices for National Statistics also presented another report, which concluded that immigrants in the UK are getting better jobs- and education standards than the British people .
There are also whole neighborhoods, which are filled with Romanians in the UK . In these neighborhoods they have their own shops, churches, and last but not least Romanian satellites for their television . They are living there, and somehow pretending its Romania. Speaking their own language, and being isolated from their environment. The older immigrated people, don’t know English very well, so they have children who go to school, so they can act as interpreters for their parents. I personally think this is a very bad idea. I think the immigrants should socialize with the British people, and I am also pretty sure, that this is one of the reasons, the British people don’t like immigrants very well.
It is very difficult for the UK government, to decide if the immigrants come to work and contribute to their economic system, or they just are coming to put pressure on the system, without even contributing back to the system. This might also be why, the UK nationals are having negative opinions about the immigrants, because they mostly hear about the immigrants who don’t communicate very well, because they don’t know English.
There are also a lot of cultural differences between British citizens and immigrants. It can be very difficult for the immigrants to choose which traditions they want to live with follow the rest of their lives, and worst case scenario they can live a double life. If immigrants are living a double life, they will maybe have a hard time, when they either go to school or working. They won’t be like their colleagues or schoolmates, and then they would isolate themselves a little more. An example could be that they pretend to be living like a Britain in school, and when they come home they aren’t living like a Britain.
A good idea for the UK, could be to establish schools for immigrants, where they could learn English, starting from easy difficulties. If the immigrants are going to learn speaking nearly fluently English, they will maybe get accepted in the society.
To conclude this speech, I will say that immigration is good for Britain. If they learn the immigrants to live in their society. If the immigrants are getting jobs just like the British people, they will contribute to economic system in the UK. The immigrants can learn English on schools which focuses on immigrants, and therefor they will learn English from scratch.
I would like to say thank you for your patience everyone. If anybody has any questions, then feel free to ask me now. You will of course have the opportunity to ask me after behind the stage, and you can also send a question to me on my mail.
Have a nice day, I hoped you liked my speech.