Pepperman wrote:UndercoverElephant wrote:There are too many people on this island already. An extra 500,000 or 1 million, is a disaster.
I haven't waded through this thread yet but just wanted to pick you up on this. What are you basing these numbers on? These are considerably higher than anything I've seen lately, even from organisations like Migration Watch
The last labour government blithely predicted that there would be around 50,000 poles and others arriving following accession. In the event, there were several hundred thousand who arrived on these shores. Bulgaria's and Romania’s populations are smaller than a country like Poland’s to be sure. However, these countries are far poorer than Poland and so there is a far greater incentive for Bulgarians and Romanians to migrate as a consequence.
How many will arrive from January 2014 is anyone's guess. But, given the entirely unprecedented scale of net immigration to this country that has occurred in recent years, it is not at all unreasonable to assume it may be in at least the hundreds of thousands. If it is not, then great. But, at the moment, we are relying on nothing more than poorly defined estimates and, given recent history, most of those estimate have proved to be hopeless
underestimates. In the context of all of the above, UE's fear that it could be in the region of a half a million is no more unreasonable or implausible than any other guess and, in terms of the precautionary principle, is a lot more reasonable than some.
