Licking our wounds in private

Sitting comfortably in my chair, stomach full, mug of tea freshly made I look out of the window, it's cold and wet and I'm glad I don't have to go out.

Watching news coverage of the refugees pressed up against the fences on the Macedonia boarder with Greece, that outlying edge of the EU which acts as a buffer to the Balkans, reminds one of the massive discrepancy in the way people live in this world. Next door to Macedonia, Bulgaria which shares a boarder with Turkey is the route from Syria and beyond, and as part of the Balkans, is an area of hard line opposition towards the humanitarian impulse which we in the rest of Europe purport to support. 

These are countries who have not bought into the multinational, free flow of human labour which the Schengen principle dictates.
Similarly the picture of immigrants waiting at Calais to hop across the Channel and the awful conditions under which they live is highlighted by the French attempt to bulldoze their camp and move some of them into "storage containers" !!!  Warm and snug as I am, they are being turfed out into the cold and one worries, specifically about the children who in this sort of turmoil must be terrified. Why not wait until the weather had improved should be on all our lips ?

The question of "rights" is a whole different kettle of fish. 

My right to go and settle in America or Australia, Russia or China is in the hands of the country I wish to settle in. The United Nations ruling which covers people fleeing from a war zone, has very specific rules and designates them "refugees". The immigrant and the refugee are different but provoke a similar reaction. The fear is that in massive numbers a bandwagon is underway to move and leave behind them the economically poor conditions which they call home.
We hear the arguments that they only want to come over to work and have no intention of taking advantage of the Benefit System.  As I understand it, the French have much better workers rights and employment conditions but they still risk life and limb to get to us.

Why is France not more attractive ?
The issue seems to be the number and type of jobs available. In the France the higher wages and better conditions make hiring people more onerous. In the UK's free for all,  plenty of jobs are available at below the minimum living wage, with employers benefiting from the fact that "Benefit Top Ups"  subsidises the employers unwillingness to pay a living wage. The immigrant from the poorer East European countries, usually young men, band together and squat or room many to a house, so that they can keep the overheads down and save to support families back home. Many are on a short term stay, 2 to 3 years and are content to live in minimal conditions for a short time.  The true 'refugee' is of an even more desperate mind set and will accept virtually anything.

Of course the other side of the equation is that this inflow of people, willing to do anything for work, drives down wages and makes a mockery of the terms and conditions the indigenous UK citizen has worked hard to obtain. In a Capitalistic market this is called "flexibility" and one often hears the politician quoting the advantages that our "Flexible Economy" brings making it the most attractive element of the economy.

Perhaps when the Market has had its fill and we the working class are once more impoverished, maybe the immigrants will depart and leave us to lick our wounds, in private.