There are 2 million unemployed and 500,000 jobs available.
That means that 1.5 million people are NOT going to get a job no matter how hard they try.
If 1.5 million immigrants were NOT here, then that would free up 1.5 million jobs for people that are not immigrants and they could all have a job.
Funny old thing, facts.
Oh and that's assuming all the unemployed are not immigrants, which some of them will be, so we could get rid of them first and then even less employed immigrants would have to leave.
No that wouldnt because many of those unemployed people simply don't want to do some of the work the immigrants end up doing.
There is a reason why we had immigration in the first place
Jobs are out there, you have to broaden ur horizons and put ur pride to one side. Look at the Michael fella in the programme, he had confidence issues, he was searching on the internet, did he not think about going to a job agency or meeting employers face to face?, but the French woman seemed to have figured how to do it. Drive, a bit of balls and some common sense goes a long way.
Sadly there will always be a element of indigenous Brits who hate working for a living, we've all had the displeasure of meeting them. The numbers seem to be increasing with this xbox 360 lazy generation who want everything on a plate.
No that wouldnt because many of those unemployed people simply don't want to do some of the work the immigrants end up doing.
There is a reason why we had immigration in the first place
Jobs are out there, you have to broaden ur horizons and put ur pride to one side. Look at the Michael fella in the programme, he had confidence issues, he was searching on the internet, did he not think about going to a job agency or meeting employers face to face?, but the French woman seemed to have figured how to do it. Drive, a bit of balls and some common sense goes a long way.
Sadly there will always be a element of indigenous Brits who hate working for a living, we've all had the displeasure of meeting them. The numbers seem to be increasing with this xbox 360 lazy generation who want everything on a plate.
The reason was to keep wages down and thus inflation down.
We, the country, did not need immigration, the rich needed immigration so that they could get richer.
We should be making things better not worse.
The unemployed should always fight for better pay and conditions and not accept less because other people accept less (which is actually better for them than what they would earn in their own country).
The reason was to keep wages down and thus inflation down.
We, the country, did not need immigration, the rich needed immigration so that they could get richer.
We should be making things better not worse.
The unemployed should always fight for better pay and conditions and not accept less because other people accept less (which is actually better for them than what they would earn in their own country).
Sure Mr Chancellor
Th facts are quite simple there will always Brits who are work shy, and that number will continue to increase as society wants more for less
Immigrants will always be needed for a variety of jobs in different sectors.
That Michael fella had the cheek to say he was overqualified to work at McDonalds.
Beggers can't be choosers..
He sat around unemployed for 2 years because of his own doing, not because there arent any jobs out there..Jobs were clearly available to him he just thought he was to good to do them
Th facts are quite simple there will always Brits who are work shy, and that number will continue to increase as society wants more for less
Immigrants will always be needed for a variety of jobs in different sectors.
That Michael fella had the cheek to say he was overqualified to work at McDonalds.
Beggers can't be choosers..
He sat around unemployed for 2 years because of his own doing, not because there arent any jobs out there..Jobs were clearly available to him he just thought he was to good to do them
Nope, immigrants are not needed.
If there were no immigrants competing for jobs then McDonalds would have to employ Michael at a decent rate and not worry that he was over qualified.
Besides it isn't even the unemployed who are moaning about not having jobs, it is is the employed who are the ones moaning about the unemployed because they think they have it better than the employed.
The employed are making a rod for their own backs by allowing immigration. they are not hurting the unemployed.
Th facts are quite simple there will always Brits who are work shy, and that number will continue to increase as society wants more for less
Immigrants will always be needed for a variety of jobs in different sectors.
That Michael fella had the cheek to say he was overqualified to work at McDonalds.
Beggers can't be choosers..
He sat around unemployed for 2 years because of his own doing, not because there arent any jobs out there..Jobs were clearly available to him he just thought he was to good to do them
My brother works full-time on the minimum wage, he still needs 'the bank of mum and dad' to help out when times are tough. Minimum wage jobs are an insult to people who do work hard and work full-time.
It was fascinating to watch that BBC documentry on shop girls a few weeks ago, where Victorian women and Edwardian women had to fight for better pay and working conditions - including something called 'the living wage' which John Lewis and a few other retailers eventually implemented.
Things haven't changed much really, low paid workers are still given little consideration.
My brother works full-time on the minimum wage, he still needs 'the bank of mum and dad' to help out when times are tough. Minimum wage jobs are an insult to people who do work hard and work full-time.
It was fascinating to watch that BBC documentry on shop girls a few weeks ago, where Victorian women and Edwardian women had to fight for better pay and working conditions - including something called 'the living wage' which John Lewis and a few other retailers eventually implemented.
Things haven't changed much really, low paid workers are still given little consideration.
Yes exactly.
Hard fought for rights and conditions that immigrant are eroding and who never thought for their own rights and conditions.
It is a shame that some people want a race to the bottom.
Brilliant programme, really exposed the ignorance of the anti immigration crowd. One bloke thought that increased immigration led to increased crime levels. An academic (y'know somone who has actually researched the subject matter) basically said this was not true.
Also found it ironic that some of the participants had parents who were immigrants. So immigration was fine for them but now the drawbridge needs to be pulled up.
The Sikh lady had a misguided view as to what "being British" is, getting others to "integrate", even asking what food people ate! I was born in this country but I've never been in a synagogue and had Chinese for tea last night. Does this mean I am not integrating into British society?
Also noted that one of the migrants on the show was in a private rental - paid for through his savings and housing benefit - the latter (tax payers money) going straight into the pocket of the landlord!
Brilliant programme, really exposed the ignorance of the anti immigration crowd. One bloke thought that increased immigration led to increased crime levels. An academic (y'know somone who has actually researched the subject matter) basically said this was not true.
Also found it ironic that some of the participants had parents who were immigrants. So immigration was fine for them but now the drawbridge needs to be pulled up.
The Sikh lady had a misguided view as to what "being British" is, getting others to "integrate", even asking what food people ate! I was born in this country but I've never been in a synagogue and had Chinese for tea last night. Does this mean I am not integrating into British society?
Also noted that one of the migrants on the show was in a private rental - paid for through his savings and housing benefit - the latter (tax payers money) going straight into the pocket of the landlord!
i felt the programme re-inforced many perceptions of immigrants .It was only the presenters themselves who tried to salvage something for the immigrants. Particularly at the end, but by then, was a bit too late anyway.
I am pro-immigration and so the program (although deliberately simplistic in its audience appeal) worked for me. The Daily Mail reader anti-immigrant argument needed to be shown as flawed.
But there are some anti-more-immigration arguments being made here that, although do not agree with, I sympathise with.
My family history is filled with immigrants, both political and economic and so I always think "my family had the chance, so why shouldn't they?" But, my family are all hard workers who believe in the rights of workers to be paid a living wage...
So, I sympathise with the argument that immigrants undercut the wages of workers already here. Not because they will work under the minimum wage (although a few do), but because the constant supply of available workers keeps the minimum wage down. On first appearance, it seems a valid argument, but is it?
To the person who argued that McDonald's for instance, would have to pay a higher wage to get British national workers if there were no immigrant workers, I would say that this would not be the case.
Any large employer with many high street branches would be more likely to shift workers between branches, bring in more part-timers and/or zero hours contracts, find ways to get their workers to do more work over their contracted hours, and, if all that failed, close a few branches (after all, there are plenty more) than raise wages above the national minimum.
Immigrants are being set up as the enemy of British workers. They are not. They are just pawns in the game of big business, just like the rest of us.
Immigrants drive wages right down making the rich richer and the poor poorer, all this immigration has happened through pressure to the government by big business who wanted cheap labour, those same big businesses that fund the parties. Now you get companies like Tesco as the worst example paying minimum wages for tens of thousands of staff and yet making hundreds of millions in profits, it's nothing but greed. In London almost half the population are immigrants so it's easier to see what is going on. If you work 40 hours a week on minimum wage you don't even take home £1000 a month - but you will be lucky if you can rent your own place to live in London for that never mind other bills. Tesco won't pay the london living wage which is 8.80 and why should they when there are thousands of immigrants willing to work for 6.31.
We are in the 21st century, if someone has to work full time and yet cannot even afford to have a home of their own then we are going backwards. If there were not so many immigrants then businesses like Tesco would have to up the wages to get people to fill those jobs. As an extreme example, lets say businesses were allowed they to bring in thousands of people from abroad to work for them for £2 an hour, do you seriously think that will have no impact on living standards for the average British person ? Of course it will, because then you will have to work for £2 an hour, which means you will probably have to share a room with 5 others in order to survive. Without immigration we would all have a much better standard of live and businesses like Tesco would not be making hundreds of millions because they would have to spread that wealth in order to be able to compete as a business.
Immigrants drive wages right down making the rich richer and the poor poorer,
...
If there were not so many immigrants then businesses like Tesco would have to up the wages to get people to fill those jobs
Wages are THE major component in the price of pretty much everything we buy. It might not just be the pay of the shop staff, but the delivery drivers, the warehouse staff, the packers, the cleaners, the manufacturers, the vegetable-pickers, and the farm labourers too.
And never forget: all of these low-paid people are the ones who buy the cheap produce. You don't see many Rollers in Tesco's car park.
If you increase the pay of all the people in this chain, and then in all the other chains: teachers, classroom assistants, caretakers, adminstrators, school-bus drivers - or a different chain: office workers, office cleaners, office caretakers, security guards, carpark attendants, train drivers - then who wins? Answer: nobody as everybody's pay and their ability to buy cheap stuff will depend on everybody else in all walks of life.
If you want minimum-wage checkout staff to earn more, that increases the prices of goods in the shops (and that will disproportionately affect the low-paid shoppers, not the affluent ones). If you want to increase the pay of council park attendants then the council tax goes up and everyone has less money as a result.
So low prices are of the most benefit to the lowest paid, not the rich.
Wages are THE major component in the price of pretty much everything we buy. It might not just be the pay of the shop staff, but the delivery drivers, the warehouse staff, the packers, the cleaners, the manufacturers, the vegetable-pickers, and the farm labourers too.
And never forget: all of these low-paid people are the ones who buy the cheap produce. You don't see many Rollers in Tesco's car park.
If you increase the pay of all the people in this chain, and then in all the other chains: teachers, classroom assistants, caretakers, adminstrators, school-bus drivers - or a different chain: office workers, office cleaners, office caretakers, security guards, carpark attendants, train drivers - then who wins? Answer: nobody as everybody's pay and their ability to buy cheap stuff will depend on everybody else in all walks of life.
If you want minimum-wage checkout staff to earn more, that increases the prices of goods in the shops (and that will disproportionately affect the low-paid shoppers, not the affluent ones). If you want to increase the pay of council park attendants then the council tax goes up and everyone has less money as a result.
So low prices are of the most benefit to the lowest paid, not the rich.
Or we eat into company profits, and use tax to increase wages rather than giving the rich tax breaks.
Or we eat into company profits, and use tax to increase wages rather than giving the rich tax breaks.
But if you end up with more people having more money, but no extra stuff being produced for them to buy, all you do is push up inflation and nobody's any better off. And one thing we learned about inflation from the 1970's (when this is what happened) is that it makes companies uncompetitive and they go out of business, leading to mass unemployment.
If you want to make people wealthier, you have to increase their productivity.
If the response is "OK, we'll just import goods from foreign countries", the same thing happens. Then the value of the £££ drops in relation to other currencies and the "extra" money will still only buy the same amount of foreign goods as before.
But it gets worse. . If the Pound drops in value, it makes more sense for british manufacturers to export the stuff they make rather than sell it domestically (as the foreign currency they would get is worth more than the Sterling for selling the same stuff int he UK). So we end up with even less stuff for people in the UK to buy with their £££'s - which will just make it even more expensive - even with all the extra pay we all get. (And that's assuming the companies don't get to thinking: "Well, since Germany is now our major customer, it makes more sense to move our factory to there, and close the british one")
But if you end up with more people having more money, but no extra stuff being produced for them to buy, all you do is push up inflation and nobody's any better off. And one thing we learned about inflation from the 1970's (when this is what happened) is that it makes companies uncompetitive and they go out of business, leading to mass unemployment.
LOL No extra stuff to buy?
People will either save or buy more stuff. Inflation happens because wages increase and then prices increase to pay for the extra wages. But if we cut into profits or use tax then inflation will not happen.
People will either save or buy more stuff. Inflation happens because wages increase and then prices increase to pay for the extra wages. But if we cut into profits or use tax then inflation will not happen.
No. Wages can increase without increasing the prices of goods if productivity increases to match the wage rises. So if a worker is paid £100 / day to make 100 widgets, they can have a 10% pay-rise so long as they make 110 widgets. That keeps the price of a widget the same, but the worker has more money - that's an increase in the worker's wealth. But if you "magically" find a way to reduce that worker's tax deductions (so that they take home £80 instead of £70) there are still only 100 widgets for them to buy. But since they have more money, they'll be willing to spend more on buying a widget. End result: no benefit to the worker, but the price of the stuff they buy has gone up.
If wages rise without an increase in productivity, all you've achieved is to increase the amount of money, but with no increase in the amount of stuff people can buy with it. That's why the price goes up: supply and demand. The supply is still the same, but the demand (due to the extra money) has increased.
As to savings? Again: no. Why would people save their money when inflation will make it worth less tomorrow than it is today, due to rising prices. The biggest problem that deflation causes is exactly the opposite: that people put off buying non-essentials because they know that those items will be cheaper tomorrow - or next year. So why "waste" money buying something now when you can get it cheaper, later. So in an inflationary environment, people will spend their money to get the value from it, rather than save it and see that value decrease.
Plus, if you cut company profits (maybe through increased corporation tax) what incentive is there for those companies to make things or sell things in the UK? As we frequently see happening, companies often choose to relocate their manufacturing to cheaper, more profitable, countries with lower tax rates at the expense of UK jobs. If you increase their tax burden, you're just making it less likely they'll stay in the UK.
Same with "the rich". They are remarkably mobile and have few ties tothe UK. Increase their tax burdens and they'll just move to Monaco or Barbados, instead.
Perhaps we should let the greedy buggers re-locate so they parasite off someone else. Really, the likes of corporates such Costa Coffee, Amazon etc have been leeching from us for years. I notice in France that they have been far more successful than us at holding onto their culture - and their is a distinct lack of corporatism on the scale that is seen in England.
Give the smaller businesses here the chance to fill some of the vacuum
This question wasn't just directed at the poster. It is open for anyone else to also give an answer!
In my last permanent job as a manager for a small design team in London I was on £18ph (10yrs ago). I considered myself pretty well off! I left, had kids, and am now self-employed, paying myself £7ph.
I could not afford to live in my house and feed myself and two kids on £7ph - we rely on Mr Python for that and if Mr Python wasn't round we'd rely on benefits.
Whilst there is NMW (£6.31) I would far rather it was raised to match the Living Wage (UK £7.65, London £8.80). http://www.livingwage.org.uk
Brilliant programme, really exposed the ignorance of the anti immigration crowd. One bloke thought that increased immigration led to increased crime levels. An academic (y'know somone who has actually researched the subject matter) basically said this was not true.
Also found it ironic that some of the participants had parents who were immigrants. So immigration was fine for them but now the drawbridge needs to be pulled up.
The Sikh lady had a misguided view as to what "being British" is, getting others to "integrate", even asking what food people ate! I was born in this country but I've never been in a synagogue and had Chinese for tea last night. Does this mean I am not integrating into British society?
Also noted that one of the migrants on the show was in a private rental - paid for through his savings and housing benefit - the latter (tax payers money) going straight into the pocket of the landlord!
You can make statistics say anything you want.
I wasn't convinced by that so-called 'expert' that said mass immigration doesn't lead to an increase in crime.
As for the French girl and her rented house with 19 residents, I bet those pictures of London buses weren't there before the camera crew arrived.
I'm sorry but anyone who thought this was a good programme is simply stupid. It was one sided propaganda, nothing more, nothing less. Just the same as that which appears on the BNP website in reverse.
Immigration is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. Some people directly benefit from it, others don't. Some immigrants contribute greatly to the economy or in other ways, some don't, and even contribute negatively.
If you own properties in London, then you will be pro-immigration, as immigration has directly led to a housing shortages, therefore increasing your rents. If you're struggling to find somewhere to live in London, you will be more likely to be against immigration. And I could give countless more examples.
It depends directly how it effects you that forms your opinion. But what this programme did was to hand pick immigrants it felt would portray immigrants positively, and "native" people who could be portrayed positively. It was no different to Goebbels going around Jewish areas with a camera and deliberately filming Jews with features he felt proved a stereotype.
Seeing a couple of extremely well off people, who almost certainly live in affluent white middle class areas, driving around and having a sanctimonious and contrived dialectic on the issue of immigration was extremely poor TV and not what license money should be spent on.
Comments
No that wouldnt because many of those unemployed people simply don't want to do some of the work the immigrants end up doing.
There is a reason why we had immigration in the first place
Jobs are out there, you have to broaden ur horizons and put ur pride to one side. Look at the Michael fella in the programme, he had confidence issues, he was searching on the internet, did he not think about going to a job agency or meeting employers face to face?, but the French woman seemed to have figured how to do it. Drive, a bit of balls and some common sense goes a long way.
Sadly there will always be a element of indigenous Brits who hate working for a living, we've all had the displeasure of meeting them. The numbers seem to be increasing with this xbox 360 lazy generation who want everything on a plate.
The reason was to keep wages down and thus inflation down.
We, the country, did not need immigration, the rich needed immigration so that they could get richer.
We should be making things better not worse.
The unemployed should always fight for better pay and conditions and not accept less because other people accept less (which is actually better for them than what they would earn in their own country).
Sure Mr Chancellor
Th facts are quite simple there will always Brits who are work shy, and that number will continue to increase as society wants more for less
Immigrants will always be needed for a variety of jobs in different sectors.
That Michael fella had the cheek to say he was overqualified to work at McDonalds.
Beggers can't be choosers..
He sat around unemployed for 2 years because of his own doing, not because there arent any jobs out there..Jobs were clearly available to him he just thought he was to good to do them
Nope, immigrants are not needed.
If there were no immigrants competing for jobs then McDonalds would have to employ Michael at a decent rate and not worry that he was over qualified.
Besides it isn't even the unemployed who are moaning about not having jobs, it is is the employed who are the ones moaning about the unemployed because they think they have it better than the employed.
The employed are making a rod for their own backs by allowing immigration. they are not hurting the unemployed.
My brother works full-time on the minimum wage, he still needs 'the bank of mum and dad' to help out when times are tough. Minimum wage jobs are an insult to people who do work hard and work full-time.
It was fascinating to watch that BBC documentry on shop girls a few weeks ago, where Victorian women and Edwardian women had to fight for better pay and working conditions - including something called 'the living wage' which John Lewis and a few other retailers eventually implemented.
Things haven't changed much really, low paid workers are still given little consideration.
Hard fought for rights and conditions that immigrant are eroding and who never thought for their own rights and conditions.
It is a shame that some people want a race to the bottom.
Also found it ironic that some of the participants had parents who were immigrants. So immigration was fine for them but now the drawbridge needs to be pulled up.
The Sikh lady had a misguided view as to what "being British" is, getting others to "integrate", even asking what food people ate! I was born in this country but I've never been in a synagogue and had Chinese for tea last night. Does this mean I am not integrating into British society?
Also noted that one of the migrants on the show was in a private rental - paid for through his savings and housing benefit - the latter (tax payers money) going straight into the pocket of the landlord!
i felt the programme re-inforced many perceptions of immigrants .It was only the presenters themselves who tried to salvage something for the immigrants. Particularly at the end, but by then, was a bit too late anyway.
But there are some anti-more-immigration arguments being made here that, although do not agree with, I sympathise with.
My family history is filled with immigrants, both political and economic and so I always think "my family had the chance, so why shouldn't they?" But, my family are all hard workers who believe in the rights of workers to be paid a living wage...
So, I sympathise with the argument that immigrants undercut the wages of workers already here. Not because they will work under the minimum wage (although a few do), but because the constant supply of available workers keeps the minimum wage down. On first appearance, it seems a valid argument, but is it?
To the person who argued that McDonald's for instance, would have to pay a higher wage to get British national workers if there were no immigrant workers, I would say that this would not be the case.
Any large employer with many high street branches would be more likely to shift workers between branches, bring in more part-timers and/or zero hours contracts, find ways to get their workers to do more work over their contracted hours, and, if all that failed, close a few branches (after all, there are plenty more) than raise wages above the national minimum.
Immigrants are being set up as the enemy of British workers. They are not. They are just pawns in the game of big business, just like the rest of us.
In mathematics, a function is a relation between a set of inputs and a set of permissible outputs
We are in the 21st century, if someone has to work full time and yet cannot even afford to have a home of their own then we are going backwards. If there were not so many immigrants then businesses like Tesco would have to up the wages to get people to fill those jobs. As an extreme example, lets say businesses were allowed they to bring in thousands of people from abroad to work for them for £2 an hour, do you seriously think that will have no impact on living standards for the average British person ? Of course it will, because then you will have to work for £2 an hour, which means you will probably have to share a room with 5 others in order to survive. Without immigration we would all have a much better standard of live and businesses like Tesco would not be making hundreds of millions because they would have to spread that wealth in order to be able to compete as a business.
Wages are THE major component in the price of pretty much everything we buy. It might not just be the pay of the shop staff, but the delivery drivers, the warehouse staff, the packers, the cleaners, the manufacturers, the vegetable-pickers, and the farm labourers too.
And never forget: all of these low-paid people are the ones who buy the cheap produce. You don't see many Rollers in Tesco's car park.
If you increase the pay of all the people in this chain, and then in all the other chains: teachers, classroom assistants, caretakers, adminstrators, school-bus drivers - or a different chain: office workers, office cleaners, office caretakers, security guards, carpark attendants, train drivers - then who wins? Answer: nobody as everybody's pay and their ability to buy cheap stuff will depend on everybody else in all walks of life.
If you want minimum-wage checkout staff to earn more, that increases the prices of goods in the shops (and that will disproportionately affect the low-paid shoppers, not the affluent ones). If you want to increase the pay of council park attendants then the council tax goes up and everyone has less money as a result.
So low prices are of the most benefit to the lowest paid, not the rich.
Or we eat into company profits, and use tax to increase wages rather than giving the rich tax breaks.
But if you end up with more people having more money, but no extra stuff being produced for them to buy, all you do is push up inflation and nobody's any better off. And one thing we learned about inflation from the 1970's (when this is what happened) is that it makes companies uncompetitive and they go out of business, leading to mass unemployment.
If you want to make people wealthier, you have to increase their productivity.
If the response is "OK, we'll just import goods from foreign countries", the same thing happens. Then the value of the £££ drops in relation to other currencies and the "extra" money will still only buy the same amount of foreign goods as before.
But it gets worse.
LOL No extra stuff to buy?
People will either save or buy more stuff. Inflation happens because wages increase and then prices increase to pay for the extra wages. But if we cut into profits or use tax then inflation will not happen.
No. Wages can increase without increasing the prices of goods if productivity increases to match the wage rises. So if a worker is paid £100 / day to make 100 widgets, they can have a 10% pay-rise so long as they make 110 widgets. That keeps the price of a widget the same, but the worker has more money - that's an increase in the worker's wealth. But if you "magically" find a way to reduce that worker's tax deductions (so that they take home £80 instead of £70) there are still only 100 widgets for them to buy. But since they have more money, they'll be willing to spend more on buying a widget. End result: no benefit to the worker, but the price of the stuff they buy has gone up.
If wages rise without an increase in productivity, all you've achieved is to increase the amount of money, but with no increase in the amount of stuff people can buy with it. That's why the price goes up: supply and demand. The supply is still the same, but the demand (due to the extra money) has increased.
As to savings? Again: no. Why would people save their money when inflation will make it worth less tomorrow than it is today, due to rising prices. The biggest problem that deflation causes is exactly the opposite: that people put off buying non-essentials because they know that those items will be cheaper tomorrow - or next year. So why "waste" money buying something now when you can get it cheaper, later. So in an inflationary environment, people will spend their money to get the value from it, rather than save it and see that value decrease.
Plus, if you cut company profits (maybe through increased corporation tax) what incentive is there for those companies to make things or sell things in the UK? As we frequently see happening, companies often choose to relocate their manufacturing to cheaper, more profitable, countries with lower tax rates at the expense of UK jobs. If you increase their tax burden, you're just making it less likely they'll stay in the UK.
Same with "the rich". They are remarkably mobile and have few ties tothe UK. Increase their tax burdens and they'll just move to Monaco or Barbados, instead.
Give the smaller businesses here the chance to fill some of the vacuum
In my last permanent job as a manager for a small design team in London I was on £18ph (10yrs ago). I considered myself pretty well off! I left, had kids, and am now self-employed, paying myself £7ph.
I could not afford to live in my house and feed myself and two kids on £7ph - we rely on Mr Python for that and if Mr Python wasn't round we'd rely on benefits.
Whilst there is NMW (£6.31) I would far rather it was raised to match the Living Wage (UK £7.65, London £8.80).
http://www.livingwage.org.uk
You can make statistics say anything you want.
I wasn't convinced by that so-called 'expert' that said mass immigration doesn't lead to an increase in crime.
As for the French girl and her rented house with 19 residents, I bet those pictures of London buses weren't there before the camera crew arrived.
This documentary was pure propaganda.
Immigration is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. Some people directly benefit from it, others don't. Some immigrants contribute greatly to the economy or in other ways, some don't, and even contribute negatively.
If you own properties in London, then you will be pro-immigration, as immigration has directly led to a housing shortages, therefore increasing your rents. If you're struggling to find somewhere to live in London, you will be more likely to be against immigration. And I could give countless more examples.
It depends directly how it effects you that forms your opinion. But what this programme did was to hand pick immigrants it felt would portray immigrants positively, and "native" people who could be portrayed positively. It was no different to Goebbels going around Jewish areas with a camera and deliberately filming Jews with features he felt proved a stereotype.
Seeing a couple of extremely well off people, who almost certainly live in affluent white middle class areas, driving around and having a sanctimonious and contrived dialectic on the issue of immigration was extremely poor TV and not what license money should be spent on.