Why do we need immigration? Honest question.
Workers is the simple answer, there are a lot of jobs out there that are not filled anymore because a lot of the Eastern Europeans have gone home,especially in the labour intensive work, ie hospitality, fruit and vegetable picking to name but two. Most countries need it, take Qatar for example the World Cup would not have taken place if they did not have migrant labour from poorer Asian countries. I do not know enough about the rights and wrongs of how they were treated to make a judgement on that, I’m sure other people on here are better qualified but I can give you an example from my own experiences.
I used to work for a company that grew strawberries and raspberries in Cornwall, the first year we used student workers from here and young people who just wanted a job for the summer, they were paid properly and given holiday pay etc etc, unfortunately they would turn up randomly say 1day in 3 and when you asked where they had been they said they couldn’t be bothered,been on the piss for two days, stuff like that, obviously the fruit was going to ruin and something had to be done. The next year we advertised for agricultural students from Eastern Europe to come and work, they were housed paid properly and were fantastic workers and wanted to learn and earn money,they would have worked 7days a week but we made them take a day off, Sergei a ukrainian lad told me his mum and dad were teachers and he earned in one day double his mums earnings for a month, his ambition was to buy them a shop.
I write this as an example of why we need migration not as an expert on how it should be done or who should get visas, the students went home in October and some came back inMarch or other students would replace them.