Why you should VOTE STAY in the EU referendum

So you're immigration point is irrelevant for us staying, great thanks.

A lot of people are on the fence, and you'll probably see a lot of fearmongering and outright lies from people that want to leave. Stuff like "our NHS is failing", "the UK is overpopulated", "we give the EU money and never getting anything back", and so on. The "Leave" crowd seem to be very loud, so it's easy to believe them, but please ask questions and look for statistics before you believe what they say.

People are turning the EU into a scapegoat as if it's the source of all these problems, and pretending that leaving it would solve them. I'd love to jump on the bandwagon, but the reality is that it won't. I'd like to make the case for why we should stay in the EU, with some facts and statistics, to help you make up your mind.

1. Immigration: The EU allows for free migration between all EU countries. The people wanting to leave will tell you that lots of people come over from poorer countries to do unskilled labour, so they take our jobs, or that lots just come to take our benefits.

Claims of immigrants coming from the EU to take our benefits are outright lies. This study by UCL found that EU migrants contributed 34% more in taxes than they took in benefits. It also found, "In contrast, over the same period, the total of UK natives’ tax payments were 11% lower than the transfers they received." This essentially means that the average migrant is contributing more to the economy than the average British citizen.

There's also a myth that most immigrants are unskilled workers - people try to say that, while EU migrants work, they're taking unskilled jobs from natives instead of filling jobs we need. But the same UCL study found that 32% of EU migrants had a university education, compared to 21% for UK natives - so the truth is that they actually are filling skilled jobs that we need filled.

As for unemployment, the number of UK natives in work has increased over the last few years.

2. Giving money to the EU: The UK (and all EU countries) pay an EU membership fee. But a lot of people don't seem to realize that we get a large amount of that money back. In 2013, Nigel Farage claimed that Britain pays £20 billion per year for EU membership. We actually paid £18 billion, and we received over half of it back.

The majority of the rest went to the EU budget. The EU uses this to pay for a lot of stuff that benefits the entire EU. For example, £4 billion went to funding scientific research in the UK, and £53 billion to agriculture subsidies. A lot of this benefits us directly, but it also helps the rest of the EU grow, which in turn helps us by increasing trade.

The EU has been particularly important in tackling Climate Change, and a large portion of the budget goes toward funding low-carbon technologies and climate change research. The budget has also provided funding for climate change adaptation for EU member states - paying for flood defenses, for example.

A ton of science and technology projects in the UK and abroad are also able to happen due to EU funding. [url="https://erc.europa.eu/projects-and-results/erc-funded-projects?f[0"]Over 2200 UK research projects have benefited from EU funding and grants

Just to comment on the issue of Mexico having free trade, no one is saying that the UK wouldn't be able to get a trade deal; of course the EU isn't going to suddenly stop trading with us. However, the deal will likely involve higher trade tariffs which will be economically damaging and we will have to subscribe to a large number of EU regulations anyway (like Norway and Switzerland currently have to - we will be no exception), so we might as well have a say in them.

One thing is for certain: the EU won't give us a better trade deal IF we leave, and will likely give us a worse one than we currently have, so there is no point in leaving on economic grounds.

So let's say the eu puts tariffs on uk goods.

We would do the same, the difference is we spend 80 billion more on their goods than they do on ours.

Tariffs would make us more money!


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Both of us putting up tariffs helps no one, it's just economically damaging for us both. The more tariffs we put in place, the less they trade.

I can't remember the exact figure off the top of my head, but I believe that somewhere around 45% of our exports go to the EU which is massive, anything which is put into place to reduce this will undoubtedly have a negative economic impact.

If you check my original post, I mentioned 'The Undercover Economist' by Tim Harford. If you're interested you should read it, he can probably explain trade barriers a lot better than I can.

1. It is irrelevant if the average migrant pays more into the system than the average British person does.

The only thing that matters is if migrants pay for themselves on average as people outside of our country aren't our problem whereas our own residents are.

The study you cite is full of flaws it doesn't include the cost of capital expenditure for new schools, hospitals etc only the cost of a school place for example.
So correct me if I'm wrong you need to build more buildings, fill them with equipment and teachers if you bring hundreds of thousands of people extra into the country per year.
It doesn't include the cost of housing benefit.
It doesn't include the cost of the rising demand for housing which comes about solely as an issue of immigration as the uk doesn't have a growing population without migrants.

A recent Daily Mail poll puts the Stay voters in the lead.

It's still close though. If you support staying in the EU, please spread the word and correct people when you see them spreading lies and misinformation!

It seems like whenever I try to talk to/debate this with friends all they seem to fall back on is immigration. I feel like closer to the referendum we'll get hounded with all these immigration figures and stories..

your reasons are weak.
do you think hardly anybody in this country cares about being able to move to poland or romania? before 2005~ sure there was france, spain and germany etc but now it's eastern europe.
do you think hardly anybody in this country think that immigration *isn't* the top electoral issue?
and by the way: benefits claimants being migrants isn't the issue. the issue is numbers. and there's no way that we get more money from the EU than we give in. NOBODY credible claims that.
and who honestly claims that we won't be able to have a free trade deal with the EU if bloody *mexico* gets it?

1. Immigration: The EU allows for free migration between all EU countries. The people wanting to leave will tell you that lots of people come over from poorer countries to do unskilled labour, so they take our jobs, or that lots just come to take our benefits.

Claims of immigrants coming from the EU to take our benefits are outright lies. This study by UCL found that EU migrants contributed 34% more in taxes than they took in benefits. It also found, "In contrast, over the same period, the total of UK natives’ tax payments were 11% lower than the transfers they received." This essentially means that the average migrant is contributing more to the economy than the average British citizen.

There's also a myth that most immigrants are unskilled workers - people try to say that, while EU migrants work, they're taking unskilled jobs from natives instead of filling jobs we need. But the same UCL study found that 32% of EU migrants had a university education, compared to 21% for UK natives - so the truth is that they actually are filling skilled jobs that we need filled.

As for unemployment, the number of UK natives in work has increased over the last few years. The number of employed natives is increasing alongside the number of migrants. The migrants aren't taking our jobs - they're spurring growth and creating jobs.

2. Giving money to the EU: The UK (and all EU countries) pay an EU membership fee. But a lot of people don't seem to realize that we get a large amount of that money back. In 2013, Nigel Farage claimed that Britain pays £20 billion per year for EU membership. We actually paid £18 billion, and we received over half of it back.

The majority of the rest went to the EU budget. The EU uses this to pay for a lot of stuff that benefits the entire EU. For example, £4 billion went to funding scientific research in the UK, and £53 billion to agriculture subsidies. A lot of this benefits us directly, but it also helps the rest of the EU grow, which in turn helps us by increasing trade.

The EU has been particularly important in tackling Climate Change, and a large portion of the budget goes toward funding low-carbon technologies and climate change research. The budget has also provided funding for climate change adaptation for EU member states - paying for flood defenses, for example.

A ton of science and technology projects in the UK and abroad are also able to happen due to EU funding. [url="https://erc.europa.eu/projects-and-results/erc-funded-projects?f[0"]Over 2200 UK research projects have benefited from EU funding and grants

1) Immigration. Leaving would give us the opportunity to control our borders and ensure that only those best for Britain are admitted. We are letting in to many, we are suffering from overcrowding and many services are being stretched. Also a large number of poorer unskilled workers are entering the country and leading to wage deflation. We would still be able to fill skills shortages outside of the EU and ensure only those we want are let in. Also any British worker that's good enough will be happily let into the EU so their is no worry their. Just a but more paperwork.

2) We pay more in that we get back, fact! We could divert the wasted spending into the UK and ensure that we don't fund projects elsewhere in the EU. British spending on British things and we could invest in even more research projects and fighting climate change as we will have more money than we get from the EU.

3) We now trade more with those outside the EU than in it. Being part of the EU makes it much harder for us to trade to the growing parts of the world and set up ftas with them. The EU is a declining area which we have a trade deficit with and so its even more in their interest to negotiate at FTA with us if we leave. We also have 5 million jobs linked to exports outside the EU vs 3 million linked to the EU so its time to focus on outside the EU.

4) 1.3 million Brits in the EU (most in Spain) vs 3 million EU workers here, clearly we don't care for it as much as they do.

5) The UK justice system is one of the oldest, most respected, liberal and least corrupt in the world. Most of the rights would remain and I much prefer our court system to that of the EU. We can make laws that benefit us, get control back over regulation of the city, reduce red tape and remove the pro French fishing laws. The UK is not a dictatorship and we don't need the EU to be one of the freest nations on earth.

6) Sovereignty. Don't you think a country of our size should be able to determine its on fate. Well I do and think we will be much better at it than EU bureaucrats, many of which are unelected.

VOTE LEAVE!

Nah I'm still voting leave.

Not planning to have a bunch of misogynistic migrant men come over to the country and then make London England's Cologne.

And anyway, staying in the EU would mean, if a terrorist has EU citizenship, they can easily go anywhere in Europe and plan terror attacks. Islamic State would send jihadi fighters into the EU as their way of saying thanks to the ones who voted stay.

Ludicrous fearmongering. You people have been telling us about how the jihadis are all sneaking into Europe for months, and yet they still haven't attacked us. The most recent attack (Paris) was done by people born and raised in neighbouring countries.

The fact is, if we're going to be attacked it'll probably be by people born and raised in Britain. But people would rather keep pretending that all we need to do is close the borders and we'll be safe.



You don't even know how much we supposedly pay but you're saying it's going to the wrong places?

1. We're already not controlling our borders very well. Most immigrants in the UK are from outside the EU, and most of them are unskilled. If immigration is that much of a properly you should be campaigning to keep out some of the hundreds of thousands of non-EU immigrants, because that wouldn't require leaving the EU. If we're already letting in more people than we need, why do you think it would be any different if we left the EU?

That said, immigration is overall beneficial for us anyway. The number of skilled workers coming from the EU would inevitable decrease if we were to leave. It's not as simple as "letting them in" - they have to actually want to come in.