Quote:
Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch
No European has started the thread because they don't want to appear racist.
I'd love to hear Eichhornchen's take as he lives near a high migrant area.
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I agree with all you say, HB.
In Boston yesterday I passed a young guy painting a shop front, making it look nice: "Polish Shop" said his new sign, plus another in the window. I thought "Good for you, mate and I hope you do well with it". There were no end of empty shops in the town until recently, and now just about all of them have been opened again. Mostly, it seems, by Polish or other Eastern European immigrants.
We noticed, a few years back, some exotic-sounding accents around town... just now and again. Today it seems that half the people you come across have an Eastern European accent; it's
very common to hear it now. They look different too, and usually very good-looking; the women are often gorgeous, including Granny. And they give every impression of being a galvanising presence: fit, active and willing to belong (there were enough stories about the migrants pitching in to help the other residents during the floods in Boston a couple of years back). But at the same time, you can't deny the great pressure on resources they've brought to the area. Not their conscious decision to do so, of course, since it means that they're in the queue with everyone else.
But I hate to hear the muttered comment about the "foreigners" because, guess what, we heard the very
same complaint in the very
same tone levelled at us, as incomers from the Southeast 30 years ago. Like many other "foreigners" from places like Kent and Sussex, we came then because the houses were so much cheaper, and we'd been squeezed out by the proximity of our home towns to London and its burgeoning population of commuting high-earning house-buyers, so we were ourselves migrants.
No-one except other southerners comments about my accent now... I've got my feet well and truly under the table here and, as one old local countryman once told me, "You've paid your dues, boy". These immigrants are, from what I can see, setting about paying their dues with a will. Things change... suck it up.