eurealist.co.uk

French voters in Sunday’s referendum were hugely swayed by the fear of their sovereignty being eroded, but there were other reasons too that influenced their negation of the Constitution.

For instance, the fear of large scale immigration from the former East European countries and its inevitable impact on wages.

On this point when enlargement happened last year, only Sweden, Ireland and Britian opened their doors to immigration from the ten new states. At the time there was much fear in the press that we in Britain would be swamped by an influx of immigrants who would all be asking for us to support them with our social security payments. The government told us this would not happen and we could expect only 10,000 of these immigrants and anyway they would come to work not to sponge of the state.

Well one year on the government have been proved right and wrong, in fact according to their own figures over 175.000 immigrants have been allowed in under the new rules, vastly more that the government estimated, but on the other hand the majority have of these people have come to work, and work they have, thus adding to our economy, they have not proved to be a drain on the country as forecast.

In the other states immigration from new members was not allowed, thus instead of the reality the people are left with only the fear of it, at some time in the future. It would seem that the fear is worse than the reality, in retrospect it might have been better all round if instead of blocking immigration in order to protect their own people from the results of their decisions, the French politicians had bitten the bullet last year and allowed immigration, as it seems that the fear has now returned with a vengeance to bite them back.