This evening Television’s ‘The Day The Immigrants Left’ on ‘BBC 1 broached on the Immigrant workforce, in particular the 9,000 Eastern Europeans who have moved into the Wisbech area of Cambridgeshire to service the Horticultural Industry.

Evan Davis of the ‘Beeb’ went out into the market place to seek workers for a Master’s ‘vineyard’ to wit the harvesting of Asparagus. It seemed back breaking work that caused some belly aching in ‘The Bull Dog Breed’ . It is understandable that if one isn’t used to such work one might not easily adapt to it, however the woman recruited to the casual workforce team, more than held her own. Even so all harvested only half what the ‘Away Team’ scored. The word was that the Brits. should have been up to speed in four hours, but weren’t, one of the men seemed incapable of doing the job at all.

THERE IN LAY A PROBLEM. Workers were being paid by the harvested Kilo, and the ‘Brits’ were earning less than the minimum working wage, thus the avuncular employer would need to make up their wage from his own pocket. It was on that basis that he needed to employ Immigrants, because we Brits were not up to such hard work.

Everywhere my parents moved to, my mother would plant a raised Asparagus bed. Our family liked eating the vegetable. Alas for one reason or another there came a time, we had no asparagus bed, thus had no asparagus because we couldn’t afford to buy it. It was all of another fifty years before we could. Cheap Asparagus is imported from Spain and Peru, whilst Home Grown is dearer. Is it not possible to contract- grow ‘English Asparagus Crowns’ in Eastern Europe, or anywhere else where labour is cheaper? The Vegetable is indigenous to the whole of Europe, Northern Africa and Asia.

I am very keen to eat the locally grown crop when visiting our son in law in East Anglia, but is it really economical to grow the stuff there? I write not of House Keeping Money spent, but of all the infra structure that taxpayers have to pay out to support the immigrant work force. Housing, Free Schooling and Medical Care, Unemployment Benefits etc etc. Not only all that but there is too another problem in that much of an Immigrant Worker’s hard earned wage is taken out of our economy and remitted to Eastern Europe in the shape of Euros. Should any wonder where those Euros come from, each one has been earned by our export and service industries.

I don’t favour protectionism for we live by trade, but see no good reason to subsidise financially unviable production by the back door. Maybe this entrepreneur might consider turning his land over to the cultivation of a less labour intensive product, or even the breeding of Thoroughbred Racehorses. 24 February 2010