Mr Hutton is understood to believe that there is no clear sign that the influx of migrant workers from the previous eight EU accession countries such as Poland contributed to a 100,000 rise in UK jobseeker's allowance claimants.

Britain was one of the first EU countries to open its doors to workers from accession states. The government had estimated that 13,000 workers would arrive from the eight countries that joined in 2004. But hundreds of thousands of Poles and other eastern Europeans came, many for short periods, at a rate 20 times higher than Home Office predictions.

I have seen no complaints about the hundreds of thousands of Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans that come the to UK either. It's all anti-slav racism and anti-EU propaganda, IMHO.

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman

(3) You didn't distinguish between political and economic disruption to my knowledge, but the two -- or, at least, the perception of the latter and the reality of the former -- go hand-in-hand.  The political disruption results from voters seeing an economic disruption, real or imagined, because of waves of immigration.

The anti-immigration lobby in the US is very loud, and certainly present, but not incredibly powerful.  The Democrats, for all practical purposes, want to let immigrants in.  The Republicans have a problem with their base, but the party leaders, too, seem to want to let them in.  Both are in a race to pander to the rapidly-growing Latin-American voter base.  Voters don't seem to be moving, asses-and-elbows, to send a message to the parties either, so it seems reasonable to state that it's not as important an issue as (say) Lou Dobbs would have you believe.

But as far as I was able to tell at the time, were it not for immigration, the Tories would not have gained nearly as many seats as they did.  So I don't see the parallels you apparently see.

Don't buy into the media hype.  I've got a pint of beer saying American voters never force Congress and the president to shut down Mexican immigration.  The political disruption barely qualifies as a whisper of protest at the end of the day.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing about the East-European migrant question being a smokescreen, nor am I agreeing.  (Honestly, I just don't know.)  I am saying that there are perhaps perfectly reasonable arguments against allowing another wave immediately.  I know that, when I was in England, there seemed to be a shortage of construction in residential areas.  And, given Britain's over-the-fucking-rainbow housing market of recent years, that suggests to me that either the market has peaked and is expected to come down strongly, or that some regulation is holding back construction which many people did suggest to me, or that businesses were just too stupid to capitalize prior to the peak.  Rising prices almost always lead to increased supply, so something doesn't seem quite right, even taking into account the fact that building houses takes time.  One way or another, there seems to be a struggle to keep up with construction.

The roads were also severely congested -- and I was in Nottingham, which hardly qualifies as an enormous, compact city, even by American standards -- and often under construction.  (There were always barricades and orange tape, as well as the obligatory large holes in the street, but nobody seemed to be actually working on filling the damned holes, and already they needed to work on more.)  Infrastructure was not being maintained in many areas.  What building sites existed were not being worked on, save for one day, and the job was being done half-assed.  These are problems that are made more difficult by large inflows of immigrants.  And Nottingham, as I understand it, isn't even a major city for immigration -- surely not on par with London, Leeds, Birmingham, or Manchester.

You have to recognize the possibility that there is severe economic disrupton happening, and that it is reasonable to ask for a break.

(4) That's perfectly reasonable, and I salute you for it.

Where's your motherf*%&ing flag pin?