There is no doubt about it we certainly do rely on foreigners/immigrants for a lot of work. Only a day or two ago I was listening to Farming Today ( well somebody has to do it !
) and there was a Flower Grower on there who said his business would go kaputt if it wasnt for the immigrants. Immigrants are prepared to do the physical picking where locals are not. This is a well throdden story now. We have heard the same story about apples and various other products as well for an age now.
The reporter asked the Flower Grower on the programme if he could now genuinely expect more locals to apply for work this year, as due to the recession many have lost jobs and so on. The Grower said it was unlikely.
So although there was a huge response in Liverpool there are vast swathes of jobs that no-one will touch with a bargepole. But according to this report on Farming Today, the thinking is that its a social level thing, once the immigrants go up the social and affluent scale, as they get more prosperous and so on, they wont want to do it either. So at that point we need yet more immigrants.
See the thread about Turkey and the EU.
But once you get a solid factory or large company this feeling seems to change. People want to work where there is the stability of a large organisation. We need one of them in Dover.