I find it brilliantly ironic that people who voted to end free movement are now clamouring for it.
People fell for the abject, baseless lies.
The virus helped shed light on these lies as they had to charter flights in from Romania just to help the farms out, as very little locals showed any interest in working on the farms.
Look back in this thread. I called it way before Coronavirus was a thing.
That depends on which news sources you rely on, I guess. There were a lot of local applications for positions on farms, mainly because of the large number of layoffs due to the lockdown, and people being furloughed trying to make up the salary deficit.
But, what they found is that some farmers had some very strange conditions attached to their offers of employment. I don't recall where in the UK it was, but a woman turned down the offer because even though she lived about 2 miles away from the farm they required her to live on site with the other labourers.
I imagine wages for Romanians are a lot cheaper than what Brits would expect to be paid, too. And before you go on about minimum wage laws in the UK, I suggest you take a look at the modern slavery happening in Leicester at the Boohoo factory where people are earning £3.50 an hour. Those most definitely aren't locals. And if it happens there, it's probably happening in a lot of other places, too, especially when there are streams of unskilled labourers arriving at the border every day. £3.50 gets you a meal deal in the UK, but is worth a hell of a lot more in Romania.
In many cases, I reckon local farmers probably have deals already set up with Romanian agents to bring the workers in every season at good rates. It's not like they're sitting there every year just hoping enough people walk up to the farm gate to apply for a job before the season starts, is it?
I agree with your point that a lot of people bought into lies the campaign put out there, though. We could go on for days about how both sides told the biggest load of **** under the sun to try and swing the vote in their favour, but I reckon we're done with the mud slinging - it's been 4 years already.