The difficulty with your answer emmie is that, sadly, many of our unemployed, especially the long-term unemployed are unskilled and unqualified. Many of them also lack a good basic education. Many of them turn up to job interviews in trainers, with baseball hats on and rolled up cigarettes behind their ears ! Add to that, they may be financially better off not working, and you have a classic example of why immigrants are like manna from heaven for British companies.
Put yourself in the position of an employer. You need someone to fill the vacancy of, say a fork-lift truck driver. Do you take on the unqualified Brit, who will need training and maybe hasn't worked in a generation, or do you take on the keen Pole, who is fully qualified and can start work next Monday morning ?
Not all vacancies will fall into this category, I agree but many do. I am at present in Cornwall and the local vegetable growers go to Poland once a year and hold recruiting sessions. Without seasonal workers, the fruit and veg would rot in the ground, because our own unemployed won't touch the jobs with a bargepole. I believe it to be the same in other parts of the country. We can survive without fresh daffodils perhaps but doing without potatoes, carrots and cabbages is another thing altogether.
TTT has given part of the answer, in that we should consider if wages are adequate and benefit levels are maybe too high. Also, should the long term unemployed be allowed to continually turn down work, even IF they would be better off on benefits ?
Large areas of British life would suffer if immigrants were not here to work, like our Hospitals and more importantly, home care of old people.
But it hasn't always been like this. My brother had to go to Germany to work as a bricklayer, along with 10,000's of other Brits in the 1990's. He was glad of the work, my sister-in-law was glad of the money sent by cable every week, and his German employers were delighted with his efforts. The tables have turned now but they could just as easily change back again, with an endless trail of white Transit vans going over the Channel every Sunday afternoon in an easterly direction.
You have said that our Employment Offices are a waste of time when looking for work. I couldn't agree with you more ! When I was unemployed for the first and last time on my life in 2003, I too found them to depressing and degrading places. But of course, these offices are not really about finding people work, its about the administration of social security benefits.
But I still found work despite the dubious efforts of the Job Centre staff. I got off my ar*e and asked around everywhere. We had a large Tesco being built at the time, the size of a medium Airport Terminal, but Tesco didn't advertise the jobs in the Job Centre about 1 mile away...they took applications on the internet. As it happens I didn't take the job that Tesco offered but took something else instead.
So, lets stop knocking the immigrants and look inwards at why we have the situation we have.