"NJ, people were migrating to this country in droves well before we joined the EU in 1973; from the West Indies, Asia, Africa. One result of that can be seen in Leicester, where white people are in the minority due to that."
Yes thanks, OG, I was about to say the same. The immigration of the 1950s and 60s from the "Old Commonwealth" countries was at the invitation of the UK government. It was undertaken to fill job vacancies mainly in public services. Like immigration from outside the EU now, it was controlled. Furthermore, as intense as it may have seemed, the numbers were nowhere near the levels seen in recent years in the form of uncontrolled immigration from the EU. Between 1955 and 1962 around 470,000 arrived (just under 60,000 per year). For the rest of the 60s the average was around 75,000 pa. These were people we had been invited to come, and who mainly had jobs to come to. The UK controlled the numbers and could plan for their arrival.
In the last two years alone around 600,000 people arrived from the EU to settle here. The UK had no control whatsoever over this number; many of those arrivals had no job to come to, no skills and nowhere to live. If you go to London’s Marble Arch and walk through the pedestrian subways beneath the roundabout you will find quite a few of them – mainly Romanians - living there.
Your comparison is completely inappropriate, 10CS. The two influxes are not in the remotest respect similar. So I will say again, if you think continued membership of the EU will not have an effect on the “bloke in the street” you cannot have given it much thought.