I'm from Norfolk too. When i first moved there from Hertfordshire in 1971 i would only happen upon a foreign tongue when going into Norwich (20 miles away) but now there are foreign tongues everywhere..I know i'll get some abuse for this but as you say,the cost must be enormous and not just for interpreters but the loss of jobs for our own people too.................
It's a lot worse than that. I am a foster carer and the young lady currently living with me needs help with her education as she's missed out on so much in the past. However, she'd not currently getting any extra help at school despite every class having a classroom assistant. When I questioned her school about it at her recent review, they infomed me that the classroom assistant's priority was the children who didn't speak English as their first language.
What Michael is really referring to is about the practise of gangmasters. They were British businessmen who brought in illegal immigrants into the country, mostly in East Anglia to do crop picking. This practise has been going on for over 100 years. Successive governments knew it was going on and some of the general public. Nobody cared less because the benefits were cheap labour and cheap produce in the shops. When I said they were bringing in illegal immigrants, it wasn't just a few thousand, it was hundreds of thousands. The practise still goes on today but it is more regulated.
The gangmasters made vast profits and the immigrants got very poorly paid.
The first most people knew about gangmasters was when the cocklers died in Morcambe Bay.