CRI听力:Refugee Crisis Pushes British Voters Opt to Leave EU

The latest public opinion polling shows 51-percent of voters would opt to leave the European Union.

This is the first time the "No" camp has drawn more support than the Pro-European Union group.
In a research project titled "The UK in A Changing Europe," Professor Simon Hix at the London School of Economics and Political Science says it’s the issue of migrants into the European Union that is pushing British voters to want to leave. At the same time, the migration situation is adding to the complexity of Prime Minister David Cameron's negotiations with the European Union.

"You can see the way Cameron is trying to opt out and stay away from any EU migration quota or any refugee quota, because I think he is acutely aware that if he is seen at all to accept some European migration quota, the anti-Europeans will jump out and say 'See, we've been told by the EU that we have to accept migrants, the only way we can stop this is to leave and regain control of our borders.' So I think the longer the migration crisis goes on, the more it lends itself towards supporting anti-European positioning."

Economic researcher Jonathan Portes with "The UK in A Changing Europe" project says of the major concerns among people in Britain is the strain that migrants might put on the country's social services. But the reality is that Britain has been able create jobs just as fast as the immigrants come to fill them.

"So if in a year from now, we actually have refugees coming and they are being successfully, in a planed way, integrated into our society, like we are seeing from the Germans who are making a reasonably good show of taking advantage of what might be seen as quite a significant economic opportunity given German's demographic and economic challenges over the next 10 to 20 years. If Germany is making a success of receiving these large numbers of refugees, that would actually be quite a good thing."

Responding to continental European calls, British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced his government will allow in 20-thousand Syrian refugees in the next five years. Those numbers are significantly smaller than what Germany has promised. German’s Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has announced that the country should be able to take in 500-thousand refugees each year for "several years".