"If an employer pays an immigrant worker less than he would pay a native Brit worker for the same work, he is unscrupulous and immoral."

Seems pretty straightforward that doesn't it. But that doesn't even show a fraction of the picture and it all depends on who the "employer" is.

Remember the Chinese "Cockle pickers" in Morecombe Bay? Their "employer" was a Triad Gang, they had been brought into the country as illegal aliens and had no say in who they worked for, or what they got paid, or indeed how much of what they got paid they could keep. They were contracted out by the Triad Gang to the Company wanting the Cockles picked.

"David Anthony Eden Sr. and David Anthony Eden Jr., from Prenton in Merseyside, who bought cockles from the work gang, were cleared of helping the workers break immigration law.

Gangmaster Lin Liang Ren was found guilty of the manslaughter of at least 21 people (two further cocklers were thought to have been killed but their bodies were never found). Ren, his girlfriend Zhao Xiao Qing and his cousin Lin Mu Yong were also convicted of breaking immigration laws. Ren was sentenced to 12 years for manslaughter, 6 years for facilitating illegal immigration (to be served concurrently with the manslaughter sentence), and 2 years for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice (to be served subsequent to the manslaughter sentence). Lin Mu Yong was sentenced to four years and nine months. Zhao Xiao Qing was sentenced to two years and nine months for facilitation of illegal immigration and perverting the course of justice."

Here's how it works:

Enterprising East European crook looks at the market for agricultural workers required in the UK and sets up an office over in the "old country" where things are bad and unemployment is high. He advertises for workers for jobs abroad for wages that are too good to be true in the "old country". In answer to this advert they get loads of takers and the next thing they are whisked off to the UK to which as members of the EU they exercise their right to free movement of labour where they are contracted out, no idea what the unit price is between the employer of these men (i.e. the Agency that hired them abroad) and the person that Agency has a contract with to supply labour, that could well be for UK minimum wage, could even be marginally above it, but the labourer only gets what he signed up for back in the "the old country".

Not quite so simple as Steve Shaw put it is it?