Immigrants but legal ones?

understanding why the UK has a much higher average refugee acceptance rate than France

This is a lie. In 2023 France received 167,000 asylum claims, more than double than the UK's approximately 67,000. In 2024 the numbers are getting closer with France receiving 130,000 claims, and the UK 108K,

I can't even get a quick illegal immigration stats check before Brexit. The number of illegal migrants before 2016 were very small but Google won't give that information because your governments doesn't want it to be easily obtainable.

This is how much crap you were fed by politicians selling you the slogan "wanting to control borders" during the Brexit referendum, and facing reality.

I feel the same OP. I've been in the UK for over 2 decades, paying tax, contributing to society, but this anti-migrant discourse is causing me a great deal of stress. In turns I am angry, sad, and terrified.

Angry because:

Migrants on average pay a lot more tax than the average UK-born person. So we are disproportionately funding the exchequer, yet are treated like we're parasites.

Migrants on average are young, childless, and economically-active taxpayers. So much less likely to need the NHS. Yet we are required to pay a yearly NHS surcharge of £1500 (£700 for students). So we are disproportionately funding the NHS.

Migrants do the jobs UK-born don't or won't do, particularly agricultural, health-care, low-paid careworkers.

Those of you on Mumsnet constantly moaning about migrants: who do you think is picking your fruit & veg? Who is going to wipe your bum when you're in a care-home or need adult social care?

We migrants make a net positive contribution to this country. How do you think it makes us feel to be constantly demonized by the press and in these threads? It sucks.

I'm perfectly happy with high skills migration. The trouble with being in the EU anyone could migrate, those without skills. The EU was meant to be a trading block no one wanted mass migration.

And Reform's plans to deal with it are pure fantasy

Like Brexit

This is the problem we can’t have a proper debate about immigration and a recognition that there are pros and cons, instead people descend into insults. Sad isn’t it?

Well I am white British but, as I sit here having my dialysis I am being looked after by staff none of whom were born in the UK. I am extremely grateful that they are here with their skills, knowledge and compassion; If they weren’t, who would be doing the job?

Which makes the Brexit referendum even a bigger joke when the UK had few problems with illegal immigration before 2016.

There were 2 big slogans during Brexit to leave the EU - "make our borders safe" and "we send the EU £350 million a week, let's fund our NHS instead"

We all know what's happened to the slogans people voted for.

I am a Reform voter. Let me explain to you why people are going over to Reform in such large numbers.

1. The sheer scale of immigration. When people migrate to a country in small numbers, they can be easily assimilated – especially when they come from somewhere like Poland or Czecheslovakia. I have known immigrants who seem more British than the British, by which I mean they have adopted the traits I like in the British (politeness, manners, self-mocking/self-effacing humour, etc) and none of the traits I detest (the oafishness, insularity, philistinism, pomposity, coldness). But when people move to a country in huge numbers, and do so within a small time frame, its identity is destroyed. You simply cannot assimilate such numbers. And when the people who migrate either know nothing about that country, or have an ancestral grudge against it, it's even worse. Imagine an experiment. Imagine you moved ten million people from Finland to Okinawa. What would happen to Okinawan identity? Obviously it would be destroyed. (The Okinawan left, however, would tell people they were being 'enriched'.) Immigration has happened on such a scale that I no longer live in a nation with a shared history and shared identity. No one voted for this change, and no one asked for it. It has simply been imposed on us.

2. The quality of the people you let in. Many immigrants really have enriched this country. T. S. Eliot, Henry James, Bill Bryson, Clive James, Joseph Conrad, etc, were all immigrants. No one objects to a university-educated Polish girl moving to the UK, or a teacher from Romania, or an engineer from Finland. I have worked with many eastern Europeans – Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, etc – and have liked and respected them all. The British are not a race. We are descended from a mix of Danes and Norwegians and Germans and French and Irish. But I do not welcome people who overstay their student visa, or come in as students and then vanish, or claim asylum when the only thing they are are really fleeing is the police. Look at the example of Anicet Mayala, an illegal immigrant from the Congo. Human rights activists fought against his deportation and won. He is now in prison for raping a 15-year-old girl. The vast majority of these so-called 'refugees' are young men, many of them rootless drifters, others criminals. Not only do they know how to work the system, there is an entire network of left-wing activists helping them. A 23-year-old Polish girl who comes here to do a masters in biochemistry enriches our culture. A boatload of young men, some of them criminals and most of them barely literate, does not.

(Let me just add that there are plenty of white Brits I wouldn't want in my country either! I sympathize with Spanish people who get sick of British yobs moving to the Spanish coast, refusing to learn the language, waving union jacks and urinating in the street.)

3. The way the left are using immigration to antagonise people and destroy their identity. The left is a magnet for bitter, destructive, hate-filled people – I mean people who never grow out of the adolescent rebel stage. They like the fact that immigration is upsetting people. They like the fact that it's destroying people's identity. They like the fact that the green belt is being ruined in order to house the immigrants. They know it upsets horrible little middle class nimbys like me, and they love it. Though they pose as moral and humane, many of them couldn't care less about the immigrants. Their real motivation is spite and hatred. The left hate British identity. Above all they hate English identity. Even George Orwell noted that. When those on the left realised there wasn't going to be a proletarian revolution, and that they weren't going to have the pleasure of massacring 'the bougeosie', they switched tactics. They concentrated on destroying people's identity instead. And the quickest way to do that was to open the borders and overwhelm them with immigrants.

4. This migration crisis is only going to get worse. Africa has the highest birth rate in the world, and the African population is going to double – right in the middle of climate meltdown.

Goodness. I know that the UK relies on migrants to do the work that UK-born ppl are too lazy to do, but seriously, asking a migrant to google some easily-available facts for you is really taking the piss.

Very well. A quick google would give you loads of data. For example from the government’s own website:

“migrants arriving on the Skilled Worker (SW) route are more likely to be net fiscal contributors compared to those arriving on humanitarian routes. For context, estimates from our Annual Report 2024 suggest that an average SW migrant has a £16,300 net positive fiscal impact compared to £800 for the average UK born adult” https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migration-advisory-committee-report-on-net-migration/net-migration-report-accessible

From the Office of Budget Responsibility’s latest report, “migrants in general tend to arrive on these shores when they're already of working age and they often leave before they retire, meaning they cost the state less in schooling and retirement benefits. This might also help to put another of the report's findings in context: that UK-born citizens paid for only 89% of the benefits and services they received through taxes, costing the state £624 billion between 2001 and 2011.”

etc etc.

You said, without qualification: Unfortunately, the racism is dripping from your post.

In my post, as one if the issues we are experiencing, I mentioned the totally preventable rapes and murders perpetrated by these men.

I asked if you included those in your definition of ‘racism dripping from my post’ - now you accuse me of weaponising VWAG.

I note you don’t confirm that you view any of my other specific points as the ‘racist’ ones so I have to ask again - what are the racist bits?

I referenced the acceptance rate not the total number of asylum applications.

Here are the latest available UK and France acceptance rates:

The UK's initial asylum grant rate for the year ending June 2025 was 48%, a decrease from the previous year's 58%. While this is lower than the high of 77% in 2022, the current rate is still higher than any pre-2019 figure. However, many refused claims are later overturned on appeal, making the overall long-term acceptance rate significantly higher than the initial decision rate.

In contrast, France's first-instance protection rate was 31.4% in 2023, meaning that nearly 68.6% of asylum applications at this stage were rejected, according to an AIDA report.

I feel the same as you. I've been here 28 years and if you spoke to me, you wouldn't know I'm not British. The Brexit referendum brought out all the xenophobia that was there all along, I'm afraid. My DC were told to fuck off back to where they were born at school the day after the referendum (that would be Cambridge, which my youngest told them). The British have always been an insular nation, suspicious of foreigners. And certain political actors, aided by a right wing media, have whipped that up very effectively.

You're arguing against someone's personal experience.

We are generally a xenophobic country, it's just in the past it's been largely covered up in many by politeness. I've known plenty of people with mildly racist views, who would never have publicly voiced them, and would have been genuinely horrified at abuse or violence aimed immigrants. They still would like them to "go home", but would never dream of putting a brick through someone's window and look down on those who would.

I am a Reform voter. Let me explain to you why people are going over to Reform in such large numbers.

1. The sheer scale of immigration. When people migrate to a country in small numbers, they can be easily assimilated – especially when they come from somewhere like Poland or Czecheslovakia. I have known immigrants who seem more British than the British, by which I mean they have adopted the traits I like in the British (politeness, manners, self-mocking/self-effacing humour, etc) and none of the traits I detest (the oafishness, insularity, philistinism, pomposity, coldness). But when people move to a country in huge numbers, and do so within a small time frame, its identity is destroyed. You simply cannot assimilate such numbers. And when the people who migrate either know nothing about that country, or have an ancestral grudge against it, it's even worse. Imagine an experiment. Imagine you moved ten million people from Finland to Okinawa. What would happen to Okinawan identity? Obviously it would be destroyed. (The Okinawan left, however, would tell people they were being 'enriched'.) Immigration has happened on such a scale that I no longer live in a nation with a shared history and shared identity. No one voted for this change, and no one asked for it. It has simply been imposed on us.

2. The quality of the people you let in. Many immigrants really have enriched this country. T. S. Eliot, Henry James, Bill Bryson, Clive James, Joseph Conrad, etc, were all immigrants. No one objects to a university-educated Polish girl moving to the UK, or a teacher from Romania, or an engineer from Finland. I have worked with many eastern Europeans – Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, etc – and have liked and respected them all. The British are not a race. We are descended from a mix of Danes and Norwegians and Germans and French and Irish. But I do not welcome people who overstay their student visa, or come in as students and then vanish, or claim asylum when the only thing they are are really fleeing is the police. Look at the example of Anicet Mayala, an illegal immigrant from the Congo. Human rights activists fought against his deportation and won. He is now in prison for raping a 15-year-old girl. The vast majority of these so-called 'refugees' are young men, many of them rootless drifters, others criminals. Not only do they know how to work the system, there is an entire network of left-wing activists helping them. A 23-year-old Polish girl who comes here to do a masters in biochemistry enriches our culture. A boatload of young men, some of them criminals and most of them barely literate, does not.

(Let me just add that there are plenty of white Brits I wouldn't want in my country either! I sympathize with Spanish people who get sick of British yobs moving to the Spanish coast, refusing to learn the language, waving union jacks and urinating in the street.)

3. The way the left are using immigration to antagonise people and destroy their identity. The left is a magnet for bitter, destructive, hate-filled people – I mean people who never grow out of the adolescent rebel stage. They like the fact that immigration is upsetting people. They like the fact that it's destroying people's identity. They like the fact that the green belt is being ruined in order to house the immigrants. They know it upsets horrible little middle class nimbys like me, and they love it. Though they pose as moral and humane, many of them couldn't care less about the immigrants. Their real motivation is spite and hatred. The left hate British identity. Above all they hate English identity. Even George Orwell noted that. When those on the left realised there wasn't going to be a proletarian revolution, and that they weren't going to have the pleasure of massacring 'the bougeosie', they switched tactics. They concentrated on destroying people's identity instead. And the quickest way to do that was to open the borders and overwhelm them with immigrants.

4. This migration crisis is only going to get worse. Africa has the highest birth rate in the world, and the African population is going to double – right in the middle of climate meltdown.

understanding why the UK has a much higher average refugee acceptance rate than France

This is a lie. In 2023 France received 167,000 asylum claims, more than double than the UK's approximately 67,000. In 2024 the numbers are getting closer with France receiving 130,000 claims, and the UK 108K,

I can't even get a quick illegal immigration stats check before Brexit. The number of illegal migrants before 2016 were very small but Google won't give that information because your governments doesn't want it to be easily obtainable.

This is how much crap you were fed by politicians selling you the slogan "wanting to control borders" during the Brexit referendum, and facing reality.

If hes North African wouldn't France have been a more instinctive choice (thinking language and community hubs)

Can you point to the sources for the claims below, please?

"Migrants on average pay a lot more tax than the average UK-born person. So we are disproportionately funding the exchequer..."

"So we are disproportionately funding the NHS."

They are illegal if their asylum claims are spurious and not covered by the 1951 Refugee Convention.

The ones found to be wanting to pop home for Christmas don’t sound very genuine ‘refugees’. This has been reported by the Chief of U.K. Border Force in a rare moment of openness.

I said it because it actually happened.