11 million immigrants since 2000. When I

AI Overview

The UK population has increased by approximately 11.1 million people since September 2000, from an estimated 58.9 million to 70 million by September 2025. This significant growth of nearly 19% over the last 25 years is driven primarily by net international migration, particularly following the 2004 EU expansion.

Not sure why you or anyone is seeing this is a bad thing - see immigrants as a positive and this is positive surely? But I guess that depends on your personal view of immigrants.

I’d really like to address the truism I hear over and over on here regarding immigration- “ We need overseas workers to do the jobs British people think they are too good to do”
I often get the feeling the people saying this have never been poor or working class.
The reality is this: If you are, for example a lone parent with no car and you need a job you will find that supermarkets and shops don’t need many people anymore, and the ones that do will only give random hours so you can’t plan in childcare.
You’d be expected to do early/ late/ night shifts that childcare won’t cover.
There are no factories anymore to speak of, and the ones there are youd need a car to get to and from, as public transport is non existent or unreliable even in big cities. For many care jobs you also need a car.
When I was young I lived in a very deprived area, but I’d sometimes get temp work in factories. The agency would bus us there from the city centre office. I doubt that still exists.
Hospitality, you will need to work every Saturday and Sunday and fruit and veg picking, again you need a car.
When my husband came here as a young man he worked in hotels,so had live- in accommodation. He nearly always got jobs where he’d have some kind of basic accommodation- he could do this as he was young, single with no family.
I knew Poles who came as young people and lived in shared houses, sharing rooms to save money. You can do that when it’s temporary and you are sending plenty of money home for your future.
Things like nursing, which was a key working class profession, used to have a bursary. Now you pay to study.
Working conditions and infrastructure are MASSIVE obstacles to the working class. Public transport is not some nice to have add on, it’s essential for workers to be able to work.
In the past 25 years I’ve seen zero hours contracts, total decimation in infrastructure, deciline in manufacturing and total stalling of social mobility. You are at the bottom, there are multiple mechanisms in place keeping you there.
Im so sick of middle class people who have never faced any of these obstacles sneering at the working class for “ not wanting to get their hands dirty” .
Yes, we should have some immigration, no I’m not a Brexiteer, but we need to look at this issue as a whole picture, not trot out soundbites thinking they make you sound liberal and tolerant.
Working class people are always the ones suffering when those at the top decide what’s best for the economy.

Your 2.5m wasn’t correct. The post you’re replying to is closer to what it is.

My strategy for increasing the provision of space would be to convert all religious buildings into flats. That would reduce story book hatred and help solve the housing crisis in one go. Even the religious people could get behind with a narrative of their god/s are helping the people today.

Repeated post, deleted.

People come to the UK and leave, shocker.

11m net migrants is a big fat lie. End of.

And 7-8m is also a made up figure.

If Brexit hadn't stopped people going from the UK to live in Europe then we'd have far fewer people here

But wrong on the low side. There were 16m immigrants in the last 25 years. Then people oh they meant net immigrants not immigrants which bring it down to 7-8m.

I think that number about right for net mitragtion. The ONS says total income migration is 16m less outgoing mitration of 8m.

What I don't is why poster seem to think that 7m materially changes the argument from 11m? It seems like a strategy to tie the thread up in knots rather than address the fundamental point the country has 20% more people than it did 25 year ago.

The OP didn’t say 11m population increase, s/he said 11m immigrants. Which is patently false.

Interesting you mention Tokyo. My understanding is that the population of Japan is falling and predicted to continue falling.

An 11 million increase in population is broadly accurate. That increase comes in part from net migration, which has been positive this century, but also from people living longer. There are 4 million more people over 65 than there were in 2000; by and large, these are not immigrants. They are also getting much more generous welfare than they were in 2000.

Barely 10% of our country is built on. Including roads and motorways. We're not overpopulated, we're under-built.

We need to build more towns and communities.

And a greater population adds money to taxation and to the intangible cultural value.

Last time I checked migration contributed more to our society than it took in benefits.

And if we build more the next generation might be able to find somewhere to live.

I’ve heard of this happening too. Friends who return for free nhs treatment.

I don't understand anyone can believe that given net mitragation was 900k in 2023 and 400k in 2024 that in the 22 years from 2000 to 2022 there was only another 1.2m people - averaging 55,000 people a year?

The figure of 11 million is wrong. The UK natural population growth is not forecast to become negative until the mid 2030s and there continues to be population growth due to births exceeding deaths. OP is falsely claiming that ALL population growth since 2000 (the 11 million figure) is due to net migration. This is factually incorrect.

Source for graph: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/the-uks-changing-population/

The population of this country should be much lower than it is.

It’s about the population and what should happen.

England 438 people per square kilometer, Scotland 65 - 70 people per square kilometer. I think it's fair to say less of Scotland's land could easily be built on which explains the over all lower population density.

6.6m is still a huge number. And someone shared a chart earlier which clearly shows a sharp increase in the trend over time. Who knows how many more will arrive in the next 25 years. I’m thinking it will be a lot more than 6.6m if the trend continues.

This 100%