Changes to immigration rules announced by Starmer

Indeed. And it's illegal immigration that causes the most anger and resentment, as these hordes of young men pass through country after country to get here, destroying their ID, lying about their circumstances etc, knowing they will not be returned to their country of origin. It's a fecking joke. Legal migration is another matter, and yes long overdue for reform but needs more than the feeble Starmer will ever do. Why can't it be as stringent as Australia, Canada etc? I have lived and worked in other countries, and had to fulfill strict requirements - job to go to, proof of savings, to have a medical, to prove I could speak the language, to pay for health insurance. You would most certainly not be allowed to bring in your extended family with you. All fine by me, and why would anyone object? Decent human beings should not be a burden on the country they choose to move to.

Well this can change. You can put an age limit on visas. The UK doesn’t do this. But other countries do. Likewise retirement visas where you must have a certain level of assets and security. The UK can afford to be pickier.

And @swimsong, 2.5 billion divided by the numbers we have had is actually only a few thousand per migrant. Which is great if that migrant is young, uses no services and goes home without starting a family or getting old, but that is not so much the case any more and lots of people are not returning home. You’d have to contribute a lot more than a few thousand a year to the economy to get to a place in which you cover the costs of the British state being expected to support you and possibly your family later on

So Reform says net migration at zero and Starmer has said how bad it is with much support already… could backfire on Labour.

I think that is the real dishonesty which is that no government in the last 14 years even attempted to really get to that figure. That does break people’s faith in politics.

How?

They are refugees

There was a programme about migration since 1997 on the BBC which had all the PMs up to Theresa “citizen of nowhere” May. What was interesting then was the advice from the Treasury about growth and migrant workers. From 1997 onwards it seemed like total orthodoxy that to grow the economy it was quicker to do this via skilled labour from the EU. Labour and Tory PMs discussed it. Then you have Brexit and the Boriswave (excellent phrase) which does something different; it provides positive incentives for lower skilled labour at lower wage rates to come to the UK. And the dependency and incentive to stay was far greater.

Whether Starmer does better is another point; the prediction is back down to pre Brexit levels in five years (Telegraph). Reform might not like, but other voters may.

@swimsong2.5 billion is not that much money compared to the U.K. economy and the Labour government is very doubtful that this has been properly estimated and costed, because the current maths on immigration doesn’t apportion a share of use of shared services or capital investment or long term care/schooling etc to any migrant, even one who is likely to stay - only an assumption as to what the person does for the current four year cycle is counted and almost no costs are attributed. So if a migrant comes, works for 5 years on minimum wage paying a small amount of tax, then has a family and claims benefits, they will register as having contributed in the official figures on immigration, even though that profile of migrant will be costly. They also won’t factor in the costs of their dependents either. It is nuts, but that is currently how it is done.

And Starmer will shout from.the rooftops if it drops, but 500 or 600k is still far too many per annum.

We just can't sustain this it's madness. The Tories promised (and failed) to get migration into the tens of thousands. If it was then immigration is a fringe issue. A million a year is insanity. No other word for it for a little island like ours.

That’s my point.

The electorate gets obsessed with nonsense and votes for idiotic policies that will make things worse so the political parties all propose ever-more idiotic policies rather than taking the obvious steps that would improve the economy and raise living standards.

So you have people who are angry about their living standards actively voting for things that will make them worse, and because the politicians have noted this they devise ever-more idiotic policies which people are apparently lapping up.

As I said, the electorate gets the Governments it deserves, and that is why our Governments get progressively worse as time goes on and the decline in living standards is accelerating.

I run a care agency, I employ local people we could never afford the visa requirements. If governments paid attention to social care decades ago ,then we should never have relied on recruiting from abroad, there should be more incentives given to attract mire into the care sector.

The open border policy was about trying to replace lost GDP because of brexit with the expectation that a population explosion would equal growth. But it makes us poorer per capita and has seen the benefits bill skyrocket.

Single people from Europe who came here often seasonally via free movement replaced with families from Africa or Asia who are basically here for the duration, often low skilled and are likely to need financial support.

I don’t mind if Labour supporters think it’s not about channel crossings. Reform won’t mind as they’ll benefit from the lack of insight.

Yes @bombastix,I agree with this. I think that it was a smaller part of a bigger picture of incompetence

Boriswave! I had not heard that one.

I think Starmer is right to do something and much of the white paper makes a lot of sense. I think the risk is that he looks disingenuous, given that he would previously have opposed this if the tories did it. But it is the right thing to do.

query whether it will go far enough for the voters - a lot of people are very angry about migration now. I get the impression that starmer’s team have now started to look at the details that they didn’t consider when they were outside government (and Cooper actually does have good attention to detail) and spotted that the line that immigration boosts the economy is based on some quite dubious accounting from the OBR and the Treasury (who only cost any immigrant for the four year fiscal cycle, so do not even consider whether they may later cost the taxpayer money at all). Same with dependents - if we as taxpayers don’t have to pay for 3 dependents per immigrant care workers, how much more could we pay care workers? Has anyone done the maths? I welcome the attempt to consider getting value for money from immigration in terms of GDP per capita - people have been told for a long time that immigration makes them wealthier, but in a no growth environment GDP per capita is going down and people have really struggled with being gaslit by politicians.

Or you could know what you're talking about:

https://www.davidsonmorris.com/immigrants-economic-contributions/

"Studies indicate that immigrants contribute significantly to the UK economy, with estimates suggesting that they add around £2.5 billion annually"

Go to any city now or large town (at least not the posh ones). The Boris Wave has changed places beyond recognition in record time.

I just don’t agree that migration is really about small boats. These are very small figures compared to legal
migration. I agree asylum seekers are a good visible story, but I don’t think they are the key issue about migration and why it may be an issue. 906k people enter the UK in one year? That is.

Immigration in general has become a huge net drain on finances. Whether with benefits or the billions paid out to keep asylum seekers in hotels and other accommodation. Yet weve no money for anything else.

It can't go on. Immigration can be positive if properly managed.

Is that why Labour have lost support in record time?

I would totally agree! I just thought all the stuff about asylum seekers was a pathetic fig leaf to cover up what was a pretty clear policy from the Conservatives to import cheaper labour. 906k people is not incompetence, imo. You have to write a criteria in law to let it happen.

This is not to say the Conservatives were not world beatingly incompetent in many other areas otherwise they would not have lost the election

I think Southport was a huge tipping point and the riots that followed (just after the election).

Starmer was at least given a chance on stopping the boats but numbers are only going up. Reform are smashing the polls and the local elections. People aren't seeing the upsides of mass immigration when the economy is in the state it's in. Brexit was about uni party not dealing with mass immigration. 10 years on and here we are again.

There appear to be some people on this thread who don’t feel there should be any limits on immigration. Mind-boggling.

@bombastixwasn’t at least part of the incompetence about the immigration debacle though? Specifically, saying one thing and doing precisely the opposite