What is it that riles people up about immigration so much?

According to Google, immigrants get older and have children ! Who knew?

I will just add it my last post. I'm British and mixed race. Moved to Switzerland many years ago and will never come back to the UK. I can empathise with people's frustrations and I can feel each time I come home to the Uk that the mood has shifted, people are more fed up than ever and since I left I can see why.
In Switzerland - things work very well. Jobs are given in order of priority so 1st Swiss, 2nd EU nationals, 3rd Third party nationals.
You can't claim benefits like chomage unless you have been working for 2 years. Yoi are obligated to learn the language if tou want to renew your permit. You pay less tax. Everything is maintained - parks, infrastructure, brilliant schools. But attitudes are different too - people are positive, conformist, take pride in what they do - even in shops i notice it with sales assistants. Healthcare is fantastic but you have to pay for mandatory health insurance. And the roads are quiet - i notice that when I come back to the UK - there are too many cars on the road- traffic is awful but the transport network isn't reliable enough to support alternative options - that is a big downfall compared to other countries.

People believe what they read on social media by racist grifters than cold hard truth. They blame all the ills in the country on immigration and not the governments who allowed the immigration. Immigration isn't ruining the country, it's years and years of underfunding, cuts as well as no allowances for allowing millions of people to live here, legal or illegal. Ie - you let in a million people in last year? Well, then we need more housing, schools and hospitals eh?!

Unfortunately people are just ready to blame those on boats for all our ills, rather than those in power. The nasty attitudes, the violence, the hatred, the ignorance is actually making the UK even worse a place to live.

Ok OP so it doesn't bother you in the slightest? What if a hotel/HMO opened up next to you housing asylum seekers and you had to walk through groups of men staring at you every day. Still fine with it?

Most people just want regulation and to know who is coming in to the country via controlled borders. Nothing wrong with that.

Why are young single men of working age putting pressure on schools? Unlikely they'll be flooding the doctors too, given most healthcare is needed in the first or last few years of life.

That’s a million people in 7 years during the Great famine. 60k French Huguenots over 39 years 150k Jews over a hundred years?

That would be the same numbers as arrived in just 2023 alone. Nothing has ever happen to the UK on this scale before.

Too many people and then more cars on the road

making housing more expensive and unavailable for people who have been born here

not being an asset and being being dishonest about wealth

government constantly lecturing us on environmental issues and climate change but building on green belt and flood planes which is a result of more people needing to be housed

Someone else hit the nail on the head "fear and most of it unfounded" Unfortunately this is something that has been brewing since Brexit. People are poorer, more miserable, disgruntled with the overall lack of change, lack of funding everywhere, cost of living and they want someone to blame. Reform party have set a false narrative that the reason for all of these problems is because of immigration and migrants "stealing our jobs". The tone has changed. We used to see causal racism but now it's shifted into something more hostile - the distinction between legal migrants/asylum seekers/illegal migrants has become blurred and really what it comes down to is black vs white migrants/people. Noone had any issues with UK accepting Ukrainian refugees- why? Because they are white. It's a hard reality to accept. The far right protest in London recently was the largest one of its kind and the demographic of protesters was predominantly white males. We are seeing flags painted everywhere which is disguised at patriotism but in reality we all know it's tone is far more threatening. If you believe Farage he has painted the picture that the UK's economic decline is because of the cost to fund asylum seekers. If you look at the facts the cost to the tax payer to fund asylum seekers per person per year is approx £100. The amount of money spent on asylum support is approx 4.5billion and it has increased from the previous year due to hotel costs. Asylum seekers are given a weekly benefit of between £10 & £50 depending on their circumstances. If you look at the cost to the tax payer per year due to benefit fraud its twice as much and when you compare it to tax avoidance, that's 6 times as much. When you look at how many asylum seekers were granted asylum - for the year ending March 2025 it was 45,000 which is 35% decrease from the previous year.
Unfortunately Reform are leading the polls and I think it's a reflection of the discontentment people are feeling across the UK - the desire for change that they hoped Labour would bring hasn't come into fruition. Alot of people are wanting someone to blame and Farage has swooped in and set a false narrative that it's because of Asylum seekers. When it clearly isn't. Unfortunately it feels like the Brexit story all over again - the 350million on the side of the bus- all just made up. I would hope this time that if it came to a referendum people would look at that facts and also at what Reforms other policies are and not just focus on this one topic.

That's hilarious. A million people came here during the Great Famine. And French Huguenots before that. And Germans, and Russian Jews after that. And my grandparents, before the war, with my mum, who worked in the NHS all her life.
But you know, 'what did the Romans ever do for us' 😂
Or is immigration for you just the brown ones?

I think it’s the sheer numbers. We can’t deport anyone due to human rights and yet more and more people come in weekly. I think people are wondering where the individuals are going to live, send their kids to school, which hospitals, dentists , doctors surgeries they are going to use. How many family members will come? It’s all of the unknowns when so many people already here feel those services are overstretched. I promise you that if the same number of people were coming from China or New Zealand people would still be asking the same questions.

I have answered this on several threads. The short(ish) version
Small town limit infrastructure
Very limited transport links.
No where for the immigrants to get jobs (no where for locals to get jobs)
Local Drs no over run with patients
Local Dentist no over run with patients
Limited shops.
No support from local government
National government says shut up or you are a racist.

So very little to do with immigrants.
Very much to do with governments being able to palm off their issues and spin BS about rural people to make them look bad.

It boils down to money; the country is on its knees financially. You only have to look at the state of the NHS, education, policing to see that we, the UK, need to be saving every frickin penny to make huge improvements to our public services.

Legal immigrants who come here to work and to contribute - great, appreciated, thank you.
Genuine asylum seekers who need safety - of course we will help.
People sneaking in in their thousands at a great cost to the country - unfair and unsustainable.

Why are people so annoyed about migrants being housed in hotels? How can they actually be affected by it? On the news it looks like they’re being accommodated at Holiday Inns, not exactly anywhere where the typical Brit would take a staycation. It’s pretty mundane and boring. It’s not The Ritz.

I am all for immigration generally, and I have loads of non-Brits in my social and professional circle. However, if there was a Holiday Inn near where I live full of 20-35 year old men who had the really poor attitudes towards women and girls that are common in their home countries (and of which I experienced while abroad) then I'd have a massive fucking problem with it and would not feel safe letting my daughters out on their own in their local area.

It's very easy for people who live in nice places to think it's all lovely and #BeKind, but they wouldn't be saying the same if it was their own children at risk,rather than the poor people's children.

I'd feel very differently if it was mostly women (the actual oppressed people in the middle east) and children coming on boats. I'd support the equivalent numbers of them coming here.

Because unlike you I am not happy about my exorbitant taxes going towards housing them in hotels or wherever else, on top of the rest of the things my taxes are wasted on. HTH.

Nobody was asked if they wanted mass immigration, the answer would have been no. The answer is still no now, nothing has changed…it’s only that people’s patience has ran out now we’re seeing the consequences and people aren’t waiting to be asked about it anymore.

Immigration is the scapegoat, not the issue, just like Jewish people during 20s/30s Germany. These things have a long background. The start was the financial crash of 2008, followed by over a decade of stagnant growth and public underfunding by the tories, followed swiftly by Covid, Brexit, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the cost of living crisis. At times like this certain types of people advance their own agenda by using a scapegoat. Immigration is not the cause and not the solution. Unfortunately we seem destined to repeat the mistakes of the past, though how far it’ll go remains to be seen!

@ThisCalmLimeZebra @ginasevern mentioned Jamaica’s indigenous population and I wondered if that person thought they make the majority today.

You’ll have to ask @ginasevern why she made the statement, I’m not sure what the relevance is either.

Immigration as we know it today started after WW2 when labour shortages needed to be filled and so a call to Commonwealth countries was issued. (It’s worth noting that this led to social tensions and the Commonwealth Immigrants Acts in the 1960s sought to tackle that.)

I see in many threads on MN the narrative that Britain is ‘built on immigration’ and we are a ‘melting pot’ of different cultures.

That may be true post WW2 but it simply is inaccurate to suggest that it dates back any further. I assume people say that because they have short memories and don’t truly understand our nation’s history.

Yes, we did produce our own doctors and nurses, until government decided that it was far cheaper to stop training them ourselves and to take other countries’ expensively-trained professionals instead. I think that’s on New Labour.

What does that have to do with anything? Does that mean Europe has to suffer the disaster of mass immigration ?

The anti-immigrant rhetoric of the right is the same across Europe. It was clear 9+ years ago that mass immigration from sub-saharan Africa in particular was going to be an issue. Conflict in the Middle East has upped the ante still further. The failure to get on top of it is the most inflammatory of numerous stare failures.

The so-called legacy media fans the flames by seeking out irregular migrants who are brown or black and who have been found guilty of sexual assault or rape. If we were living in a time of plenty, people would be more tolerant. Shabana Mahmood, just a few days in post as Home Secretary, has pointed out that the current situation poses risks for 'people who look like me'. I wish her well, and am keeping my fingers very tightly crossed for Reform to stumble and fall apart before 2029.

The anti-immigrant rhetoric of the right is the same across Europe. It was clear 9+ years ago that mass immigration from sub-saharan Africa in particular was going to be an issue. Conflict in the Middle East has upped the ante still further. The failure to get on top of it is the most inflammatory of numerous stare failures.

The so-called legacy media fans the flames by seeking out irregular migrants who are brown or black and who have been found guilty of sexual assault or rape. If we were living in a time of plenty, people would be more tolerant. Shabana Mahmood, just a few days in post as Home Secretary, has pointed out that the current situation poses risks for 'people who look like me'. I wish her well, and am keeping my fingers very tightly crossed for Reform to stumble and fall apart before 2029.

You realise that the indigenous populations of Jamaica and other Caribbean islands were effectively genocided by Europeans right?

It’s all good in theory but when you are negatively impacted it’s hard not to feel like your own government hates you.
I live in a very diverse area (always have) it’s a pretty poor area as well. We have had many waves of immigration and on the whole people get on fine.
Recently it feels like we let people into the country who have no interest or care for the communities they live in. The reality of living near these people is very difficult. My street is currently blighted by fly tipping, anti social behaviour, selfish and irresponsible parking, random men who congregate outside houses all day. Many of my neighbours don’t speak English. You want to build community and trust with people but it’s impossible. Most of the people just seem interested in making money and sending it home. They don’t view this country as their home and don’t care about it. It’s a recipe for disaster.

So people don’t want mass immigration because they’re stupid? Is there any country that wants mass immigration? I think it’s a bit rich accusing other people of being stupid and miss-led.

Other really important jobs such as Drs ‘haven’t classically been filled by immigration’ . What a weird thing to say. British people have been quite capable of producing Drs until relatively recently.