If you are against immigration, what do you think about net contributing immigrants?

[IceLollyMolly]

I don't have the nerve to post in AIBU! I am a recent immigrant- I don't even have my ILR yet- and came in on a skilled worker visa in 2020, as did my DH. Both of us are high earners and pay a lot of tax. Both of us fill positions that were first advertised to British people, but could not be filled.

Lately, of course, there has been a lot of press about high immigration and how it should be curbed. There seems to be a simmering resentment against all immigrants, spearheaded ironically by Tory immigrants.

So far, I have not taken anything from the state and am unlikely to. I have private health care, and am pretty healthy anyway, so rarely use it. I have not given birth here or used state schools. If I ever had to go on benefits, I would likely return to my home country where I had a good standard of life, just not the international workplace I have here.

I am aware that the country needs both high earners and low earners- I am not saying I am more important than a care worker- but I sometimes get tired of the narrative that all immigrants are low paid unskilled workers taking jobs from British people, and a drain on the system. I am by no means the only one in this position. I work for a company that recruits globally. But many are now going to the US or Canada as they think they will be more welcome there.

I think that by paying high taxes, my colleagues and I are giving back more than we take. We are of course not eligible for benefits until we get our ILRs. Am I wrong? I also think the British economy should encourage high earning immigrants and global talent by making immigration easier and cheaper. My ILR next year will cost £2885 per person and may take 6 months! I think that is rather unfair. Prepared to be told I am being unreasonable even though this is not in AIBU.😊

^ this

Yes this is what is so frustrating about the Brexit narrative that it was necessary to take control of our borders. There are so many ways to bring in stricter controls even within the EU.

Take Germany. Everyone in Germany has to register their identity and address with their local authority. If you move, you have to update your details. You can hardly do anything in Germany without showing people your registration.

You also have to put your name on your external letterbox and there are some official documents that will not be delivered to you unless your name is on your letterbox.

Would British people be willing to abide by all sorts of new laws and restrictions in order to massively reduce immigration? I'm not sure. It's something people seem to want to magically just happen without thinking through the costs and restrictions.

But you have engaged Cardi. And it’s only when being asked to quantify and back up your rather strong views - something you insist everyone else do - you just wave everyone away as racists. It’s lame. And we’ve all moved on from this Brexit type bashing because people are slowly realising that British culture is being weaponised against normal thinking people who can see clearly that this is all just a race to the bottom now and that no one is benefiting from this superior ‘be kind’ neo liberalism kind of narrow mindedness.

I think a points system similar to Canada and Australia is the way to go.

Does it help that much?

In 2022, around 1.08 million non-EU citizens were found to be illegally present in the EU, indicating a 59% increase compared with 2021 (679 730).

Hungary reported the largest number of non-EU citizens found to be illegally present in the EU (222 520), followed by Germany (198 310) and Italy (138 420).

This is incorrect

A country needs a total fertility rate of 2.1 to maintain the same population size. This is known as the replacement rate, the number of children households need to have to replace their own eventual demise.

Right now the total fertility rate in the UK is less than that, around 1.5. If that stays the same then over time the UK population will decrease in size.

You may think that's a good thing but unfortunately our societies are structured so that younger working people pay taxes to support everyone else, so if there are fewer young people and more old people, then our whole economy ceases to function.

Contrary to what a lot of people on this thread seem to think, many immigrants to the UK are young workers or students who come here, pay taxes and work, and then go home before they get older and expensive.

In reality we're overpopulated because people are living a lot longer and there's millions of baby Boomers who are now hitting retirement.

We need the working age immigration for the labour force but it adds to population overload. It adds to strain on services but we need them to fill health care roles. None of it is ideal but it is what it is.

We can't just have people turning up on boats though uninvited or on backs of lorries. We need control of our borders and people turning up undocumented and uninvited shouldn't be granted asylum.

So many comments about how the UK has no room, it's full, there's no room for housing, it's being built over.

Less than 10% of UK land is built on

That's less than the amount of UK land covered by peat bog

This, whole heartily agree!

Those numbers spiked in 2022 in part due to the war in Ukraine and weaponised migration through Belarus. Germany introduced stricter border checks last year that reduced numbers.

I'm not saying those kinds of restrictions solve the problem, but they do reduce appeal and make it harder for migrants to stay long-term.

You are giving back loads more than you take, and this country wouldn't run without you, thank you

We need the working age immigration for the labour force but it adds to population overload. It adds to strain on services but we need them to fill health care roles.

Why is it that, despite having very high levels of immigration and a rapidly increasing population that we still can't fill these roles. Almost like massively increasing the population also massively increases the number of roles we need to fill.

It's like a dog chasing it's own tail, the solution is causing the problem to be never ending.

Reform to make people's lives better, so we could get to replacement rate of reproduction is the only long-term solution.

Yes the people arriving still require services like GPs, dentists, translators

A vicious circle

Ok maybe it’ll start working but more recently it looks high

Illegal immigration set to exceed record high

10/21/2023October 21, 2023

Police data released Saturday showed over 20,000 people entered Germany illegally in September, the highest monthly figure since February 2016. Politicians have yet to find a solution to the problem eight years on.

https://amp.dw.com/en/germany-illegal-immigration-set-to-exceed-record-high/a-67175099

Let's expedite their paperwork so they can start working, earning money, and contributing! Their willingness to take on jobs that many British people won't do is a valuable asset that benefits everyone involved.

Nobody is “against immigration”. If you are choosy, immigrants can massively benefit and enrich your country. T. S. Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Clive James, Sylvia Plath, Wittgenstein, Karl Popper, James Watson (who discovered DNA) and Stanley Kubrick were all immigrants. The most brilliant lecturer at my university was an American who’d settled in the U.K. My GP is a lovely young Indian lady from Mumbai. The nurse who looked after my mother was a wonderful, sweet, kind Thai girl. Someone with a PhD in engineering or nanotechnology is going to benefit this country. A top neurosurgeon and his wife are going to benefit this country. Anicet Mayela, an illegal immigrant from the Congo, who campaigners helped stay here, and who then went on to rape a young girl, did not benefit this country. It’s pretty simple really.

And by the way, I include Brits in this. I have a lot of sympathy for the Spaniards who resent British oafs taking over their coastal towns, getting drunk, urinating in the street, and then whinging about everyone speaking Spanish in Spain.

There are two separate issues here.

1. The question of identity. If you let in a few people, and make them welcome, they can quickly assimilate. If you let in millions of people, even good people who enrich you, they will overwhelm your country and you will lose your identity. Also, if you let in people who hate your country (which many immigrants clearly do), then that is also going to undermine your identity. That is what has happened to Britain, and especially to England. But the left have no problem with that because they hate England too and are glad to see its identity destroyed.

2. The question of who you let in. If you let in a famous Russian poet, or an Indian PhD student, or a Nobel-prize winning Brazilian chemist, they are going to enrich your country. If you let in boatloads of rootless, undocumented young men, many of whom cannot speak English and have possibly fled the police in their home country, they are not going to enrich your country.

Well that’s a very good question. How come we did that, but won’t do it for other refugees, not even ones who have helped out armed forces?

What’s British culture? I know a fair bit about Welsh culture, which is celebrated fine here in Wales.

Yeah it's a sort of lack mentality, it's makes no sense.

Ever considered that maybe British people don't want to do those jobs because they are unsafe, don't pay fairly or have very poor working conditions?

But you think the solution is to import desperate people in to do that work, instead of the employers having to improve conditions or pay?

So it doesn't benefit 'everyone involved'.

Have you thought about what the long term consequences of that are for everybody, British or immigrant, that have to work in this country?

I disagree, it depends where you are in the country. Local to where I live now I have witnessed racism towards polish people and different skin colours. An old white male in a pub was asking why my second generation Indian friend was in the country….hes British?!

There are people who are racist and anti immigration, I tend to find when people have had a few beers their true opinions slip out. We had a lovely Europen woman leave our company and country due to the comments and remarks from neighbours.

Only 0.2% of U.K. land is truly vacant.

It is 9% developed use, which is residential houses (but not their gardens), transport, utilities, community centres and other developed uses.

63% are agriculture/farms which includes farm buildings.

20% is forestry, open land and water,

5% is the gardens of homes, including sheds

and last 2% are outdoor rec centres, holiday parks, etc.

0.1% are our landfills.

It’s you and the poster you quoted who make no sense. Do you know why we shouldn’t build on the peat bog, or the flood plains or the green belt? And that all the people we import to work in the nhs and elsewhere also need capacity in the nhs and schools and all the rest of the infrastructure not just housing?

I’m sick of this argument. People on the left constantly say “oh, well, statistically the UK is mostly farmland. If it wasn’t for those wretched little NIMBYs, we could house everyone comfortably.” Yes, and statistically you could fit everyone in the world on the Isle of Wight if you packed them in like sardines and they all stood shoulder to shoulder. But would you want to live on the Isle of Wight? No you would not.

I’m not interested in the statistics. All I know is that here, in rural Essex, I can hardly breathe. My local woods have been hacked down to make way for a disgusting new housing estate, and at the other end of the village a second giant estate is being built that is more like a mini town. The traffic is so awful I hardly bother going out. People keep talking about declining birth rates, but they forget the height they’re falling from. In 1900 there were a billion humans. By 1960 that had trebled to three billion. It’s now eight billion and heading for ten. In Africa, the birth rate is so high the African population is going to double. Sometimes I feel like I’m literally suffocating. This country is so crowded I could scream. Too many people, too many houses, too many cars, and too much goddam noise. It’s driving us all insane.

But no matter how many new estates are built, no matter how bad the traffic gets, the left don’t care. So long as they can pose as the morally superior globalists, welcoming in the poor refugees, to hell with the lives of the people who already live here. This country is now so crowded our quality of life is seriously deteriorating. My friend’s new house is so small she has to store her vacuum cleaner at her mums because there is nowhere to put it. Developers know they can get away with building these rabbit hutches and jamming them on top of one another because the demand is limitless.

Imo people underestimate how hard it is to stop irregular migration, it takes far more than addresses and ID cards because traffickers are incredibly well funded and able to get round a lot.

It takes Aus level intervention which is hardline