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.😊

Good god, I didn't expect so many replies and I have been at work all day and then went out, so didnt get a chance to return to this thread. Will try to read now.

Yes! And they need to keep in mind 10% of our homes ARE currently on flood plains. Some should never have been built on, others have become flood zones due ti climate change. Much of the 20% “forestry, open land and water” can’t be built on too because it is almost vertical (mountain sides), more flood zones, and bogs/fens/wetlands. All our native wildlife species are running out of habitat as well and under serious threat.

Ok but nobody is suggesting building over 90% of the country. My point was that if 65 million people can live on 9% of territory, population growth can be accommodated with even a small amount of new build. It's not like half the country is already concrete.

More than a million homes could be built on brownfields alone.

Great! That covers 90% of last years immigration- paving over all the brownfields assuming you’ve done the toxic waste clean up that is.

Now what about this year’s million plus intake? And 2025? And so on?

65 million don’t live on 9%….unless you want everyone with a garden, private or communal, to have it built on? We 67 million live on 14% of the land

Who is paying for the building at that rate and why is it an attractive prospect?

Oh, and what is your plan @dreamingbohemian for all the “internally displaced people” in the U.K. having to abandon their 5.2 million homes on the flood zones in the near term? Oh dear, no brownfield left is there?

And what about the 250,000 homes currently falling into the sea due to coastal erosion and rising sea levels? What is your plan for housing all these people?

note to all: I am not anti-immigration but there are constraints on how many people this island can support safely and with decent quality of life while not extincting all our native wildlife. To sweep away these valid, serious concerns as some sort of anti-immigration bigotry is not productive.

Totally agree with this:

I am against people arriving uninvited and undocumented.

You are welcome as you have come via legal channels bringing your needed skills

I have several very good friends who have arrived on these shores as skilled net contributors, now all in the top 2% of taxpayers.

I have zero time for those who play the system to bring the rest of their family over to drain our schools, housing stock, doctors, dentists and health services etc. Likewise for the British born net takers who bleat on about “their benefits” and what they are “entitled to” after contributing f all or not enough to cover their own.

Anyone who's genuinely interested in solving the housing crisis, there are approximately 1 bajillion links out there with ideas for how to do so with no or minimal impact on green belt/nature/etc.

Personally I would concentrate home building in cities (high rises/brownfields) and help pay for it by higher taxes on people who park their money in London real estate and never even live here.

Something like a third of all immigrants settle in Greater London, if I remember correctly, and there is still a lot of scope for building up here.

I actually think the low paid workers are of more importance to the UK economy in some ways...Eg. care workers and fruit pickers
the fruit industry has crumbled (sniggers) due to lack of EU workers.
lack of care workers, nursery staff, housekeeping staff, hospitality staff have had a massive impact on their respective industries

and then there are the key workers such as medical staff

the majority of immigration is due to those coming in lawfully in the above roles or as students (who are also net contributors). asylum seekers make up a very small %. and those who would turn them away, no amount of logic or facts will change their minds.

I'm an immigrant of 20+ years. paid through the nose for private boarding school, then uni (25-30k per year) and then worked ridiculous hours in the NHS. used a mix of private and NHS care and have been fortunate enough to have been gifted significant sums from parents who are non brits to buy property in the UK. despite being in the category of "contributing" immigrant who has spent her entire adult life in the uk, in recent years I feel unwanted and unwelcome. being someone who is culturally very english but also a religous brown Muslim, I constantly face rhetoric that treats me as an outsider. it's exhausting.

Thanks everyone for all the replies. I am not even sure why I started this thread; in retrospect I have rambled on in my OP, and not made much sense. Maybe I was thinking out loud.

I am a POC from a Commonwealth country. It has been easy for us to integrate as we were both educated in English and consider ourselves liberal/secular. Both with considerable privilege in being born to parents obsessed with education. I do believe integration is necessary, but at other times I realise that not everybody has that privilege. I feel uneasy about the "good immigrant, bad immigrant" discourse sometimes. I did not intend to sneer at low paid workers because they definitely contribute more than I do. And yet, I also recognise the alarm felt by many about certain values being destroyed, though I do think that many of these values can also be shared by others.

I have always felt very welcome in the UK actually. I consider it a privilege to live in London, despite the high CoL. It's truly one of the world's greatest cities. Lately though, I have been alarmed by many dogwhistles, if I can call it that. I lurk on MN and don't post much, but yesterday I think there were about 6 benefits threads. I suppose we can expect more ahead of the elections.

I have moved around a lot, and sometimes feel like I do not fit in anywhere. I guess this is what most immigrants feel. It's very confusing. People are often confused by me too!

As far as I am aware, there is no process for asylum seekers to do that unless they are on British soil.

I think that's very true. Immigration to replace falling birth rates is a giant ponzi scheme.

The problem is that in order to pay people fairly for their work (to use British workers rather than exploiting lower paid immigrants) then you need to charge more for the output of their work. But you need to charge more without increasing salaries to match. Which means everyone gets less (stuff and services), since they're paying the true cost for what they consume rather than an artificially low cost.

We have this idea that we should have an ever-improving standard of living 'because we're a rich country'. There's a bit of truth in our model of non-stop economic growth, as advances in automation and manufacturing do bring the cost of 'making stuff' down, so there's more stuff to share out. But it's been hugely inflated through the immigration ponzi scheme and by borrowing more money.

Re-adjusting to accept the standard of living that actually reflects the value we create as a country each year is basically the current COL crisis. Well actually, there's much further to go.

We can't really blame governments. They all cheat, since the alternative is so painful (eg COL crisis). Oh and Labour also try to cheat by extracting ever-increasing tax. But that has a limit too. Higher tax rate but less stuff being produced (because it no longer makes sense to make some stuff in the UK - or at all - given the tax burden) can end up with less tax income than before. Redistribution does work to a certain extent, but you have to figure out where you can do it without reducing what gets produced.

I'm not supporting the person who said it, but it is true that the only way to sustainably increase our standard of living is by continuously increasing our productivity as a country. Unfortunately, it's much harder to figure out how to do that...

The asylum system isn't fit for purpose. It was designed 70 years ago to reflect post-WWII Europe.

We now live in a world where economic migration is much more common (and so an option people consider more readily) and a large percentage of the world population could argue that they meet the criteria for asylum due to their country being run by mafias/violent to minorities etc.. which is unfortunately a lot of countries in the world.

And that's why the people trafficking is getting worse and worse - and will continue to do so unless we disincentivise illegal immigration and speculative asylum claims so that it isn't the best economic option for billions of people.

We also have vast trafficking networks representing billions. They have gained strength over that time

We've created the perfect conditions for people traffickers.

Huge economic benefit for economic migrants, whether their asylum claim is successful or not.

Asylum criteria which are wide enough that a high percentage of the global population are potentially included.

And the barrier to claiming asylum is physically getting here. Hence the traffickers.

Once they've paid the traffickers and got here, there's a backlog in processing asylum claims of up to several years. They get living costs from the government, but can also start working in the informal economy (which will employ workers without permits) and then disappear.

It's completely different from what the creators of the asylum agreements expected when they designed them in post-war Europe: with the memory of their citizens fleeing bombing and Nazi persecution fresh in their memories, all of Europe still devastated by war and all struggling economically (so no reason for economic migration), and limited global migration.

Yes and there’s very little discussion on what to do about it

You could end the 1951 convention and do direct returns which would stop trafficking, as for Albania

Then set up another system of allocation, the issue being were no where near able to discuss it and the demand for asylum would be incredibly high and probably not met

What we have with over packed boats, men with sticks / worse and drownings is going to increase until international law is addressed

Welcome to the UK. I have no problem with you, or your husband being here and remaining here. I do have a problem with illegal immigration, particularly from thpse countries were people are not subject to the evils which would cause them to be in desperate need of asylum.

Absolutely this - like most laws/idea from decades ago - these 70 year old laws do not work now given current circumstances, world population and threatened climate change affecting food supplies.

Something needs to be done to stop the traffickers as a joint enterprise for those countries (mainly Europe and America) worse affected. See what Keir pulls out of the hat ?😐

There needs to be a limit on the amount of immigrants in the country, high contributing or not. In alot of towns and cities in the UK it doesn't feel like it's my country anymore, I like to see the large majority of people who look like me and talk like me but if you say this as a white British person you'll get burned at the stake.

Millions of migrants are now entering the country every year in parallel with crumbling public services.

No government is adequately responding to these rapid changes in demographic, the issue is simply kicked down the road for someone else to pick up.

We are witnessing the managed decline of the country.

Why do people always equate concerns about immigration with racism?

it is entirely possible to want to welcome people
who arrive legally and want to integrate and contribute to the UK. It is also equally possible to have serious issues with daily arrival of young men on boats from countries which often don’t present risk to them and they are solely here for economic reasons. It is the latter that most people are concerned about. The ultra left seem unable to see the difference

I have relatives in cologne who moved primarily because their town was changed so much and very quickly meaning women could no longer safely walk the streets at night. This is not what I want for my country. It worries me greatly.

My neighbour is a highly skilled recent migrant {past few years} has married an Englishman, has two bilingual children {well behaved kids} and pays a lot of tax.
It's cost her thousands in visas, too.
She is an asset to any Country she lives in.
Skilled migrants who speak the language are welcome in most countries.

Illegals are what people are generally against - net takers.

Assuming the you have a legal right to live permanently in the UK (and I do too) then neither of us have to leave, despite our different values. Likewise all our descendants... forevermore. We'll all need to find a way to live together peacefully.

That's why it's so important to be incredibly careful about people joining our society.

1 million net immigrants last year is not being careful.

Trouble is the government (whoever is in office) is not