to be shocked that less than half of people in London are white

[Ilovecoffeeandchocolate]

I was reading the article below and was shocked to see how much this country especially London has changed over the last ten years and feel concerned that immigration is too high for what is an already overcrowded island especially in the south east!

www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/dec/11/census-2011-religion-race-education?intcmp=239

This will add nothing to the discussion...

This country is changing. It has always been changing. I hope it always does. If you went back through history you'd be able to find people whinging about the same things again and again. "Those pesky Huguenots coming over here and taking all our textile jobs..." etc, etc.

If you can't or won't embrace change then you will stagnate.

sorry, haven't read whole thread but just one point - the island is not overcrowded. The SE feels congested, but outside London itself, something like 1-2% of the island is actually built on, that's all. The idea of immigrants taking jobs is also a red herring if you look at the stats (can't quote details, DH is economics MA and teacher but not here right now to give me the numbers but its something we have discussed many times).

I like the Hugenots analogy!

When I heard the census news, I thought: " but wait! I am an immigrant and my DC were born abroad, but but BUT we LOVE England and....we drink tea and eat scones and celebrated the Jubilee....I accidentally cheered on the British athletes and and and....stop, wait, we are NICE immigrants. I worked really hard on improving my English!

But I guess not all Brits see it like that.

My next door neighbour once told me he wished all immigrants would go back home. I said that was an odd ting to say to...an immigrant. He said :" you are alright Chandon, I know you. it is the other foreigners I mind about."

To be fair, I can see why people are worried about unlimited immigration, and being "overrun" by foreign culture. That is quite a big fear to have to live with (though maybe not rational, and actually based in racism).

But the whole census result and its focus on " white British" made me feel uncomfortable. To count British people, fine, but what does skin colour have to do with anything?

I always HATE filling out my ethnicity on those census forms. Whose business is it, and why do they want to know????

'There was lots of beautiful countryside and the quality of life there was better than it is here. Our island is not overcrowded, whatever the scaremongerers might want us to believe'

According to the Campaign for Rural England much of SE england is more densely populated than pretty well anywhere else in Europe. Even Belgium. Fact. And it patently is an issue.

Our island as a whole isn't over crowded - parts of it are though.

I've been in London for 25 years now - irish by birth so an immigrant myself - but I do notice how much more crowded the capital feels.

All the immigrants I know are married to British-born men and women.

dinky have you not recently come back to the UK after living abroad?

Abra1d - cherry picked and potentially misleading fact. The population density of London (NOT including the SE) is 5199 people per sq km, of course that will skew the rest of the SE if lumped together. No other region has a population density of over 500 - roughly the same as the whole of the Netherlands.

Excluding London, the population density of England is 349 people per square km - lower than Belgium.

Is it only the non-whites who make an island overcrowded then, OP? White immigrants like myself take up no physical space? But somebody whose ancestors have been living in this country since the 18th century adds to the crowding?

Tell me, is it the additional pigment that makes such a difference to the overcrowding or something else?

Net migration into Britain ? the number of people arriving to settle here minus the number who leave permanently to set up home in a foreign country ? is running at around 200,000 a year, which means we?re adding a million to the population every five years, even before the new arrivals have any children.
In terms of the UK?s net immigration, it isn?t just numbers that should concern us; it is the type of people leaving and the type of people arriving.
The people that are leaving are, in the main, literate, moderately well-off, educated and/ or skilled and speak English like natives.
The people that are arriving are, in the main, illiterate, indigent, uneducated and/ or unskilled and do not speak English. In addition, because of the dire state of the countries they have left, they are more or less totally amoral.
Net immigration accordingly represents a massive drain on and threat to our society, a society that has been painstakingly constructed by our ancestors over the last 1,000-odd years.
Yes, we have been invaded in the past and yes, we have had waves of immigration in the past, but times were different then and that argument is no longer valid.
Ever increasing population will only lead to increased racial tensions, ever expanding islamic ghettos, a collapsing social security and health care system, lower living standards, soaring house prices, urban sprawl, decreasing agricultural capacity, water shortages, energy shortages and soaring unemployment, especially amongst the young and less skilled/educated yet unskilled people will still keep coming because the UK will still be a better option than where they come from.

that very interesting Dinky

now again have you not recently come back to the UK after living abroad? if so what led you to go and come back

Firstly, that net migration figure is an estimate. Nobody actually knows how many people are coming into the UK to live and how many are leaving to live abroad. Nobody's counting.

Secondly, most immigrants who come here are highly educated - they have to be in order to fulfil the visa requirements and also in order to have the funds to get here in the first place. This is true of all immigrants everywhere - it's the people at the top who tend to leave, because they have the means to do so.

The rest is just racist bullshit and I'm tempted to report you.

"In addition, because of the dire state of the countries they have left, they are more or less totally amoral."

Really? If somebody has to flee their own country because they have been protesting against an oppressive regime, that makes them amoral?

Everywhere is more crowded though - the earths population is increasing! I have photos or my grandparents in Rome in the late 50s - the streets are so empty! I have photos of them in front of famous monuments with only them in the shot. You can't swing a cat there now! London is more populated now - but it has been on the increase since it was a settlement in the side of the Thames!

Also crowded because of increase in tourism. Whem my grandparents did their globetrotting, they were very unusual because they chose to travel abroad. Even when I was a child, most children didn't go abroad for their summer holidays.

I am of course interested to hear that I am illiterate, indigent, uneducated and/ or unskilled and more or less totally amoral. Oh, and I don't speak English either. Which might come as a bit of a blow to my undergraduates who rely on me for feedback on their essays. Oh well, more or less total amorality should be able to find a solution to that problem.

Wallison - I don't think you can be right. When I did asylum work all my clients were desperately poor; the problem was they were in reality economic migrants seeking a better way of life and trying to shoe horn their histories into something that would fit the UN category of refugee. Hence a huge culture of suspicion has grown up between the UK Border Agency and those claiming asylum.

Didn't Blunkett grant an amnesty for 30,000 asylum claimants? I heard tha was because there was a flood at immigration offices in Croydon and rats ate the rest of the paperwork.

I agree there has not been adequate record keeping.

I don't think it is remotely racist to be worried that there is a large influx of people into our major cities who for whatever reasons are not integrating well. A lot of my clients had been in UK for years but could not speak English and needed interpreters at every court hearing, at vast public expense. I don't think this is a healthy or sustainable state of affairs for any country.

Worrying about immigration and consequent overcrowding is one thing. Linking it to skin colour- as was done in the OP- is a totally different matter and absolutely indefensible.

Well now immigrants are amoral, are they Dinky?

What will you do if you need hospital treatment and the ward staff includes some of these amoral nurses?

^ In addition, because of the dire state of the countries they have left, they are more or less totally amoral.

I guess here you are talking about refugees. You do realise, don't you, that most refugees live in a country that borders the one they have left? In global terms, the countries with the most refugees are Pakistan and Iran. In the UK, refugees make up 0.3% of the population. Hardly the stuff of 'rivers of blood', is it?

So how are we to judge the 'worthy immigrant' then? I met a lovely family yesterday. Parents both doctors, three of the brightest, most polite and friendly children I have met in a long time. OMG they were forrin'. Bloody cheek. Fleeing from a civil war, coming here, scrounging off the... Hang on, they had bought their house and kids were going private.

As no adequate records have been kept, you can't state with confidence what percentage of the pop is made up of refugees. And it isn't helpful to talk about country as a whole. The problem is with the cities, where people (quite naturally and understandably) join with others of similar background and language. The proportion of recent immigrants in London will be much higher than 0.3%.

This is a debate that needs to happen. And shutting people down with cries of 'racism' will get us nowhere.

Spero - 47% of immigrants to the UK have completed tertiary education. This is actually a higher figure than the indigenous population.

The figures for refugees come from the UNHCR who monitors refugees and their movements worldwide and yes they do keep track of numbers.

I don't ascribe to the completely amoral description but it was very clear to me that a large number of my clients did not tell the truth to people they perceived to be in authority as that had not benefitted them in their countries of origin where bribery and corruption were prevalent. Why do you think they were so keen to get out?

The trouble is, these attitudes do become internalized and it does have an impact on your willingness or ability to integrate into a different country. You can't just say multiculturalism is great, let's just all get along. I fear that we are simply encouraging parallel living with no integration. This causes tension for all. that is certainly what I noticed after two years loving just up from Brixton tube station.

Walls ion - how on earth were the UN keeping records of the 30,000 who got an amnesty? They came to the Uk illegally, they had no status, then the Uk records got destroyed! The UN cannot track people who are trafficked, because they are trafficked by criminals. A lot then go under radar in UK and have no paperwork.