To think 335,000 extra people coming to the UK in a year is too high

[jdoe8]

Where will they all live? What jobs will they all do? I know it may help GDP, but that is irrelevant as GDP per head is the important thing.

It does seem to be race to the bottom with more part time work , uber type work and the country is borrowing more and more and the national debt is 35k per head now.

It's ridiculous to say that the problem of lack of GPs means we must import them.
We are training them - where are they going????? Why won't medics be GPs?

Lots of reasons. GP workload has gone up, and the work they're doing is more complex. Changes in other services (like specialist mental health services) mean more is getting shunted on to GPs. More GPs want to do part-time work. Lots of medical students don't see it as the most attractive specialism.

Part of the problem is, again, our aging population. The groups most likely to need GP care are older people. The number of GPs has gone up in many places, but it hasn't kept pace with that demand.

Thank God all those 25 year olds will all be put down / will be sent back when they reach their pension age and won't produce an even bigger burden in the future.

Two issues:

a) many of the 25-year-olds we're talking about are immigrants who plan to work here for a few years, then go back to their home countries anyway;
b) that's not how demographic shift works. It's not about 'we need fewer older people.' It's about the ratio of old people to young people.

So your solution is that all the unemployed UK people in the post -industrial areas (who currently don't even internally migrate to pick veg) are going to train to be GPs, nurses and all of the other areas of work struggling to recruit? How is that going to work out?

The military thinks that global warming will lead to an unimaginable refugee crisis. I personally never thought I'd see the day when headlines like this happens.

www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/01/climate-change-trigger-unimaginable-refugee-crisis-senior-military

But surely it means a never ending increase in carers as more than one person is needed to provide 24 hour care of one elderly person. So it's a pyramid scheme - and sometime in the future it will crash.

Well, I pointed out why someone wouldn't be a nurse - increase staffing, reduce workload then the existing nurses would, for one, work for longer. You don't see many over 60s nurses - or at least I don't.

But surely it means a never ending increase in carers as more than one person is needed to provide 24 hour care of one elderly person

well, that's not quite how care works. You've got multiple people providing 24-hour care to one elderly person, but they're also caring for other older people at the same time.

I'm not anti immigration.

I do however think free movement of people within Europe is insane. Theoretically, 500 million people could arrive in the UK tomorrow and there's nothing we could do.

For those who believe in free movement of Europeans, I'd love to ask why? Is it because deep down you believe Europeans are the 'same as us'? Personally, I find free movement of Europeans is a rather racist, discriminatory idea. Why do Europeans get preferential treatment over Africans. Asians, Australians and Americans?

For those who believe in free movement of Europeans, I'd love to ask why? Is it because deep down you believe Europeans are the 'same as us'? Personally, I find free movement of Europeans is a rather racist, discriminatory idea. Why do Europeans get preferential treatment over Africans. Asians, Australians and Americans?

Free movement doesn't apply to 'Europeans' as a race - it's countries who have signed up to a particular trade agreement (the EU single market), with that as one of the conditions.

The logic behind that is that the single market has 'four economic freedoms' - freedom of goods, freedom of capital, freedom of services, and freedom of people.

(Personally, I am less keen on the idea of trade agreements that allow money and things to flow across borders but not people. Ranking money and things above people is, in general, a bad idea for approaching the world.)

Theoretically, 500 million people could arrive in the UK tomorrow and there's nothing we could do.

And yet they didn't. We are not that much of a prospect and British exceptionalism is a very unattractive trait.

You have to look at free movement of labour in the context of the the four freedoms upon which the single market is based. We could make comparable treaties with other places so it is not racist at all.

I do however think free movement of people within Europe is insane. Theoretically, 500 million people could arrive in the UK tomorrow and there's nothing we could do

No, they really couldn't, and yes, you could.

This is why this stuff shouldn't be debated places like this, most people don't have the first clue what they are talking about. It's all just vague ill informed opinions based on fuck all.

If that's how you think, then are you in favour of free movement of people for the entire world? If not, why not?

I imagine the 500k people coming here aren't all GPs. I know several in the UK that have just quit all together, they really weren't earning much with the workload and pressure.

Are there figures on the amount of in work benefits that new entrants claim? The fact that millions are supported while working is a broken economy to me.

How many of you remember Auf Wiedersehn Pet, the TV about UK builders/trades exercising the free movement of labour to work in Germany (during a UK recession)?

Well going forward that escape route for the working classes won't be available; so tanking our economy should be the last thing we do.

If that's how you think, then are you in favour of free movement of people for the entire world?

If the entire world wants to set up some kind of equivalent single market, then sure, I suppose? But that's not what's in place. Again: this is about the conditions of being part of the single market , as a specific trade arrangement, not just arbitrary shuffling round of people.

*500k people that come here without work

I'm going to go against the grain of both view points and say it's actually more of a perfect storm of a number of factors. There have been financial cuts and big business also has a lot of play in this both in wage depression and tax avoidance. The birth rate is going up and we have a high rate of old age survival. In terms of infrastructure it's not necessarily about how much money you might pay into the system from migration it's where it is going or being spent. For example I've lived in this area 20 years and much of what is here is what was here when I moved here. The population due to a combination of higher births, less deaths and migration has expanded. True there have been some things built but a lot has stayed the same. DS school is marginally bigger in terms of space but has almost double the amount of children that were here 20 years ago. Cuts of course don't help and it's debatable whether the governments austerity measures have helped. In terms of the health service, yes migrants are often staffing it but it's a fallacy to say they use it more or less than native Brits as that is often down to individual level as for example a pregnant 25 year old migrant lady will be using it far more possibly than a healthy 50 year old male, so it's all relative.

The fact is we all need houses to live, healthcare and education (if we are young or have kids), we all use our local services such as bins, police etc. We all want to be paid a fair wage and be able to live in a reasonable way. We cannot say migration has 'no' effect, much the same as we can't say that people living longer or having more kids has 'no' effect. What we need to actually know from our government is how much money for these things is there, what they are doing to raise more money (ie. sorting the tax dodgers), what infrastructure they are going to provide or how they are going to solve problems when they occur (how for example are they going to up the numbers of GPs?). Level and quality of migration are part of the whole picture, just as much as planning for dementia services. We study patterns emerging and when say dementia starts to increase we may put more resources into that.

I think this whole question has become a battleground of saying that either all migration is good or bad. It isn't one or the other, it's a very mixed bag and it's effects on you will depend on where you live, income and general status in life. Nobody's experience is the whole and no one's is invalid just because someone else has a different experience.

People talk about the EU and the single market like it's perfectly ordinary and has always been like that. It's not. Its a relatively new thing in terms of history. I view it as a political experiment that hasn't worked.

Why would half a million people from the EU want to come here? WHY?

Can someone please explain this to me?

Why do Europeans get preferential treatment over Africans. Asians, Australians and Americans?

They don't.

People from countries within the EU are subject to different rules from those without.

Trying to pretend that's racist is pretty weak.

This is why this stuff shouldn't be debated places like this

Yes, we need laws to regulate discussion.

Fascism is just not coming quickly enough.

Most people in the UK, outside of major cities, live in areas that are upside down triangles; i.e. they are top heavy in the over 55s.

Again the figures re in-work benefits are trivial compered to the economic benefits of allowing migration.

Immigrants were reported to have contributed more than £3bn in income taxes, while claiming roughly £0.5bn in benefits. The OBR (which I quoted above) said reduction in migration will cost us 6 billion per year.

See www.newstatesman.com/politics/welfare/2016/06/how-much-do-benefits-paid-eu-migrants-cost-britain

Fascism is just not coming quickly enough

Plenty of racism and facism in mainland Europe which was one of the reasons I wanted to leave the EU.

The UK is one of the more tolerant countries in the EU. Racism is mainland Europe is quite frankly terrifying.

Formerbabe
The single market cannot be described as a failed experiment. In trading terms it is so much better than the alternatives.

See the evidence in the FT:

"A Treasury paper found that trade in goods was 73 per cent higher between EU member states than would have been the case in a free trade area, while trade in services was 16 per cent greater. This is because while there are no tariffs in a free-trade agreement other barriers remain.

A similar type of analysis by the OECD looking at membership of the European Economic Area, which includes full single market access, said trade in goods was 60 per cent higher than if trading partners simply relied on World Trade Organisation rules."

www.ft.com/content/1688d0e4-15ef-11e6-b197-a4af20d5575e

*£3bn in income taxes, while claiming roughly £0.5bn in benefits"

Is that out of work benefits or does it include in work benefits?