To be ashamed of Theresa May's slant on immigration

[thinkiamgoingcrazy]

No mention by her last night of the many positives. Or the net contribution that immigration makes to the coffers. Just a focus on bringing those numbers down because "that's what people want" and "for lots of reasons".

(Yes there have been issues in some places that have seen a huge increase in incomers, and where there has been a large downward pressure on wages. I am not saying nothing has to be done, but the first call IMO, should have been better investment in those areas and better monitoring and policing of unscrupulous employment practices.)

Instead, and since the Tory conference last year, the language that is being used is unfriendly, divisive and excluding. Also some of the policies that are being planned.

I think that it would benefit our country more, as well as the many contributing and hard working people from other countries who live and bring up their families here, if the rhetoric were more welcoming and inclusive. Not only that but people that we need are either leaving or not coming here. IMO that's embarrassing and shameful. How sad that numbers will go down / have been going down, because our brand is now inward looking and closed . I really don't think that this makes economic, political or social sense.

that is what the electorate wants

The 37% of registered voters that voted to Leave last year, or the 24% that voted Tory in 2015?

What do you mean by the electorate?

The NHS will be over without immigrants.
To suggest people are only coming here to pick spuds is just not true.
The care system too would cease.

And GP appointments -that's not about immigration- its about the doctors who would have become GPs choosing not to. V.v. few migrants where DF lives- still can't get GP appointments.

d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/r4762fpv66/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-060315.pdf

52% of people think immigration should be decreased a lot and 24% think it should be reduced a little.

28% of people even got as far as to think that ukip has the best policy on immigration (0 net migration).

66% agree and 21% oppose to migrants not having access to basic services like the NHS unless they are in work. And 81% agree and 9% oppose to migrants not receiving any benefits until they have been in work for 2 years.

I would say on the whole the UK is fairly anti large scale immigration.

Last night wasn't "the migration show" and it would be been pretty weird for her to spend a long amount of time weighing up the pros and cons when there were so many topics to cover.

I would also guess although I haven't looked for figures, that conservatives are more anti immigration than labour and at the end of the day, she's never going to win over die hard labour voters at the expense of her core voters over an issue like migration.

She has made a commitment to under 100,000 net
And her track record suggests she cannot deliver anything reduction in net migration. Are we going to get the mobile 'Go home or else!' billboards again?

She's paying lip service and won't do anything to address the problems associated with immigration.

Never has, never will, and regardless of what they say the 2.1 established political parties are in lock-step on this issue.

Perhaps this is a comfort to you.

For every extra person coming to the UK we need extras. Extra transport, extra housing, extra medical services, extra schooling etc etc etc. We just can't go on like this.

Just look at the number of cars on the roads. Traffic issues and trying to get anywhere...

It just cannot go on.

From Oxford University:

www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/

^Resources
Projects
Press & Commentary
About
Glossary
Search
HOME / RESOURCES / BRIEFINGS /

UK Public Opinion toward Immigration: Overall Attitudes and Level of Concern
28 NOV 2016

Share Tweet
This briefing provides an overview of attitudes toward immigration in Britain. The discussion focuses on two basic questions: whether or not people favour or oppose immigration to the UK, and how many see it as one of the most important issues facing the country.

Key Points
General reactions to immigration can be examined by using public opinion data, but such responses may be based in part upon confusion about categories of migrants both among the public and in the questions they are asked.
More…
Immigration is currently highly salient and in recent years has consistently ranked in the top five ‘most important issues’ as selected by the British public.
More…
Approximately three quarters of people in Britain currently favour reducing immigration.
More…
Concern about migration applies to both EU and non-EU migration.
More…
Attitudes to immigration vary for different migration types.
More…
A majority of the British public thinks that migrants are good for the economy, but equal proportions think that Britain’s cultural life is either undermined or enriched by migration.
More…
Understanding the Evidence
Asking people about their views on immigration raises a host of issues. Definitions and categories are a particular problem: individual respondents and survey organisations may have different ideas of who ‘immigrants’ are. Many important issues depend greatly on definitions of who is a migrant. For example, policies often refer to subsets of migrants who have taken a particular path of entry into the country, such as those who come to the UK with job offers.

The data for this briefing come from polls and surveys of representative samples of the adults in Great Britain or the UK, conducted by professional polling firms, academic survey organisations, and NGOs. This briefing relies in particular on the British Social Attitudes, a long-running high-quality survey run by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), which included modules in 2011, 2013 and 2015 with many detailed new questions about immigration.

When conducted according to accepted professional standards, polls and surveys are reliable as snapshots of public opinion, at least for the questions that pollsters or academics choose to pose to the public. But interpreting them always requires care and caution, for they have important limitations and flaws.

Immigration is one of the ‘most important issues’ facing the British public

Pollsters and scholars commonly assess levels of public concern by asking people to name the ‘most important issue’ or ‘issues’ facing the nation. Ipsos MORI conducts a monthly poll asking respondents first to name the most important issue, and after they reply they are asked to name any ‘other important issues’. Respondents are not prompted with particular topics. Rather, they simply reply with whatever comes to mind. After assigning each response to one of 47 categories (see our data section for the full list), Ipsos MORI reports how many respondents chose each of these categories for each monthly sample.

Immigration consistently ranks among the top five issues in recent history. As of August 2016, it was the issue picked most often by respondents (34%). The other top five issues that respondents picked that month were the EU/Europe (31%), the National Health Service (31%), the economy (30%), housing (22%), and defence/international terrorism (19%). Figure 1 tracks the percentage of respondents naming race relations or immigration as one of the most important issues facing Britain, relative to the other five most frequently named issues as of August 2016. These other issues are presented as six-month moving averages to make the chart easier to visually interpret.

Figure 1

Use regions/landmarks to skip ahead to chart and navigate between data series.
Immigration among the public's most important issues. Chart provided by www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk

Long description.

No description available.
Structure.

Chart type: line chart.
The chart has 1 X axis displaying values.
The chart has 1 Y axis displaying Percentage of respondents.
Chart graphic.
Percentage of respondents
Immigration among the public'smost important issues
Chart provided bywww.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk
Immigration
Economy
NHS
EU/Europe/Common Market
Housing
Defence/Terrorism
2000
2010
0%
25%
50%
75%
Source: Ipsos-MORI Issue Index

Note: Until January 2015, ‘immigration’ included responses of ‘race relations’. After this point, ‘immigration’ became its own category. Data for ‘immigration’ are actual percentages. The other categories report six-month rolling averages.
Figure 1 reveals the rise of immigration from a marginal concern to one of the few most-frequently named issues. Immigration and race relations were rarely mentioned by respondents as one of the ‘most important issues’ facing the country prior to 2000. As recently as December 1999, fewer than 5% of Ipsos MORI’s monthly sample gave a reply that had to do with race relations or immigration. But since then, immigration has become one of the most frequently named issues. Similar patterns emerge in polling over shorter time spans by other polling firms, including Gallup and YouGov.

While it is possible that the coding involves some error or uncertainly, the Ipsos MORI results appear reliable (Jennings and Wlezien 2011). However, the ‘Most Important Issue’ coding scheme combined ‘race relations’ with ‘immigration’ and ‘immigrants’ until January 2015, making it impossible up to this point in time to isolate public concern over immigration in particular.

Return to top

Immigration is unpopular, with approximately three quarters of the British public favouring reduced levels

Over 56% chose ‘reduced a lot’, while 77% chose either ‘reduced a lot’ or ‘reduced a little’.

By contrast only about 18% think it should remain as it with a small proportion of don't know and tiny proportions wanting increases.

Sorry! That posted an entire page when I only wanted the paragraph saying:

Immigration is unpopular, with approximately three quarters of the British public favouring reduced levels

Over 56% chose ‘reduced a lot’, while 77% chose either ‘reduced a lot’ or ‘reduced a little’.

By contrast only about 18% think it should remain as it with a small proportion of don't know and tiny proportions wanting increases.

Perhaps you should report 'all those polish builders' to hmrc chickpea. It is your duty as a good citizen.

Blaaaaaaaah

Thanks your poll looks very similar to the one I posted. Obviously not just a one off.

I have 2 Lithuanians fitting a kitchen right now and they have a VAT number. Not sure how endemic this fraud is.... do you have personal experience?

Oh I agree with the concern - I'm interested in the figure.

I'd also be interested to know how much of the decrease in immigration people would like from the Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi and Caribbean communities who've been here since the 1950s and are now on to the second or third generation born here. That's where a lot of the concern about 'integration' seems to lie and no one actually has a clue how to deal with it because if you send 'them' home, how far back do you go in what is a mongrel country.

It is interesting though that there is not a concern about immigrants from NZ or Aus or SA so is it colour, or language or both.

I'm not religious but I honestly don't know how she has the nerve to call herself a "Christian". Surely her views on most issues are the antithesis of what it means to be Christian? She really does seem like a horrible person (even by Tory standards)

Yes they contribute but they also take a lot out. Huge amounts of immigrants work in low paid or part time jobs, topped up by benefits so pay little tax and put pressure on things like the NHS, housing, schools etc which all require more funding so even if they contribute they also end up costing the country quite a lot back. And lets not forget that all these people grow old and will need a pension, care themselves so we will have to import more immigrants to pay for them and so on and so on. It really doesn't make sense. It's basically a big pyramid scheme to ensure a small group of very rich and big corporations make more profit at the expense of social and economic cohesion.

Also, it's not just about economics. Disparate groups and cultures can have a damaging effect on social cohesion, when people stay with their own peoples ghettos form, so many different languages spoken means that it is hard to unite people with a common language etc.

Yes, there are a lot of positives to immigration but not as it is done now under the Tories or was done under NuLabour. It needs to be properly managed and based on bringing in people with high skills, who speak good English and are culturally compatible, not importing low skilled workers who need benefit top ups, housing, schooling etc all because big business is too tight to pay a decent wage!

I still can't get my head around the fact that some of the people who go on about TM's "nasty", "divisive" rhetoric and how damaging it is are quite happy to throw nasty, personal slurs at people who disagree with them.

Low paid immigrant workers with children take out more than they put in is a FACT.

What do you think about the current controls on immigration, and what additional controls would you add? (Obviously, I'm talking about non-EU immigration, as EU immigration will no doubt be changing anyway.)

I don't know enough about the existing non-eu immigration controls to really comment but I know that immigration from the commonwealth has had to be curbed as eu immigration is so high. Personally I think this is wrong as commonwealth countries (eg Nigeria, India) tend to learn English at school and English history etc so have a greater affinity to the UK. Contrast with many eu migrants who don't know any English, neither do their children which puts strain on schools.

In my opinion, immigration should be in response to demand and eligibility should be dependent on a decent level of English for the whole family, and proof of a means to support themselves eg they've already got a job lined up or have savings.

Someone mentioned there were 1.5 million jobseekers. More should be done to train these people to do the jobs currently done by immigrants so over time we become less reliant on it.

Have you considered lack of infrastructure, poor accessibility from many areas to places with jobs, the price of houses and the cost of rent (which immigrants, especially those from developing economies, would struggle to afford), the increase in crime over the last decade, the fact that the economy is teetering and there's huge uncertainty?

All of those things are a valid reasons for bringing the number of immigrants down.

" So now it becomes a discussion about benefits and how to access them - does it need to be easier? The People don't want that either."

Speak for yourself

The issues with zero hours/temporary contracts and the benefit trap are well understood. I can't be the only person who would like to see reforms to the administrative system so that people aren't punished in the long-term for taking on work when it's available.

In a purely technological sense, then the suspension/reinstation of benefit claims for (e.g) the apple picking season could be done at one click of a button for proven workers.

Why aren't we campaigning for better rights for U.K. residents?

Low paid immigrant workers with children take out more than they put in is a FACT.

Not all immigrants are low paid though, and overall there is a net contribution to the UK economy.

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/immigration-uk-economy-what-are-the-benefits-stats-theresa-may-amber-rudd-tory-conference-speeches-a7346121.html%3Famp

Access to benefits for short term unemployment and the benefits trap was supposed to be addressed by Universal Credit.

I'll just leave that there.

OP, that makes no reference to GDP per capita, which is a far more important when assessing a country's overall "health" than just GDP.

if my DC and their friends are anything to go by, the highly trained young people (especially STEM grads and doctors) skipping the country in droves should help her towards her idiotic net immigration targets.

She seems to have forgotten that not all countries treat their immigrants with the same distain that she does.

This may be slightly simplistic - but surely the government not setting a liveable minimum wage and implicitly supporting exploitative zero hours is in part responsible for pushing down wages? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick there