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.

Others are skills which unemployed people could relatively quickly and easily be trained in (like construction) but aren't because employers would rather take up the cheaper option of a fully trained migrant.

Or because of the high retirement levels of the baby boomer generation and chronic underfunding of further education meaning many young people aren't getting adequate training, there really is a shortage of skilled workers.

Investing in our country is the answer, not cutting of our lifeline.

Immigration is out of control. The system is a shambles. Yes we need certain kinds of workers but our current system doesn't allow us to target them.

I think overcrowding is a huge problem. I think it is responsible for the xenophobic attitudes people speak of, as well as many milder mental health problems, stress levels, anger management and frustration.

Every mammal becomes distressed and behaves in unnatural ways when suffering through living in overcrowded conditions: we are no different.

My town is an island at peak times of the day. It's a nightmare.

Yet houses continue to be thrown up.

Why complain about Theresa May? Corbyn is likely to let just as many if not millions more people in. NuLabour created this mess. Before 1997 there wasn't mass immigration, houses were cheaper, schools were less overcrowded etc. Mandelson admitted doing it to "rub diversity in peoples faces". They never thought about the real, long-term, economic and social impact just to score a few political points from their gilded ivory towers. The Tories have been stupid to take NuLabour's baton and run with it.

More immigration of cheap labour is right wing ideology - big business wants to drive down the cost of everything to make more profit, and cheaper labour is better for them. Big business runs the Tories, hence there will be no cap on immigration, not one bit, as that will affect their profits. Or how much you pay for their products, take your pick. Must be a bit tricky for our right wing leaders really, trying to appeal to the send them all home brigade whilst simultaneously wanting cheap foreign labour is a delicate balance!

Anyway, why is it always the low earning foreigners that people want to send home? What about Mark Carney, or the Russian oligarchs for instance, or most of the premier league's footballers? Why do they get to stay and a fruit picker doesn't? Why can't a local be trained up to do what they do? Must be easy, as after all, that's what's being advocated above. Doctors, Nurses, governor of the bank of England; piece of piss I say.

Yep.

Thanks, Tony.

That's why I'll never vote Labour again.

Perhaps overcrowding would be such a problem if (every) government invested equally around the country and there wasn't such geographical wealth inequality. Jobs in the rural north that aren't just warehousing popping up in the odd post-industrial town causes localised overcrowding. Crappy expensive public transport means localised overcrowding. A lack of public services in smaller towns leads to localised overcrowding.

And at the same time as some areas are creaking under the strain of more people, others are becoming ghost towns.

The issues in this country are structurally entrenched. Cutting immigration to zero won't change a lot of the issues being thrown around on this thread. They existed before Poland joined the EU and they'll persist after we leave.

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

DONT pull back the curtain...move on nothing to see here

Which ones, specifically Drink?

Because house prices went rocketing between 1997 and 2007. And although it's tapered off to a point, it's still a very expensive island indeed, unreachably so in London and the SE.

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.

A) Nobody said anything about sending anybody home

B) Most people have concerns about the effects that migration has on wages and living standards. The way the immigration system works at the moment most of the groups you mention are actually the 'good' sort of migration that is most favoured: high skilled migrants entering shortage professions. In fact, the migration that causes the most concern is low skilled mass migration which is primarily white European. So your points don't stand.

I don't think for a moment a UK-born Asian person is a migrant and I don't think anybody would. They are the son or daughter or grandson or granddaughter of migrants. Two totally different things!

Anyway, why is it always the low earning foreigners that people want to send home? What about Mark Carney, or the Russian oligarchs for instance, or most of the premier league's footballers?

I'd like nothing better than to see the back of Mark Carney. He is a disaster.

The issues in this country are structurally entrenched. Cutting immigration to zero won't change a lot of the issues being thrown around on this thread. They existed before Poland joined the EU and they'll persist after we leave.

Of course, but lets not pretend that immigration has had absolutely no impact on society and that bringing in more won't create more problems.

Maybe we could ask Japan (one of the richest countries in the world) to take in a few more immigrants? They take in virtually none, very few refugees etc.

Which ones, specifically Drink?

I didn't mention house prices, I mentioned geographical inequality in this country. House prices have not risen uniformally. In principle in our area such a thing exists as an affordable first home, but job prospects for young people are poor not because of immigrant but because we have a further education college which only runs a limited number of courses, there has been little inward investment in the town for decades, and rubbish, expensive public transport means people are limited in where they can commute to to work. This has led to people leaving the town, not coming in.

I'm not pretending that currently there are issues in this country deriving from immigration. What I am saying, though, is that they could be ameliorated through structural change and investment, not a disastrously ill thought out policy to limit immigration to unsustainably low numbers.

*no issues

why is it always the low earning foreigners that people want to send home? Sending home? You're being dramatic, has anyone on this thread said that. Do you disagree that low paid workers with children take out more than they contribute?

Do you think, then, that with better public transport and with a shiny new college offering lots of courses all would be well?

I'm not saying these aren't issues, but I think the issues go deeper than that. Job prospects for those on or just above the minimum wage are poor not necessarily in relation to pay but in relation to working conditions and what people are expected to do for very little. Twenty years ago, one of my mothers cousins worked as a care assistant for the local council, earning a low amount but with regular shifts, anti social hours paid as such and hourly pay. Now, her visits are broken into fifteen minutes at a time, her contract is zero hours, she has to pay for her own uniform and so on. It's things like this that entrench somebody's life meaning it's impossible to buy a home or plan meaningfully for the future.

I also think there has been a conflict between a view of community as a random grouping of people within an area which tends to be an elite view. But many ordinary people see community as almost a mini-nation, tied by culture and shared practices and interpersonal relationships. My husband grew up in a very white working class town on the fringes of Greater Manchester. As things stood he went to school some ten minutes bus journey down the road as it was the only Catholic high school in the area and he has always remarked on how his neighbours were incredulous at this long journey he undertook every day So in other words, when those power see nothing wrong with importing a million people from elsewhere that does cause a sense of threat for those in that area who feel anxious by the arrival of large numbers of people with no shared bonds of family or even language sometimes.

Large arrivals of migrant workers do change the backdrop of an area (look at Peckham) and that isn't always to people's liking. Demonising this view as racist isn't as straightforward as it seems. I think there's been a very gradual shift all over Europe to a further right movement and I'm just not sure there's any one reason for it.

I am assuming given the comments upthread that these posters opposed to economic migration must all still live in the villages in which they were born. They cannot possibly have gone away to university; they must all have gone to their local one and lived at home. They cannot possibly have moved to a different town or part of the country to get a better job. God forbid that they should ever have moved to live in a different PCT or different LEA, to be near good schools for their children. From the anger expressed on here, it follows that any such behaviour would be completely immoral, putting the original populations of such new areas under intolerable strain. No upstanding and honourable person would ever do such a thing, surely?

I am an economic migrant. I grew up in an outlying part of the UK. It is only part of the UK due to annexation hundreds of years ago - a process which was nothing to do with me and for which I can claim no personal credit. It is part of the UK in the same way that France or Germany is part of the EU, and the area where I lived as a child had a very, very strong sense that it was a separate place, with its own identity and culture, albeit that it politically formed part of a wider whole. So historically not so different from the relationship between EU states, then. I moved to the South East at 18, to go to the best university I could get into. I moved to London upon graduating because I could earn more money and have a better quality of life there. Like a large number of MNers, I suspect.

I would genuinely be interested in why it is ok for me to have done that but not somebody from another part of the EU. It can't be about how much I contribute to the UK economy and the figures quoted upthread about how long a person should have to work before they are entitled to access services just don't make any sense; I believe that in the UK, you need to earn something like £38k before you are a net contributor. We wouldn't propose that anyone born in the UK earning under £38k should be denied access to public services because they weren't putting enough into the pot. So why do we feel somehow special? Why do we feel that it's ok for "people like us" to behave this way but not anyone else? Why am I more entitled to use the public services of my new area more than someone who happened to be born somewhere else, across a different but completely arbitrary line over which they also had no control? It can only be based on some sort of gut feeling, because I honestly can't see that there is any logic behind it. It just baffles me. Why are we so great...?

Oh sorry - that wasn't directed specifically at mynotsoperfectlife. Cross post there! :)

Twenty years ago, one of my mothers cousins worked as a care assistant for the local council, earning a low amount but with regular shifts, anti social hours paid as such and hourly pay. Now, her visits are broken into fifteen minutes at a time, her contract is zero hours, she has to pay for her own uniform hmm and so on. It's things like this that entrench somebody's life meaning it's impossible to buy a home or plan meaningfully for the future.

Yes and government policy has the power to reinstate acceptable working conditions, not continue to whittle them away as they have done! Immigrats are used as a scapegoat by the government for their own failings - as a pp has said those conditions suit the tories' ideology. Without immigration they're not going to return to working conditions of the past.

Do you think, then, that with better public transport and with a shiny new college offering lots of courses all would be well?

I'm not sure exactly all would be well but would make a bloody large difference for local people.

Again, immigration has problems. But they are not insurmountable.

Excellent post Hidinginthespareroom

Good post by hidinginthespareroom. Agree with this 100%.

Also, to the person who said that 80% employment meant 20% unemployment and therefore claiming housing benefits etc, no it doesn't. Many of the 20% including myself are SAHPs with a partner who earns enough to support both of us.

Hiding, I think there are a few differences between someone moving within a country (from Liverpool to, say, London) and migrants from one country to another.

The main thing is in terms of resources, which also amounts to space. Yes, arguably, someone moving from the highlands of Scotland (though perhaps not if NS has her way) to London is contributing to those lack of resources and space in their own way, but it still isn't adding an extra body to an entire population.

Plus, people don't usually move in their millions from one part of the UK to another. I think it's really that which tends to be a sticking point. No one tends to notice or care one person moving from Italy to London. A million people might elicit some raised eyebrows.

There's also an argument for assimilation and multiculturalism. In fairness I am aware many/most Eastern Europeans do speak excellent English but nonetheless there is a shifting of communities mentioned above, and especially when overcrowding is thrown into the mix it's a recipe for disaster.

No one is saying that someone wanting to migrate shouldn't. But migration to the U.K. will be limited due to unlimited and unprecedented numbers from 2005 onwards.

There are two problems routinely identified with immigration:

1. too many low earning people who come over often seasonally to do jobs the British born population don't want to do. This will carry on but be authorised differently and people will just have to put up with it, and

2. people who have moved to this country but haven't integrated, don't speak English and live in 'ghettos' with other members of their former nationality. Many of these people were born in this country, even though they stick closely to their original groups.

Integration is not going to happen by limiting other immigration but by a huge multiagency effort and probably a shit load of money. Without that the lack of integration will be a factor and the perception will remain that there is too much immigration no matter how much future immigration is reduced.