I really liked my neighbour until she said this

[neighbourhoodwatch]

I've recently moved to a new area and was talking to my neighbour, who I really like.

Somehow the conversation went to GPs and how you can never get appointments and basically have to beg to be seen nowadays.

She was saying how it didn't used for be that way... before...

She then went on to say that it's because of all the immigrants that have come into this country and how our country is too small to hold all these people.

She also talked about the illegals coming in on boats etc and how terrible it is.

I am immigrant. I didn't come on a boat and I have a good job etc. But essentially I came to this country. I've never claimed benefits or anything like that. I'm on a high salary etc and studied here etc etc. So, I'm well established. Essentially whenever people say stuff like that, alarm bells start ringing for me.

Am I seeing it too black and white ? It's just difficult when someone says stuff like this to someone who also came here..... as an immigrant...

Gammon, bigot, privileged, entitled, evil. I am also sure many more will purport to being immigrants to ramp up the drama as well.

The more you got to know her OP the more deeply unpleasant views you'd have uncovered

Am I seeing it too black and white ?

Nope.
It's absolutely black & white - your neighbour is an ignorant racist.

I wonder if she's aware of how many immigrants work for the NHS she's so keen to paint as buckling 'due to immigration'?

However - don't lose any sleep over her. It's not your fault she's nasty & smallminded.
If you want to avoid her in future, let her know you are an immigrant, so won't be taking up her time as obviously she resents you living & working here, contributing to the economy ...

How skilled of her to fall out of her mothers fanny right here, I hate people who believe in boarders or nationalism.

I would point out being born was not a skill, you have not earned anything to be proud of just by the coinciendence of where your parents where located when you popped and you are certainly not more deserving or above someone else born in the 2nd or 3rd world.

What an incredibly toxic post. You can apply your 'logic' about not being skilled to have been born, to anybody then. It is so passive aggressive.

Your neighbour reminds me very much of my elderly neigbour. He ignored my husband, because he was at home all the time, so he thought he's immigrant on benefits. He started talking to him once he found out my husband is self employed working from home, has good education etc. We just laughed it off, because he's elderly man, didn't have easy life (daughter passed away to cancer), but if you were friendly with your neighbour, I'm not surprised you don't want to talk to her.

We're all immigrants more or less ( traced my English family back to France in 1700s) it's such a ridiculous hateful attitude. Ignore her!

Immigrants are net contributors to the national finances, you know? Through working (sometimes in jobs where there are labour shortages) and paying tax as well as spending. The rhetoric is deliberately amplified and whipped up to encourage people to vote for right wing parties.

People are absolutely entitled to their views on immigration

They're not though are they??

@loislovesstewie

Let me give another perspective as an immigrant. Our original countries and societies are not as perfect as Mumsnet think. High skilled people seek to move abroad to have better lives for themselves and their kids. For example a highly skilled, high income friend moved out because he did not want his kids to grow up in extremely polluted Delhi, where average person spend 3 hours in traffic every day, where corruption is so high, that you can't function without it. iSo why should this friend have a sense of duty of service to his country? Why did CEO of Alphabet ( Google) moved to the US rather than starting a technology firm in India, contributing directly to Indian society? He says his father was poor, all the more reason for him to use his talent to do something to help poor in his country, but he chose silicon valley. So why the foreign governments and high skilled people need to worry about brain drain in country of origin.

Op, the government in UK is responsible for many existing problems but even with a perfect governance of the country, a country has limited resources and more people would mean constraint on resources. So your neighbour has some point in what she says. In a nutshell, it's a demand and supply problem. You can't increase the supply ( funds, infrastructure, green space) after a point, so you need to restrict the demand ( demand for the resources like NHS for example).
China had one child policy for years to control its population, but it caused other problems. So what options do UK have to control its population? Suppress birth rate, or restrict immigration to the point it is helpful to the country?

But it is true. I remember not seeing any immigrants in my area until the 1980s. It was nice to see a mixture of cultures and colours. We all wanted to be friends with a new brown girl in our school. However immigrants do push the population up. This has an effect on services like gps. It used to be so easy to get an appointment, but it's not like that now. The government should set up, more gp practices to cope with demand. Instead of letting us blame service users.

You hate people who believe in boarders or nationalism? You don't believe boarders exist? How else are we supposed to define countries? Boarders and Nationalism are two separate things surely. Also while I agree that we do have no choice on where we are born/what country we are born into, I think it's ok to acknowledge the country we grow up in and the culture we live which has inevitably shaped every one of us. That isn't the same as nationalism.

Did you tell her that you are an immigrant? I would not have been able to not say.

This has happened to me many times. I just used to say 'oh dear, my husband is an immigrant' and stop speaking. Usually they backtracked, made excuses. I don't have to justify why he was an asset to this country, and it made them feel uncomfortable as rightly it should!

You are responding to the wrong poster.

I doubt the OP is an immigrant.

The population has gone up best part of 10 million since 2001. It has gone up 3 million since the last census 2011. They have not yet released the ethnicity of this 3 million increase (due Oct 2022 - god know why, presumably because the truth needs hiding or filtering through some PR nonsense). Remember these are only the official numbers too, not the hidden numbers. The white British population has stay roughly the same throughout this time but has gone from being 87% to 80% of the populace from 2001 - 2011. The increases are not us - our birth rate is low.

There is great indication that the country is struggling to provide for this endless craziness. Many people believe greater powers than our impotent puppet governments have designs on the UK, to destabilise and destroy it. Our inability to deal with any tough decisions because of our desperate need for self-flagellation and to be seen as 'not racist' at all costs means we are psychologically incapable of dealing with it. There certainly seems no way to stop what is happening.

Immigration is necessary in small, manageable amounts. The truth must be difficult if you have benefitted from emigrating here but stopping or temporarily halting immigration is just as important to you as a citizen before your country buckles under the strain. To shout 'wacism' the instant these things arise is to absolve oneself of responsibility like many on here. It's easier to cope with than the truth.

Saying that it is hard to keep racism at bay when these things are being discussed - work needs to be done on how to protect the people that are here should any real progress be made about immigration levels.

But don't worry - the whole thing will continue regardless. The country is being destroyed systematically imo. Nothing to do with what any of us think or vote for in the first place.

Some people are just thick and have eaten up the bullshit from the Tories and the media about immigrants. We would be absolutely screwed without them.

@UWhatNow 👏👏👏

@mam0918 how crass

YANBU. Keep it polite if you can but you’re not destined to be friends.

Ah, the accusation of being thick, when one has alternative views to your own. Whereas your own post is positively littered in intellectual reasoning.

Well, it depends how she says it. If you sense that she's genuinely xenophobic and hate-filled, then maybe keep your distance. But it's perfectly reasonable to worry about mass immigration. This IS a small country. And it IS crowded.

Immigration is a mixed bag. It isn't automatically a good thing. It really depends who you let in. If you let in an Indian neurosurgeon, or a Russian physics professor, they will benefit your country. A violent Albanian pimp, however, or a Nigerian drug dealer, will make your society worse. It's as simple as 1+1.

I just wish people would talk sensibly about this issue. I'm sick of hearing stupid people complain about "all these immigrants". But I'm also sick of smug, sanctimonious lefties describing every economic migrant as a refugee. Refugees tend to be women, children and old people. All I ever see on the news, however, are boatloads of fit young men. If they really are "fleeing war and persecution," as the media keeps telling us, where are their elderly parents and their children and their wives? Presumably they left them to face the "war and persecution" on their own.

An illegal immigrant isn't a hero. He has broken the law. It's the equivalent of me kicking in my neighbour's front door, laying on his sofa, and saying, "your detached house is much nicer than my flat. I'm going to live here now."

You are the perfect person to help educate her

Beautiful3 · Today 10:06
But it is true. I remember not seeing any immigrants in my area until the 1980s. It was nice to see a mixture of cultures and colours. We all wanted to be friends with a new brown girl in our school. However immigrants do push the population up. This has an effect on services like gps. It used to be so easy to get an appointment, but it's not like that now. The government should set up, more gp practices to cope with demand. Instead of letting us blame service users“

half of the GPS at our group practice are immigrants and a good two thirds of the consultants at our regional hospital. Thank goodness they decided to come to live here.