To think Europen governments need to respond to immigration?

[Finlesswonder]

So the Netherlands is going to have a far right government.
Sweden has moved to the right.
Finland has shut its borders.
Countries that have traditionally been liberal are hardening and irrespective of the many issues listed its to do with immigration.

Ireland has seen violent protests last night following a series of stabbings.
In the UK we obviously had Brexit.

I think governments need to start responding to voters feelings on immigration as if they don't we will continue to see a general slide to the right in Europe, when actually these countries aren't right wing: it feels like a single issue is distorting the entire political landscape?

ps: would we provide all those additional health care professional places under existing terms, so similar loan packages and last 2 years of a medical degree tuition funded, for instance? How much more would we the taxpayers need to pay to fund that?

Would additonal STEM degree places & apprenticeships be provided under existing terms, too, and how would that be funded? What would be the tax bill to create all those additional training opportunities, keeping in mind we're asking for lower qualifications at start point under these scenarios, so additional training time may be required.

Someone on radio says "more bursaries for nurses" : who wants to pay additional tax to fund that?

@lljkk
Why do we need to grow the economy?

Most people don't want hoards of young men from v different cultures arriving here. Lack of integration is a real problem. However, governments don't listen. We're putting the success of western liberalism at serious risk and indigenous populations should object before it's too late,

‘I'm thinking of kids learning to get on with other cultures etc. ‘

Like in Leicester?

@lljkk

There's a bench with gypsy-looking people always parked on it (colourful, cheerful) in the city centre. I look forward to seeing them.

Why do you look forward to seeing them?

They're not going to be growing the economy if they are sitting around on benches all day. What do they bring to the UK?

Ah, it's the self flagellation, isn't it.

The only issue I have really with Britain is the class obsession somewhat and needed to put pelple in some box. Which doesn't work for immigrants! I grew up what would be WC in UK, lived in WC areas in UK, don't dress in brands etc, speak like my beak grew, drink lager(picky tho), but my fridge and pantry screams MC+++ (which it wouldn't in places DH and I come from. Poor-ish people's food!) 😂 It makes people sometimes bit uncomfortable.
I mean like wtf is MC on fermented cabbage and rice with chicken - kabsa🤷 (not together!).
DH had very much noted difference in how he was treated when he bought more expensive car and jacket.

Come to think of it, there is one more. And related to the topic!
Demands for diversity everywhere. "Our countryside is too British/white!" No shit Sherlock. Countryside in most countries is more native than big cities for obvious reasons - work. If not in all countries. It's not a bad thing, it's normal thing. Yet people moan about it as if it's something bad and unusual and needed to be corrected. How would one achieve diversity in villages somehow mirroring census numbers for demographics in England and Wales?
"So... Kingham needs some immigrants. We need you to move in there. They have about 1k population, few people from non White English groups, and we need couple of Arabs and White other. So we need you to move there, we will move one of the English families elswehere to level it there"
(Kingham was chosen in random, these are not real numbers).

It sounds ridiculous but sometimes this is how some people sound to me when they talk/write moan about this.

I hope it's clear not jumbled. Sorry

What do they bring to the UK?

They’re colourful and cheerful, that’s the contribution apparently.
Seriously though, I noticed that comment too, as it could have been describing our town.
Unlike PP though, I’m feeling less enthusiastic about it.
Fwiw, I quite like some of the international shops, but for every well stocked, welcoming Euroshop or Asian supermarket there are ten barber shops, odd cafes with groups of men hanging around outside blocking the pavement and ‘American candy’ shops selling vapes.
And that’s pretty much it. Most of the other shops have closed down due to lack of customers and high levels of shoplifting.

Yes, the self flagellation is odd.
By all means, be critical about some aspects of your history/ culture. But I’ve seen people on here describe the UK as a ‘total shit hole’ or ‘totally racist’ and I always wonder what perfect countries they’re comparing themselves to?

I agree that society as a whole, and governments as an institute of society, need to be able to discuss the benefits and risks of migration openly, just like with everything else, but it seems groups tend to discuss one side or the other. We can't deal with the issues, if we can't discuss them without people jumping on about large scale economics.

We also need to recognize that there has hundred of changes to the migration system over the last couple of decades, many triumphed as a way to control immigration and ensure we get the right people, but really, a previous Chancellor said it best - the migration system in the UK is a for-profit system both for the government and the "private partners" migrants are required to use. They're never going to reduce it when their companies are making money off of it, and benefit from how it is now. They're going to keep making changes, many of them applying to immigrants who have been here decades who will have to shell out to 'private partners'. I mean, next December we have hundreds of thousands of biometric residency cards expiring, an issue known for years that no matter when applying they had that date, and all we have now is, 'we'll tell you what to do next in early 2024', and I would not be surprised if it's going to be another way for them to make money (nevermind how many lost their ability to work or access public services when BRPs became required and people who had had indefinite leave then had to prove years of residency - and women originally on spousal visas were particularly bad hit with many struggling to be able to provide that proof or have 'appropriate' reference).

There is also the issue that we are going to have to go through the population bulge. Migration can be part of that, but we can't be expecting to import and drain the people from other countries for us. That's...kinda creepy.

Student immigration, for example, bring billions into our economy. Do you want to be poorer without that income? Why do you want to reduce this income stream?

They bring income into the UK, sure, but what is the impact on the local area? Are people at the local level seeing that benefit? Or are they just seeing the downsides and handling the risks? Is enough brought in to outweigh the impacts on people?

Even without migration, there are issues when areas push far more towards students because they are "good for business", but ignore the impact that they don't pay council tax and the businesses they use aren't the same ones that the community that use. When you're in an area where everything that is being cut, the students are accessing at university, you get animosity between groups. You get the 'what is the point' when the only people who seem to benefit are those making money off of students, not the people living alongside them. Just having the additional resources means nothing.

People who oppose immigration won't discuss the economic impact of restricting it.
I oppose the government treating migrants as a 'for profit' measure for themselves, whether it's continuing to move the goalposts to immigrants have to keep being that economic benefit or that local communities don't see that benefit.
I oppose that my daughter, who is an inclusion teaching assistant apprentice, has been dropped into supporting literacy for dozens of children with little to no English, when she's had no training yet and is basically just supporting them use a computer. Neither the schools nor wider community here have seen the economic benefit to help with language and other things needed for community building. Schools and charities are working to get sponsorship deals to cover these desparate needs.
As a migrant, I oppose to being whittled down to my economic benefit. It's dehumanzing and I find putting us down to that only benefits people who make money off of us, not the communities we choose to live in nor does it get anyone to see us as people. Really, it just another way to rate who is a 'good' immigrant - the ones with high paying jobs and students who leave - from the bad immigrants: those who came on spousal visas and have largely worked in their communities unpaid, often legally barred from doing otherwise.

I live in area that's nationally noted to be deprived and have higher immigration - and where the Reform Party has strong control, even our mayor is Reform now. Most people aren't discussing 'economic impacts' because that's how professionals talk to each other (and I am beyond sick of professionals writing things they claim is for the community, when clearly it's just for other professionals), they're discussing difficulties talking with the receptionist at the GP surgery, they're discussing homes being bought by people who live out of country for the use of students and nothing happens when there is an issue, they're discussing how we've lost another community centre that's now been left to rot, but the university is getting council funding to take over another city centre building, it's discussing how Labour hasn't really learned its lesson yet about not insulting people that they want to vote for them and we're going to keep being stuck until they and other similar parties learn that, learn to deal with their in-fighting and get as tactical as the groups who spout anti-immigration rhetoics and focus only on the negatives - they can be awful ideologically, but great at tactics to get those votes and put off those who would have voted against them both from voting and in engaging in the wider community.

The landscape won't shift until those who want to support immigration actually discuss and be open to dealing with this issue, rather than chanting mantras and using cold language like 'economic impact' that make sense on a large-scale level, but means very little to most people who've been told how great it is for decades and seen none of the benefits and been dealing with the risks. We have to move past this idea that we can only discuss the benefits of immigration or we're hating on people fleeing the worst (which most immigrants aren't). We immigrants can discuss the issues with immigration and you born-Brits can do it too. You have to if things are going to improve.

*How many posters agree that it's fine to let universities collapse if they can't have 600k new foreign students each year?

Oh, I'm all for the crumbling Ivory Towers to face they're crumbling rather than continue propping them up with more human beings, many who won't get the promised benefits. It's not like that funding has benefited most of the people who work in them, the entire academic funding method has done little but incentivise the worst practice in the workplace, research, and teaching.

This is happening where I live. Some days I don’t hear English being spoken anywhere. I don’t feel there is much community cohesion any more. It’s more parallel communities each with their own resources and keeping to themselves

I agree mn is especially bad on this

Overall there’s so much handwringing and dicking around tbh

I don’t mind some need for skilled visas but it will fall due to AI

Why we prevaricate over sorting out irregular migration idk but mn again particularly glued to it as a good

It’s more parallel communities each with their own resources and keeping to themselves

That’s exactly what it feels like where I live. Nothing exciting or vibrant about it at all, more cold and isolating.

I grew up abroad and me and my brother weren't allowed to speak English together at school, in fact we got detention for it, the idea being that is was exclusionary to others and would only do us harm.
The school made us foreign kids go to intensive language classes while the other kids did their normal "own language" classes, there were no interpreters.
Our parents also had to go to language classes so they could communicate at a basic level with the teachers, otherwise they just got skipped at parent teacher evenings.

A totally different narrative to Sunak and Braverman?

He wont do it because the only realistic why to stop is to physically turn the boats around in the channel & that wont happen, once here, the vast majority will stay.

This whole saga is due to leaving the EU and having little or no influence on the French/EU.

Australia had a large island grouping to send to and never had a million + migrants trying to or have got into Europe.

And this is exactly where Sweden failed and admitted it. Lessons learned. But as pp said, how do you integrate. Especially those who don't want to

‘Large parts of southern Europe were Muslim until the middle ages - that was what drove the Crusades
There has always been movement of people who are being persecuted e.g. the Jewish diaspora in Roman times’

This is a rather different take on history to the mainstream. The crusades were specifically ‘driven’ by the desire to retake the Holy Land and particularly Jerusalem, which had been conquered by invading Muslim nations. The re -conquest of Spain , the only part of Western Europe occupied by Muslim overlords at that time, was an effort by the indigenous Princes ( or at least, the aristocracy of peoples who ruled that region before the invasion by North African Muslims).

The ‘Jewish diaspora’ had taken place before the final destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans after the rebellion. Jews were very active and influential in Alexandria before this, and had, I believe, special privileges.

You may think that this belongs in Pedants’ Corner. But it is dangerous to present arguments based on misinterpreted or incorrect history ( if you later rely on them…)

I don’t know what his idea will be.

That you can do it without a strong deterrent is something many in the U.K. generally don’t get.

Many still parrot lines on ‘safe routes’ and ‘smash the gangs’ or whatever bollocks. Although it seems to dying down as people get more realistic

But I’ll see what he comes up with if he’s ditching that particular deterrent

And here that would pro be viewed by many as super harsh. There is case law about requirement to speak English only at work (at breaks it should be fine imho) being discrimination.
I worked in very diverse places and most spoke English together. But i worked in one where I was minority (1) and everyone was chatting so I actually missed extra tasks because I had no idea manger verbally assigned them🤷 Apparel he "ha, soz forgot to switch language" 🙄Twat.
Quite confident to say that if he(and others who I know work without English speaking requirement) were in his (their) country he(they) would absolutely demand people to speak the common language - of the country.

When I was managing later I made sure no one was left out. Have a chat on a break but at workplace you speak common language. For inclusion AND safety. Sue me.

It's worrying, the way history is being rewritten to suit someone's narrative.

‘Large parts of southern Europe were Muslim until the middle ages - that was what drove the Crusades

This is such an example.

It's either a rather startling display of ignorance, or else an attempt to misrepresent historical facts.

The issue of English spoken is easily dealt with and that is to require it for a visa.

Likewise accessing any public service. We have set translation as part of our culture but this is not actually a requirement. If the UK wants to mandate speaking English for entry, in the workplace, or as part of employment, it can.

The issue of English spoken is easily dealt with and that is to require it for a visa.
O believe it is for some. How we, what's needed ia heeavilily controlled environment like if you do UK citizenship test....

Not from me but i don't think dealing with trafficking gangs and having more safe routes is bollox as you put it, they have their place.

I just think the deterrent you think will work, ie sending a few already here to a 3rd country is going to work UNLESS you have capacity to send 10s of 1000s, as Australia did.

No one is getting realistic, i ve not yet heard a serious politician say we should turn boats around back to Calais against the French Govts wishes.

681 migrants landed a couple of Sundays ago in Kent, so in ONE winters day, you've filled your Rwanda scheme, this why Cleverly said it was a "Batshit" idea.

Anyone knows what was actually holding the med from the crossings aa we have today?

I think frankly you need to test on physical entry to the UK. I have encountered women in spousal visas who cannot speak a word or certainly not what is claimed.

As for actual citizenship I would change the criteria to be far tougher than it is. It is very easy to become a citizen of the UK.

Do people not get behaviour?

You will not get people paying to end up in Rwanda. It’s not something traffickers can sell.

We’ll never know not least because the public are so ridiculous over anything that isn’t unicorns and rainbows

You mention turning back boats, is that a policy you would vote for?