THe upper middle class favour immigration

[MeouwCat]

The upper middle class favour immigration because the alternative would be paying locals more and that would men them paying higher taxes to support the wage demands by care workers/Nurses/council workers etc.

Tax rates are determined by income or wealth not class.

How much would that cost? Can you point to a nationalised model that works?

Also you have to realise that incompetent people exist in every society. They don't become immigrants though. Immigrants are always going to be more hardworking and aspirational than average.

Did I really read that - it is an outrageous comment. So indigenous people are less hardworking and aspirational. And your proof for this is ?

The upper middle class have yet to feel the effects of immigration. Don't worry once they do, the whole world will change.

There’s so much twaddle on this thread about lazy Brits, too good to work as carers, apparently we didn’t even build our own country!

The truth is British born have the same employment rates, both full time and part time, as immigrants. 81% of care workers are British, similar to our number in the population (83%).

And Britain wasn’t built in the last 30 years, which is the only period we have had mass immigration. Our infrastructure has been built over several centuries, during which time we had very small numbers of immigrants relative to the native population. Even the Windrush generation, which might be seen as our first mass immigration, the numbers were about 0.1% of the population a year. Now we have immigration of 2% of the population a year.

Immigration at this level benefits business owners, who lobby the government hard. It benefits the government, because it increases the GDP, (although the GDP per capita is currently going down). The wealthy can buy their way out of it’s effects.

For many people though, it just means having to share scarce resources amongst ever more people.

When it comes to care workers, we could have chosen to improve the pay and conditions. I think paying care workers a few more pounds an hour would have been better value than what we did do. Which was to import (with the resultant fraud and exploitation), a 100,000 care workers, who came with 120,000 dependents.

But you're not answering the questions people are asking you. Who can afford £52k in nursery fees? Plus higher prices for social care for their parents. Women (mostly) will stop working leading to shortages in the job market. Who will fill them? Who will pay to train all these people as women work in all sectors of the economy. Those women were paying tax too. The economy will be in major difficulty.

I dont think you've told us the numbers in your fantasy economy. At what income level are you considering someone is 'upper middle class' (putting aside that class does not = income)? How many of them are there? What rate of tax are you proposing & how much income will it raise? And why are you putting the burden on the middle class. You've told us you are upper class but you havent told us how they are going to contribute.

Of course, increase in the supply of labour pushes down the price of it in a non unionised economy which benefits the rich, business owners who pay out salaries. Those who depend on earning a salary are worse off. Likewise increase in demand for housing without an equivalent increase in supply pushes the price up. Those paying a mortgage or rent are worse off, the rich have assets which are worth more, and they can charge more rent. Increase in population benefits the rich at the expense of everyone else, be that from natural increase or immigration. That's why Elon Musk wants people to have more children.

So, there is a shortage,and wages should rise, but they aren't. I'm not saying it's all of it, but it's obviously a factor in suppressing wages.

It’s interesting to watch the proponents of mass immigration engaging in intellectual contortionism.

Initially it was all about the soundbite that it’s good for economic growth. Now that the economic growth argument doesn’t stand and immigration is known to be net drain on the people already here, watch them trying fuming ways to justify their stance, which they only really hold either because they think it makes the look virtuous (the new moral status symbol) or because they are economically illiterate. Usually it’s both.

Immigration is making everyone already here poorer. Because immigrants are not net contributors. And no, the ‘what is about contributing in other ways’ argument is total garbage since you can’t eat ‘contributing in other ways’ A country cannot keep borrowing, printing and taxing to pay for people who are not productive enough to be self sufficient. If you cannot see beyond the ‘oi racist’ trope and acknowledge the cold hard numbers, then you are not virtuous, just stupid.

Immigration in this country is a Ponzi scheme. Importing low skilled, low wage labour to have those already here paying for them. Then importing even more low skilled and low wage labour to care for them when they get old. The cycle continues until the UK economy is basically a third world country. Which it’s well on the way to being.

wealthy people do benefit from immigration, a lot of immigrants are poorly paid and poorly treated, and people are making money out of this. All jobs should be paid a liveable wage.

"so we'll import some poor bugger in who'll work for peanuts and be grateful?" : Jesus, it's like the Brexit line "but who'll serve me my sandwich in Pret?!" All over again!

We also have an aging population in this country. Every year more people retire out of the workforce than age into it. Who is going to do all those jobs and who is going to fund the taxes to pay for all elder care?

So how would you staff the care homes, adult social care and factories of the UK without immigration?

My neighbour is house bound, she is cared for by various carers from India, bought here because UK citizens can't/won't do care work, who cares for her in your opinion?

& if wages are increased to encourage UK workers to do these roles, who pays for that? more taxes or more austerity?

What would you like to see....

Excellent post.

I’m interested in your figures about care staff. Do you have the breakdown of where they’re working etc?

My observation (and obviously this isn’t scientific) is that in care homes there are more international carers and nursing staff, in the NHS there are more UK non-registered clinical staff but qualified nurses (working in the NHS) more are UK citizens, doctors probably more 50/50 and other registered clinical staff are more weighted towards UK.

I’m just interested to know if that’s reflected in your figures because the term care staff is so broad.

I know that many of the care homes that I know of (and a good few trusts) couldn’t run without international recruits. I’ve known the most amazing carers who will sit gently with people with dementia while they’re confused and abusive, they will treat them with affection and respect - that’s the stuff that you can’t fake for 50k a year. If you’ll only do it for that amount of money, it’s not genuine. Some of the people who have made the most significant difference to the lives of my kids and my family going through cancer treatment have been international staff and I will be forever grateful for that.

Upper middle more likely to benefit from cheap labour. They don't care that migrants who come here to work are often living in terrible conditions and are depriving their home countries of their skills, wrenched away from their families and communities.

Working classes both migrant and 'native' are more likely to be in competition for scarce resources in health, education, housing. Upper middle don't see this because they have access to private versions of these resources and/or win the postcode lottery.

I see it through a Marxist lens. A globalised workforce means increased exploitation of the global working classes as they are forced around the world in search of wages that are driven forever downwards. Working classes that are too vulnerable or resource-deprived to travel/migrate are whipped up to false hatred to the migrants when actually the problem is the exploitation of the boureouis.

instead of hating each other the global working class should turn its ire on the bourgeouisie and demand proper training, properly waged dignified jobs and sufficient resources not just to survive but to thrive. This is difficult to achieve as Bourgeouisie control of the media means that we are encouraged to hate each other and to focus on short term hypercapitalist consumerism rather than our long term benefit.

When it comes to care workers, we could have chosen to improve the pay and conditions. I think paying care workers a few more pounds an hour would have been better value than what we did do. Which was to import (with the resultant fraud and exploitation), a 100,000 care workers, who came with 120,000 dependents

Paying more might have made a small difference but the fact is, UK citizens don't want to do care work, no matter the salary.

There is also the "how" .... Care is privatised, you cannot force businesses to pay more, what about differentials? a "few more pounds an hour" means a carer earning the same as a degree educated band 5 nurse or physio or radiographer.

Prior to Brexit, EU citizens came here, many left, so we now get carers from SE Asia etc, as you say, they've come with family, they will never return.

So far no one, despite 10 pages, no one can come up with an alternative.

It strikes me (not just with this thread but others too), that there are a lot of mental gymnastics to project anger at people in what seems like a pretty pointless way.

‘I’m unhappy about immigration but it’s not our fault that we won’t do the jobs that I don’t want anyone else doing, it’s because it doesn’t pay enough.’

On one that got deleted yesterday ‘I’m angry because Keir Starmer isn’t doing enough about what happened in Southport. He’s not even shown his face’ - well he did - ‘yeah but it’s just a photo opportunity’ - what should he be doing? - ‘I’m not prime minister how should I know?’ - Well he probably is doing stuff but it might not be in the glare of the media’ - yeah but he should be doing something’.

There are lots of other examples but i expect that essentially people feel a bit helpless and angry and want someone to blame. I do get that but I also think that society / community / life in general might be a bit better if we focussed on the bits that we can do something about rather than focussing on other people.

There are almost 6 million working age people not in work an/or on benefits. While we import people and pay out of pocket for them to work. So we are paying twice. The out of work need to be in work. Cue the outrage and excuses about how they just can’t work. Sure they can’t. When they are being paid not to work and mass migration is facilitating them to not work, or course they won’t work.

And automation. The UK has some of feb lowest productivity in the G7. That because low skilled mass migration does not incentivize employers to invest in automation when you can get cheap labour from overseas instead of investing in automation for those jobs to be done. Now cue the cries of ‘oh you can’t automate care jobs’. But you can automate almost all non front line jobs in every sector to have the available labour go into care sector.

Cue more excuses. There is no reason not to do any of this. Expect for the corrupt governments not being able to then take backhanders from those who bribes them (sorry donors) and gullible ‘progressives’ who would lose their status symbol of championing mass migration. Instead every person in the country already continues to get poorer as wages and national income is diluted. Because it’s kind, innit?

@ShiteRider

We wouldn’t expect anyone else to do a difficult job for the love of it, and minimum wage. I’ve known quite a few care workers in my time, and they’ve all liked the job. But it can be very hard physically and emotionally.

Caring for people with dementia can result in some pretty violent and disgusting situations for the carer to deal with. Yes it can be a very rewarding job, but we obviously need to pay more so people will put up with the very difficult bits.

If we want to reduce migration, which the majority of people do, we have to find ways of recruiting British staff.

My figures come from The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, which seems to be a factual and unbiased source of information. As far as I can remember, the NHS is staffed by roughly 81/19 percent British/Immigrant, same as makes up the population. You can probably find how that is broken down by job on there.

Lets look at some of these 6m you suggest we get into work:

I ve worked with some of the long term unemployed, in many ways, they are unemployable, MH, dependencies, extremely low education, no transferable skills ie cannot drive/no car, so unable to work in coummunity social care.

Many would need a great deal of support to get into sustainable employment.

People who have taken early retirement, don't need to work, are you suggesting we force them too?

Long term sick... well good luck solving the crisis in the NHS and even if someone is given that new knee or hip, the work they might be able to do afterwards will be limited, many are over weight, older & may well have caring responsibilities, like looking after their grandkids so their own children can work.

SAHM's and Students make up the rest of your notional 6m, they are already busy & at best could only work very limited hours.

Simplistic solutions rarely work.

What's always shafted the working class is its own stupidity.

HTH.

(Working class South Londoner here).

Breakdown of 6 million attached. Lazy carers included 🙄

Your point about benefits is the bottom line really. In my nursery, employees (both British and non British) with children will not work for more than 16 hours a week. Their salaries are topped up by generous benefits that allow them to live reasonably well. Certainly none appear to be struggling - they all have plenty of holidays, which I can’t afford.

I think people on benefits who don’t have children have a harder time of it. But there isn’t much incentive for the ones that do to take lower paid jobs, unless it is to work the minimum number of hours required to keep the DWP happy.

I think this post bears repeating.

We have the lessons of history before us but clung onto parochial mob mentality. Rampant consumerism and capitalism in its current bastardised form are the issue here.

Ordinary people regardless of colour, creed, religion, whatever are the pawns of those in power.

There are enough resources to go round but they are hoarded and used as leverage to keep us in our place. Humanity and the planet are sacrificed on the altars of greed and power.

All of the potentially beneficial technological progress we have made, and yet our social problems get worse not better. One minute we're told there are too many humans, the next the falling birth rates are an issue - but only "the right sort" of people should be "allowed" to "breed".

People talk about the hard pragmatic decisions of economics and treat human suffering as acceptable collateral damage associated as long as they manage to avoid the consequences themselves and cling to the false hope that they can become part of the elite if they just follow the rules and ape our "betters", a good number of whom are that simply by accident of birth or who have got there through psychopathic relentlessness.

Progress at any cost is not Progress.