To think immigration will always mean that we have high levels of inequality?

[Bumpitybumper]

Just looking at the latest immigration statistics and it seems like nearly a million people have come to the UK over the past year. Most are from countries that are poorer than the UK and many people have come with very little or nothing in terms of financial resources and are unable to speak English. I am also constantly reading articles and posts from people on MN about how inequality should be lowered or completely eradicated in the UK. These articles and posts always seem to skirt over immigration and never really address the obvious fact that it is going to take an immigrant a long time (sometimes several generations) to be in the same position as someone that has lived in the UK for many decades.

AIBU to assume that inequality and immigration are strongly linked and no matter what government initiatives are put in place then it is unrealistic to expect inequality to reduce when we have such huge levels of immigration? Even if you tackle inequality for the people that are currently here then another million people could come next year that would hugely impact the statistics.

I see you posted while I was writing, OP.

I never ever said immigration was all people taking low paying jobs. My point is that migrants are disproportionately more likely to be taking this type of work and therefore more likely to appear in statistics around poverty, deprivation and therefore also driving inequality statistics. These calculations tend to ignore the middle and focus on the extremes. Arguing that migrants can also be extremely well paid doesn't negate this don't isn't relevant.

Again, immigration levels are forecast to go down so if that is the case, why the worry?

OP, is it that you don’t want more lowly paid immigrant care workers over here? I mean, their numbers have gone down now too, because they cannot bring their families anymore due to a change in immigration rules. Student visas numbers have also declined because they can’t bring families either, so much so that UK universities are in financial trouble because of it.

As far as care workers are concerned, they have to work for 5 years on their visa apart from their families to get citizenship and bring family over. Care workers visas are some of the few that don’t have stringent income requirements but wow, apart from your family for 5 years? There are fewer numbers willing to do that. Why do you think the NHS has so many vacancies?

Apart from care worker visas, on spousal visas, the income requirement to bring a partner from another country have increased a lot. You have to make £29000 a year to bring a partner from another country over, and the financial need rises by £3,800 for the first child and by £2,400 for each additional kid. You have to have some means. And the visa fees for any immigration process apart from war refugees are also high.

There are refugees that don’t have a lot economically of course, but most immigration isn’t like that.

My point is that migrants are disproportionately more likely to be taking this type of work and therefore more likely to appear in statistics around poverty, deprivation and therefore also driving inequality statistics.

You keep saying this, but it's not true. The report you cited says
"Taken as a whole, the occupational distribution of migrant workers did not differ much from that of UK-born workers in 2022". There is nothing disproportionate about it. You cannot ignore highly paid, highly-skilled migrants working in the same proportions as UK-born workers, when you are trying to make the point that they are driving poverty statistics!

Is "equality" a thing we all believe in now?

I feel it's a sort of made up fictional realm, yet people talk as if it is a type of achievable reality.

First and foremost we would have to agree on what we think are objectively "better" ways to live, and while there may very well be a majority who believe the accumulation of wealth and power would be up at the top, I'm sure there would be others who would disagree.

I suppose we could classify equality as having an equal possibility of achieving our own person goals in life, but seeing as human society has evolved to a stage where we would not physically survive but for the labor of others, are we to believe that those doing the hardest and most physically demanding and dangerous jobs really want to be doing so forever more?

Perhaps it is damaging to our own mental wellbeing to contemplate the struggles some humans go through to survive and so we talk about "equality" in an abstract fashion, knowing fully well that it's not realistic.

Could we install equality in a small isolated community? Possibly, if children were raised together and jobs were rotated throughout life. Would it survive the years when those who lack the intelligence to lead and plan were on rota to be in charge? Possibly not.

At a factual level you're right though, as other have said, it's a mixed picture.

The figures show that inequality among immigrants is greater than inequality among people born here. Therefore immigration will tend to raise inequality.

Most are from countries that are poorer than the UK

ime, most immigrants come from relatively wealthy and even very wealthy families in their home country. Look at people like Badenbach, Sunak, Braverman. They came from a lot of money & high status families. All the foreign students that come to UK: their families can afford the very high tuition fees to come here; the student families are much better off than UK average family. So regardless of whether the country itself is poorer, most the countries will be poorer if UK is 28th in world for gdp per capita, the actual family origins are probably much wealthier than Uk average.

Don't we all know people who were qualified teachers in Poland or engineers medical doctors in Egypt and end up working as care workers & technicians in UK ?

Even refugees often come to UK by airplane, from well heeled families.

What makes you think many don’t speak English? Speaking English as their second language is one of the main reasons people choose to come here. A study by Oxford university reported that 90% of migrants spoke English well and both migrants and the indigenous population believed it was important to integration. Stop reading the daily Mail for god sake.
Rising inequality is caused by government policy and that’s it.
migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/english-language-use-and-proficiency-of-migrants-in-the-uk/

This is bonkers op. You've been shown research - long running and recent research - that concludes that immigration does not affect inequality yet here you are determined that it is all wrong and you are right.

I know this is anecdotal but I teach and children moving to our area/school from other countries are generally hard-working, smart and driven. Their parents uprooted their entire lives to move here and are determined to make a success of it. They value education and are more respectful of teachers than many white British families I encounter. After 3-4 years in school the children are indistinguishable from children who were born here. I hate this rhetoric, based on nothing of substance.

University students make up nearly half of the Net figure - yet Uni fees for people coming from abroad are extremely expensive! I am covered by the Brexit withdrawal agreement but we didn't encourage dd to go back to UK for Uni, nor for her planned Masters because of the huge tuition cost. She pays 850 euros a year vs £9k. How are these people fostering inequality? A lot will go home after their studies after paying rent and spending money for several years. Some will stay and presumably will have to jump through some hoops to do so.