Why is there so much more anti immigration sentiment NOW?

[GreyWasp]

Half my family are Indian and came over in the 50s. My British Indian dad (born here) said he has always been very lucky to have not experienced much hate and discrimination. He has a wide friendship network of people from all backgrounds. I’m not saying racism doesn’t exist. Not at all, just that the environments my dad was placed in outright racism was minimal. And he felt pretty much like a normal British lad going to school, uni, clubs, bars etc. My white grandparents had their concerns in the 90s when my parents married mostly in regards to potential bullying any future grandchildren would experience but really they were fine with their marrying. I have genuinely never had one negative experience (granted I have been in somewhat privileged situations in middle class areas in the South plus am white passing but do look ambiguous when tanned).

In recent years I have noticed a shift (for the worse) in terms of negative sentiment towards immigrants/poc. For me, it’s the worst it’s ever been. I certainly did not feel it 10/15 years ago. I see SO many racist comments on social media. Was not the case previously.

Im just interested in having a discussion why this could possibly be the case? People are definitely more woke now than they have ever been.

Is it the social media sites themselves? Less moderation? More political influencers?
More media attention?
People looking for an excuse to blame the economic decline (pandemic, brexit, col etc)?

Just curious what people’s thoughts are?

Look what they're getting that you're not.
A tale as old as time.. divide and conquer.
The modern one they're staying in hotels .. wonder who got those juicy contracts?and you can be assured it's not like any hotel that any of us have stayed in.
Substandard accommodation and cheapest of cheap food=max profit.

I'm not sure whether this post was aimed at me, but...the associated right wing press has always banged the drum. They were certainly doing that 50 years ago.

Well, given the current trajectory any diversity and inclusion is absolutely for the chop at the next elections. It will all be about meritocracy (cf white blokes). I think people are a little deluded if they it will be all okay for the contribution you make. That would exclude a lot of people who are complaining in the first place.

I watch this channel called evolve with Lubna and she has several Indian speakers on. It’s mostly in Hindi/urdu but she has another English speaking one also. Anyway, my point is that so many of these speakers support what Trump is doing in America in terms of controlling immigration. There is such a vast difference between the discourse on main stream media in England versus India.

@Miaw111 - it is different. I grew up with overt racism but mainstream parties knew it was in their interests to not indulge it. Enoch Powell got sacked.

These days, we have political figures who have strong incentives towards a lack of racial harmony, and a lot of poor and deprived people. This is explosive stuff.

I've not come across that tbh, but denying it may be an issue.

Migration HAS hit historic highs in the past few years - net migration hit 764,000 in 2023 and there's no particular reason to think it will go down. Those kind of migration levels coupled with a creaking infrastructure, a desperate shortage of affordable housing and a resident population who feel - and mostly are - poorer than they used to be is a recipe for anti-immigration sentiment. It just is. People will say that isn't fair, but reality never is. Also I think some of the taboos around migration in public discourse - for example the pressure to pretend that all cultures are equally wonderful - are breaking down. I'm pretty OK with saying that the dominant culture regarding women in countries like Afghanistan & Pakistan is pretty terrible & not something anyone needs in the UK, while also accepting that not all Afghan or Pakistani men necessarily have those values.

Also I think people see discomfort with higher migration levels as some kind of 'white people' thing, but right now South Africa is cracking down on migrants from its poorer neighbours, Japan remains pretty resistant to large scale migration and Iran is busily deporting hundreds of thousands of Afghans. There's also been considerable resentment towards Venezuelan migrants in South America. I'm not saying any of this is necessarily fair or humane, but its a global phenomenon.

We've managed to have universities a long time before the skyrocketing immigration of the last couple of years.

The student route is a well worn route to circumventing the usual visa. I'm sure I will be told I'm "lying" but I've been told myself from the horses mouth by a "student" that there was absolutely no need for the study - they were very well educated in their home country but it's a route in for their family of 5.

You also need to factor in the racism and homophobia that immigrants can bring when they come from intolerant countries. Again I have sat and listened to non-white people slag off other non-white people of different religions and people not from the UK share their intolerant views of gay people to the point I said to them they will have to be careful what they say at work as they will get themselves in trouble.

Some people coming here not sharing British views of tolerance and live and let live is part of the problem.

People coming to work in shortage occupations is just a giant pyramid scheme as they and their kids also need child care, teachers, housing, doctors, dentists etc. You get one worker and need one or two more.

This, really. DH (not white, Muslim, highly skilled immigrant and NHS consultant) is very much opposed to further unskilled immigration and has opinions on certain (generally less-integrated) communities-religionists that might even be considered Islamophobic on here.

It’s much more nuanced than it used to be. My 8 year old mixed race DS - also disabled - has been called “P*ki” in school. (Which is too hilarious to get upset over, since none of my in-laws have even visited Pakistan and my DS was just confused). Personally, I think the left categorizing everyone who expressed any unease about integration or resources as “racist” has made actual racism more socially acceptable, on the grounds that it failed to distinguish the offensive from the mainstream.

Post edited by Mumsnet HQ to disguise a racist term that was not used with the intention of offence but which we still thought was best redacted

My mother remembered racism in London in the 60s and, although I haven't experienced racism, xenophobia was blatant in the 90s and has got worse. I think Brexit was the tipping point for a certain type of person to feel they'd been given permission to air their unacceptable views out loud. (For example, shortly after the vote, more than one person said to my mother she should "go home" [to an EU country] now.) The hostile migrant policy in place before that certainly didn't help, as it made systemic racism and xenophia acceptable.

Yes. Anti-immigrant sentiment isn't universal. I live in a very MC 'leafy' suburb outside a southern city. The catchment secondary is the best performing in the county. There are many south Asian and Chinese families on my estate, all here to take advantage of the school. Many of the parents are doctors, radiographers, pharmacists, engineers etc.

Of those I know well enough to speak to about it, few tell of encountering racism.

It is largely, I think, to do with outward integration.

However, close to our city centre is an area which is overwhelmingly blue-collar, poor and Muslim. We stopped sending our healthcare students who didn't have a car to the training hospital there because they were getting hissed at and spat by the local men as they walked to the railway station.

I think social class has a lot to do with it, too.

A good friend and former teacher of mine arrived here from Ethiopia in the 60's, he laments the slide back towards racism, which he puts squarely down to self inflicted division.

As he puts it, to paraphrase, "I spend 30 years looking to be viewed as an individual, as a man, judged for who I am, and then along came some do gooders saying Black Lives Matter, and suddenly I am no longer a man, an individual, but back as part of a minority"

I feel he has a point, its all about tribal sub division now, gay, trans, black, ND, NT, etc etc, everyone wants to identify with a tribe, and guess what tribes have always engaged in warfare.

I think some of it is down to austerity and lack of investment in all public services

Its also down to the Tories and Farage convincing people it’s immigrants that make them poorer and life harder, not that the super rich are getting offensively rich on the backs of working people and don’t want to pay taxes.

But a lot down to social media too

The grooming gangs, bombings, two tier kier, “illegal” immigrants, rioting Asian men with knives are constantly brought up on SM and the comments and anti Muslim sentiment is very worrying.

i don’t agree with it at all but sometimes go down rabbit holes on SM to try to understand the “other side”. it is very scary - so many people now think we need our own Trump to presumably take very tough action

We are not having enough children to be able to cope with no immigration. But we might have to stop immigration and as a country take the poverty hit, otherwise I don’t know what will happen.

It is a mass generalisation (and incorrect), but these are the Daily mail readers who are spouting off the loudest on social media, frothing up other ignorant people. We don't have enough surgeons, nurses or doctors here because they've had enough of the NHS conditions. Many of my doctor friends have gone to Australia, where the salary and work/life balance is much better apparently. Nursing has a very high attrition rate, my SIL was a nurse and nearly left in her first year post graduation as she was put in front line A&E with very little supervision, and it scared the life out of her. Too much risk and responsibility for not enough remuneration. Care homes, well, no explanation needed there really.

Its also down to the Tories and Farage convincing people it’s immigrants that make them poorer and life harder, not that the super rich are getting offensively rich on the backs of working people and don’t want to pay taxes

This is exactly it, and ironically the British working class have much more in common with the "illegals" (asylum seekers) than they do with those at the top, but the DM serves to keep the anger/rage/panic there to obscure this.

The scale of recent immigration, the cost of living (notably housing), poor public services and rise of social media is a perfect recipe for resentment.

The scale of immigration over the last 4 years has been unprecedented. I believe over 3 million net immigrants in 4 years! When even a Labour PM says we have lost control, you have to sit up and listen.

To put into context the scale of immigration, I read more Indians came to UK in the last 4 years than the preceding 15 years. More people from Nigeria came to UK in last 4 years than the preceding 20 years.

As an immigrant myself, I feel British are generally a tolerant people, but they just can't cope with the level of immigration they have experienced in the last 4 years let alone last 20 years.

Most of the recent immigration was driven by low wage vacancies (mainly in social care) along with their dependents. Furthermore, a significant uptick in refugees (notably Ukraine) and illegal immigrants from France (predominantly men from countries with poor track record on women's rights) gives the feeling of unfairness in the system.

This level of immigration from predominantly developing countries working in low wage sectors has put significant pressure on existing wages as well as access to housing and public services.

Because of the scale of immigration over the last 20 years, there is less pressure for new arrivals to integrate. This puts pressure on social cohesion especially between some communities. There is a feeling this country has given up on hard won battles for women's rights, free speech and the removal of religious ideology in driving public policy.

Social media then feeds on the emotional aspects of the debate (eg. Unfairness of allocation of social housing or illegal immigrants living in hotels or anger over the grooming gangs) and so certain influencers gain a lot more attention than would have been possible under the old terrestrial TV model. Social media then feeds back into wider society and so resentment and mistrust grows.

OP - don't know if I answered your question, but think the issues facing UK are no different to many developed countries. I have read similar issues in Canada and Australia. The West is facing an ageing population, massive debt, large scale immigration, high living costs (notably housing), poor public services and lower living standards. There is a general depressed state of affairs in The West, so think people are angrier, poorer and less trusting of each other.

@mumminators Re the NHS, the massive black hole in X-ray staffing due to: the removal of the bursary; endless red-top bad-mouthing of the NHS before Covid, then Brexit has caused huge recruitment from the developing world.

I left my frontline NHS job (very white, very middle class Hampshire) last year because my team went from 100% western-trained 6 years ago to 100% third and developing world 'trained' staff (MRI radiographers who had never seen a working MRI scanner..). It had become dangerous, stressful, poor communication ability, unsafe work practices driving down safety standards for everyone, racist (the Nigerian boys bullying the Filipina girls, the Indian Christians ostracising the Muslims, untackled by management for fear of being labelled racist themselves).

Between the 20 of them, on their base salary of £37k, they'd brought over 60 dependents, mainly younger kids.

Repeat this across the country. These are people's experiences of sudden unintegrated immigration, and I'm talking B6 health-care professionals, here.

It was the Tories that allowed in nearly 1 million people (net) in one year?

I will never understand the logic of making it harder and prohibitively expensive for British people to train as nurses. The practice of importing nursing staff who have been trained by poorer countries while simultaneously cutting off the potential social mobility of a career in nursing here is wrong in so many ways.

I can only imagine it's also negative for the countries who have their trained staff leave to move to the UK

@EsmaCannonball I could tell you for free that, as a radiographer, I could have trained probably half of our western, English speaking HCAs (with at least GCSEs, a bit of maturity and common sense) to be a safe, routine radiographer to a higher standard than a worryingly large number of my 'international' colleagues.

We'd begun to rely on the HCAs to sidle over to inform us they were seeing unsafe practice happening on another scanner so we, the dwindling number of western trained staff, could swiftly step in an avert disaster.

We should not be demanding 8 GCSEs, 3 A levels and a B.Sc from our own young people when we are employing sub-Saharans as radiographers who cannot identify the eyeballs on a head CT scan.

And, on another raised topic, my established, integrated 'non-indigenous' colleagues share our views on immigration over the past 4-odd years.

I agree. When people feel frightened or vulnerable it's dog eat dog, e.g who is causing this problem for us.

I think reading SM will make anyone in any vulnerable group feel really shit.

There's no shortage of racist comments and general cruelty to various groups including disabled kids or anyone who looks different. It feels as if people are becoming more and more detached because of SM and their capacity to be really cruel and voice that is in our face more than it ever was.

Just reading YouTube commentary for example makes me regularly ask myself ' is this how people predominantly think '. You have so many people creation their own platforms also on YouTube or other SM and ' reporting ' on things. You can see so many of these people aren't always speaking complete sense but they will have huge audiences.

I think there’s many reasons. We are facing huge amounts of immigration. Since 2018, the number of people arriving on boats has equalled the population on York. People are struggling with housing, with accessing healthcare. Schools are overstretched.

People can see resources becoming scarcer. People are being faced with alternative cultures being embraced whilst their own culture is criticised and hidden. Anything people have tried to raise and concerns they have been shut down. People don’t like being told to shut up, it tends to make them should louder.

Many people are seeing their lives very much affected by the failed experiment of multiculturalism.

There’s a distinct group of people who are refusing to look at integration and it’s making people very protective over their culture and country.

Social media - especially X & Elon Musk stirring things.

Tony Blair increasing immigration from Eastern Europe closely followed by summer of 2015 when Germany & Sweden invited people from further afield. They have accepted lots but more have made their way here since that summer.

In the 50s 60s 70s immigrants were initially invited here to work & then in the 80s 90s only those who applied could get a visa. Currently people are arriving by boat having destroyed their papers. We have no clue who they are. So how do we go about keeping track of crimes, voting etc

It seems to be lots of single men in their 20s coming over & they get housed in hotels currently. I think people are more sympathetic to older people, women, families. So Ukrainians weren't seen as a bad idea. People also don't want large groups of men hanging around all day & night.

Lack of NHS GP appointments & dentists. Then people discover there is a GP based at the hotel - meanwhile they can't get an appointment. It annoys people when they find out.

I think that it is currently an anti-Islam sentiment as there are lots of males coming from Islamic countries. They don't agree with women dressing in the way many British girls like to dress & so there's a clash of cultures. This isn't the case with black, Hindu, Sikh males. There's a feeling that they don't want to adapt our ways.

Some traditionally working class areas have had a big influx of immigrants. So your families who go to the pub, footie etc are now living alongside families who don't take part in those types of activities. Nor do the kids join in with footie, cubs, class parties, sleepovers etc so people feel a bit threatened by this. They are accused of being racist for wanting to live alongside people who are like them. I imagine the people up top (like Tony Blair) haven't been expected to adapt to new neighbours. So it's one of those NIMBY situations.

I agree with the poster who said that being concerned about undocumented immigrants arriving continuously isn't the same as being racist. However the two are hard to separate. The increase in people arriving is increasing resentment & people who would usually not be racist are getting fed up.

National Front/BNP used to be seen as really far right. Now Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson & co are seen as the only hope as government don't seem to have a handle on the problem.

Yes this is a good example of "contribution" becomes irrelevant.

I don't think racism in the UK will become so evolved as to say "but you are a nice professional so no racism for you". What happens is that anti migration sentiment extends to people whose face does not fit and a majority feel poor.

On the issue of dependents, you could probably address it by making professionals pay to use the education system; despite the moaning the UK has very good schools. They could easily be better funded by additional visa fees.