We cannot continue taking on immigrants indefinitely

[MobilityCat]

I'll probably be shot down for saying this but Immigration should be strictly controlled or we'll all become significantly disadvantaged. While international law doesn't require asylum seekers to stay in the first safe country they reach, some governments argue they should. There is a belief that the UK has a fairer asylum process, more legal protections, and better opportunities for work and education compared to other countries. While the reality may be different, word of mouth and social media often spread the idea that the UK is a good place to seek asylum. Our reputation as a desirable asylum destination is straining social services, housing, and the asylum system. The NHS and schools face increased pressure, housing shortages worsen, and asylum backlogs lead to long waits and high costs. Public frustration is growing, fueling political divisions. The system is unsustainable due to financial burdens, fairness concerns, and security risks.

Are you aware that immigrants bring a net benefit to the UK?

how is Japan coping with an elderly population and no immigration?

we don’t HAVE to do anything.

The idea we should just keep bombarding the country with more humans is so very flawed. It’s short-termism with catastrophic consequences long term.

Plenty of research now showing that statement to be false.

Exactly. It's just a giant Ponzi scheme.

Not happening anymore, our doctors and nurses can’t get jobs in the uk now because NHS accepts applications globally.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5267503-aibu-to-be-furious-that-there-are-no-jobs-for-young-doctors?page=26&reply=142007048

uk nationals are no longer prioritised.

There are actually no routes for asylum seekers to claim asylum outside this country, and no legal routes in without having claimed asylum first. It's a real Catch-22. We don't take a high number of refugees.

As for immigrants, if you look at the figures, we are barely replacing ourselves, so in order to keep the working age population up to a level where the country can be funded, we need immigrant workers.

I actually favour the Labour Party even though they've behaved poorly in some respects.

I agree with you but there doesn't seem to be any government that want to think as far ahead as that, as far as I know but could be wrong.

Japan, I admit I know nothing about the culture or economics, but I personally think it's almost fruitless to compare.

A lot of Asian cultures tend to care for their elderly relatives at home, whereas I believe the UK due to housing, employment and finances, it's the opposite (just an opinion!). Japan is also very productive, whereas the UK keeps selling companies overseas, which does affect the economy. I have no idea what Japan's welfare system consists of but that may also influence how they cope. Do we know that they are actually coping with an aging population?

The country can't be funded by minimum wage earners in receipt of benefits.

We need far fewer people. We can't feed ourselves, we're struggling to pay for ourselves. Why would adding more at the bottom make that poor scenario any better?

@TrainGame - this seems likely to stop given the remarks of Wes Streeting. I think it is mad to do it and not improve conditions and opportunities for British citizens who have the right qualifications. To make these kind of changes is not discrimination in the unlawful sense, it's just sensible politics and ensures we are valuing the skills we already have here.

I'm posting here again, but I do have the right to live apart from MN 24/7.

When it comes to our ageing population, how are immigrants going to help with that when the vast majority take out more than they pay in?

The taxpayer will then have not only support pensioners, but also all the low payed and economically inactive new citizens.

Well yes you are right about people living longer.
However if we keep increasing our population to pay tax to care for our elderly people, what happens when these workers get old? Will we then have to import more people? Then they get old we get even more people?
I certainly don’t have any solutions, but it’s just not sustainable. Perhaps what we need is some deadly virus to sweep the planet and reduce the population?

They have the opposite of a housing crisis. Homes are abandoned. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/05/07/asia/akiya-homes-problem-japan-intl-hnk

after 20 years of going nowhere things are picking up

https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/corp/vemo/vemo-japan.html

I recently bought an EFT for Japan. Long term play.

Things could be the same here. We don’t need more people. We need to do things differently and transition out of mass migration to stable population.

A similar thing happened in my local hospital. For years the paediatric area i worked in was horrifically short-staffed, it was dangerous, staff were leaving in large numbers as moral was low. There were jobs being advertised, but not enough applicants.

Forward 3 years, they did a big recruitment drive for overseas nurses. No longer short-staffed, staff moral improved so less people leaving. Now people are moaning that there's no paediatric nursing jobs in the hospital. It was open to UK nationals for 3 years.

As all i hear from the unions is that there aren't enough places for the amount of nurses needed, and there aren't enough people applying to be nurses. What's the answer around that?

Arguments around immigration remind me that, at base, we are animals and that many people haven't developed any sort of higher order thinking - they just go with a gut feeling stimulated by years of mammalian evolution and go with that.

I wonder if we'll ever get to a point where people are actually able to think and not just respond to atavistic feelings of territorial fear?

The sad truth is that the only immigrants who are likely to be net contributors on average, are people from wealthy, westernised countries. The majority of our immigrants do not come from these countries.

Well yes. This is why our Brexit decision was such a terrific success. We swapped a migration pattern from countries with similar qualification levels and less likely to stay for...

The opposite. Some of the trade deals that the UK will make will involve migration pacts. The opportunities for those countries will be much greater than for the UK.

Fixing nursing shortages means thinking ahead, not just reacting to crises. Hospitals wait until a crisis before recruiting, then overcorrect, leaving fewer jobs later on.

In theory, it’s all good and laudable to take them.
in practice, we don’t have nearly enough decent, affordable housing for those already here, nor for a good many people who were born here.

And no government seems remotely willing or able to do anything effective about it. And I mean do, not just talk and spout the usual platitudes.

This is what I can't understand. We're constantly told that we need more people then we find out they actually cost quite a lot of money, our home grown young people are missing out on job opportunities, we magically do (but also at the same time, don't) have the housing and social infrastructure to support everyone and then the baby boomers are still being blamed for living too long even though we're importing more people every year to support them. It's just a series of circular arguments. If we had the truth then perhaps we could make sense of it all, but it's confusing.

I agree OP, especially if the culture is incompatible.

Many people like me question immigration asylum and refugee levels and do so based on practical realities like the economic impact, housing shortages, the pressure on public services, cultural integration, and national security. These are not simply emotional reactions but reasoned responses to real-world challenges. Dismissing these concerns as mere animal instinct is an oversimplification ignoring the fact that humans do engage in higher-order thinking when discussing immigration. We weigh ethics, economics, and policy considerations. If anything, you're assuming that only one side of the debate is rational while the other is primitive is itself an emotional reaction rather than a reasoned argument.

So you'd be okay with me sending 150 strangers to your house to live? They can drive your car, wear your clothes, dig up your garden, if you have one, eat your food and do what they want with your possessions?

I don't think any amount of higher thinking would be able to deal with that. Virtually every species on the planet is territorial, why should humans be any different?

Why should we spend £4.3b a year on people who have never contributed anything to this country and we have hospitals with huge long waiting lists, pensioners freezing, education in a terrible state, people needing foodbanks.

I could go on.

I never asked for my tax to pay for extra people to come in, nor for them to be made comfortable in a Premier Inn for months, possibly years, while they wait for their claim to be processed. In the mean time Janet and Steve next door in their 60s are under are choosing between heating and eating.