What can labour do about immigration?

[CrispyEye]

Current poles showing Reform is way ahead of labour now. I’m so worried Reform will win the next general election if Labour don’t get a grip on this issue. And I say that as a Tory voter.

Realistically, what can Labour do, what should they be doing and do we think they will do it?

There's been lots written on here about how there aren't jobs for UK trained HCPs, including doctors. We don't get cheaper workers from other countries. We've got to move away from the myth that the UK doesn't have enough workers and that people aren't willing to do the jobs.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-68849847.amp

There's no longer proper investigative journalism and very few asks the questions that need asking. Even on here there's very black and white, good guys and bad guys and people have lost the ability to think. So the truth about the reasons behind decision making and from the public's pov (rather than brand them far right and racist) is never going to be put across.

Alot of people on here sporting the same old rubbish. What we have now is chaos- money laundering on every high street via "turkish" barbers, vape shops etc. , asylum seekers committing terrible crimes (recent Iranian terrorist plot was by asylum seekers), acid attacks, gun crime, gdp per capita decreasing rapidly (we are now around 25th and places like Poland who don't have open borders are overtaking us). It doesn't have to be like this, it wasn't in the 80s and 90s and other countries manage a sensible system.

The last government stopped most of that. It’s what’s led to net migration falling by 1/3 over the last 12 months. Unfortunately, it’s also led to a 78% reduction in health and social care visas so I suspect the people voting reform will find their problems have not been miraculously solved.

people coming into the country is down & Labour have massively sped up and increased deportation and yet reform are increasing in popularity. It’s difficult to imagine that immigration itself is the issue rather than something that reform are doing. Rather we need to tackle their lies head on rather than playing their game.

Especially if you consider that if you ask people whether the countries problems are caused by immigration they say yes. If you ask them if it is responsible for their problems they overwhelmingly say no. It wasn’t even in the top 3 issues for voters in the last election. If reform stopped whipping people up it would fall even further. Because without people telling voters all their problems are caused by immigrants people don’t care all that much.

The immigration debate has been dominated by "facts" and "figures" on both sides.
But it doesn't matter whether high immigration makes or doesn't make economic sense.
Politicians seem to have forgotten that there's a purely emotional reasoning at play too.
People don't necessarily want their culture or country to have to bend and adapt for people from elsewhere.
That's a pretty normal reaction wherever you are in the world.
If that reaction didn't exist, we wouldn't have different cultures or nations in the first place.
People are allowed to like their country and want it to stay as culturally monolithic as possible.
There is no moral duty to agree to immigration. No country owes citizens from elsewhere anything.

@BrightonEarlyOneSummerMorning and the powers that be then wonder why the WC aren't, once again, rushing to give up our children as cannon fodder. We've worked out that our interests aren't being served.

Unfortunately, what we learnt from Brexit is that countering lies with facts isn’t that successful either. I’m not sure what the answer is.
I’m sure as hell isn’t trying to beat reform at their own game is though. Look what that did to the Tories.

Labour have reduced immigration by a third since they were elected last year.

They could either stop issuing dependants visas or only allow it for people earning above some threshold. And get on with processing asylum claims quicker, it's not right that people are being left in a limbo for years waiting for a decision.

Is it? I literally don't know anybody- friends, family, work colleagues who worries or even talks about this! It seems to me that it's a characteristic of the extreme right, they have imported the tactic from Trump's campaign playbook- whip everyone up into a feverish outrage on this one issue to win power, it is up to other UK political parties to highlight this manipulation.

@ JunkShopper
“They could try actively making the factual case that immigration is actually good for the economy and we'd all be poorer without it”

But that’s not true. “Claims that immigration represents a fiscal benefit to the UK are false …. The academic research points to immigration resulting in a clear fiscal cost to the UK. Between 1995 and 2011, immigrants in the UK cost at least £114 billion, or about £18m a day (University College London research, 2014). More recently, for the year 2016/17, a 2018 report for the Migration Advisory Committee estimated that immigrants overall cost the Exchequer £4.3 billion, adding to the UK's fiscal deficit (A net contribution of £4.7bn by EEA migrants was considerably outweighed by a cost of £9bn for non-EEA migrants - - see par. 4.11 of MAC report). On this evidence, immigration does not generate the tax receipts needed for migrants to 'pay their way' let alone to finance the new infrastructure or anything else required by rapid population growth.”
https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/news/2017/10/30/summary-of-migration-watch-evidence-to-the-migration-advisory-committee-costs-and-benefits-of-immigration-from-the-european-union/

Both of those things have happened. Reform’s support is still increasing.

I don't trust Labour now! I'd never ever vote for them again. Labour have screwed us all over, for illegal immigrants! I still welcome legal migrants as they are needed. Reform all the way now 👏 👏 👏

I’m a Labour voter, but every now and then I think, “Fuck it, I’m voting far right next time, I’ve had enough”. I don’t consider Reform to be far right, but I’d vote however I need to. Enough is enough.

In my local area, people are far more focused on Labour "dragging us back in to the EU against our will" and "Starmer giving the EU stuff and agreeing to their rules".

That's been the tipping point for a lot of the people around here to say they will vote reform next time.

I live in a red wall area that went blue over brexit and then back red this time but the local elections saw a lot of seats go to reform as a protest vote.

“Fix it” depends what you mean. I think we need to “fix it” by allowing people who want to work in this country to get visas to work in roles we need employees for, we are short in many sectors including those which require minimal English and education (though many migrants have good English and education anyway). Giving people a legal route with rights and responsibilities is better than sneaking in and working under the radar for unscrupulous employers. Asylum seekers already in “safe countries” should present themselves at British embassies to explain why they should be allowed to travel to the U.K. Those who are economic migrants, give them a legal mechanism

You mean by turning the UK into a country no one wants to immigrate to? Labour have not changed any immigration rules yet, so whatever has happened to immigration levels is not on them.

Or we could just solve the problem by removing our disgusting tuition fees for things like nursing and providing our kids with grants and fair pay so they can study and fill these roles themselves

Thanks, I'll have a look at that.

As said by pp this is due to the last gov.

how have they screwed you over?

Put the boat people - who I work with - into camps or detention centres. They’re not at all bad.

Revise the criteria for social housing so boat people don’t go straight to the top of the housing list, knocking off babies, the disabled, taxpayers and single mums.

The genuine refugees don’t mind, believe me. The vast majority of boaters are economic migrants, less than half of whom get a job.

Labour are responsible for removing failed asylum seekers (or illegal immigrants as some like to call them) at a much faster rate than the Tories. Which will lead to us spending much less on housing asylum seekers as the processing system gets up and working again.

Neither this nor anything the Tories have done is doing anything to reduce support for reform though. It doesn’t seem to have worked out well for either party.

So the answer has to be something other than tackle immigration.

This isn’t the case. Costs have gone up and are projected to continue to be higher.

That's because the horse has already bolted.
There are some things that could be done retroactively though, such as not forcing us to watch live streamed Eid, and not covering up grooming gangs.

Bar dialling back on legal immigration which the current government are already doing, there's no easy answer for any political party.