Immigration - can someone please explain it to me in simple terms?

[Illbeinthehottub]

So for as long as I can remember I’ve heard that there is a problem with immigration in the UK. There are headlines about it daily and it’s always an issue for government. It’s a big part of what Brexit was about.

I don’t personally understand all about it, what is the issue, is it simply than people feel immigration is putting additional pressure on services?

I’ve just seen another headline saying that Kier Starmer has lost control of the borders.

Conservatives were in power for 13 years, presumably immigration was still unacceptable to people. Now people are unhappy with Labour.

Can someone who understands explain to me a) what is the problem with immigration b) why hasn’t any government been able to have an acceptable policy that works c) is immigration just something for people to whinge about?

But that’s what I was posting about really.

People have been complaining about immigration since Gordon Brown called Gillian Duffy a bigoted woman. It was a hot topic back then.

Yet over 10 years of Conservatives and apparently the problem is worse than ever.

What are Labour doing about it?

What will the hypothetical next government really do?

Or are we saying that people are more sick of it now then they ever were?

I put an answer to this in pp. It takes a lot to vote in a system that reach Aus reduction but it’s looking likely.

Up until now there’s been a lot of backlash even from politicians including ‘dog whistle’, ‘culture wars’ and ‘racist’. Now Labour are cravenly dropping that in an attempt to get votes people will just say yeh this doesn’t look good.

I agree with pp in a few years people will wonder why we thought entry in high numbers using criminal gangs was a good idea.

Well, it's going to be tough. You've seen the reaction on here to the Scandinavian model, which I think is eminently sensible. I suspect those weekly pro Palestinian marches will pale into insignificance if harsher methods are introduced.

So what they fly home for all appointments and dont use any of the services in the countries they are living in? Get real.

I guess from a practical standpoint if there continue to be large numbers of net migration then issues that people care about will get worse. The NHS won't get any better if there are more people chasing fewer resources. Schools will get less money as there will be more kids. it is difficult to build more housing quickly due to a large number of factors. We have no growth in our economy and not enough high tax payers to fund increases in the NHS/education etc.. If it was easy to tax the big corporations (which would be the most preferential option) then the government would have done it. If things don't begin to get better then that gives Reform a good chance of winning the next election.

Are you suggesting that 3 and a half million people entered the UK legally, with visas, and then promptly began claiming benefits?

Because they weren’t all Ukrainians (who did have access to public funds) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ukraine-family-scheme-application-data/ukraine-family-scheme-and-ukraine-sponsorship-scheme-homes-for-ukraine-visa-data--2 and most of the other visas I’m aware of require the applicant to demonstrate that they can support themselves in the UK as they have no entitlement to access public funds. So what visas did more than 3 million people come in on that impacted the benefit bill?

Immigrant's are just like British people. Some are happy to take take take from the government and get as much as they can for the least amount of effort. Some are incredibly hard working and will put more into the system than they'll take out. Some are hardworking but also need too up benefits and therefore probably take more from the system than they will be able to put in. Just saying they are all amazingly hard working or they are all scroungers is just silly. Immigrants aren't just one homogeneous bunch.

Why do you think Brexit would have had any impact on immigration?

Because the freedom of movement in EU was stopped - that our Gov would allow /encourage / increase other immigrants from elsewhere wasn’t on the cards at the time of the vote.

I distinctly remember Boris Johnson saying that once free movement from the EU was ended, we could take more migrants from other countries.

Although I’m sure he dressed it up as skilled workers, contributing to the economy and so on.

You clearly weren't paying attention. As pp said, Johnson highlighted that Brexit would allow for less immigration fron the EU and more immigration from the rest of the world.

"The Government has failed because of the simple reality that inside the EU we cannot control immigration - it is literally impossible because we have no choice but to accept the principle of free movement and the European Court has ultimate control over our immigration policy.

This has led to the absurd situation in which we stop highly qualified people coming from around the world who could contribute enormously to our society because we cannot stop millions of unskilled people coming here from the EU"

Boris Johnson, 2016.

You do not have to wait 6 months before you can access NHS care. That's bullshit and if that happened then it was incorrect. Habitual residence rules do not have any such requirements

So what do people actually want? Track every single immigrant, give them an ID card and social credits and count every penny they contribute from the point they arrive, including children? And once they are at a certain threshold, let them do a test and get citizenship if they get to what figure? 500k? What exactly is people’s point here? And what about all the remaining existing citizens who never contribute much financially into the pot and are net takers. What do we do with them (barring ill health/disability) - should we remove their vote?
Generally speaking, UK has benefited for centuries from colonising and cheap and more expensive overseas immigrants coming here. The stats should clearly that EU migrants where contributing, not least because many came here during their productive working lives, after they had been educated in eg Poland, at the cost of the Polish state, many went back to pay for their own holiday health treatments and then on top of that, went back during retirement. Not actually costing us much at all. But that was not good enough. People still voted for Brexit. And now we are paying through our noses for both Brexit and Covid. And yet again, it is the immigrants to blame. Not the lazy sods here contributing f… all and putting not much back in.
I say if people want this, bring on the ID cards and social credits for all British citizens.

As Boris said ‘ch we stop highly qualified people coming from around the world who could contribute enormously to our society ’ -that is not what’s happened. Why succeeding govs have allowed in hundreds of thousands I have no idea.

We had a lot of Chinese, Indian and Nigerian students come. Many well off and intelligent. I really cannot see the problem with that demographic, for example. They are coming at the most productive time of their life. There really is nothing to complain about.

in 2023 net migration was around 900k.

We built around 200k homes that year.

where are we housing everyone?

No thanks. I’ll take border control and no social credit system.

Shitty temporary accommodation
Hotels
Houses of multiple occupancy

Even if people can house themselves adequately, prices to buy or rent increase so that people are left with less disposable income.

We have not built enough houses for years. This has been an ongoing problem. Despite promises to build more, we do not have the construction workers and looking at the stock prices of housebuilders, hardly looks like anyone believes there is lots and lots of profit in there for the taking. It is difficult and expensive to build here and debt is expensive.

We have also had border control for years and intrusive questions every time you enter the country, even if you are British. Yet we have more migration.

Labour have already increased indefinite leave to remain to 10 year qualifying period, international students have already been put off, the thresholds for bringing over family have already gone up.
When the Tories tried to put migrants into the Bibi Stockhold barge there was massive outcry from Labour and Rwanda scheme was illegal.

So exactly what is the proposed solution?
And Farage promising unicorns won’t do it. It will just be financial bankruptcy as 1+1 does not equal 1 million pounds for all. As much as everyone wants to believe it.

So exactly what is the proposed solution?

A quick Google told me that net migration in 1995 was about 75k. The country didn't collapse. Why can't we go back to levels like that?

It was Starmer who scrapped Rwanda not the courts in the end. There was new legislation overcoming the court ruling.

On what people would be happy with I think most would be with the Aus system.

And this my friends, is what they call “delusional”

Quite honestly, the “limited critical thinking” jibe is so tedious now and it doesn’t work. It’s like you think once you say that as a put down, you’ve somehow won an argument. Are you so stupid that you believe thoughts on immigration are binary? I.e people who want to stop mass immigration are stupid and those who want open borders are somehow on a superior intellectual plane? Are you really sure no-one on this planet who has concerns about immigration could also be clever? Are you REALLY certain about that? 🙄

And are you sure your comment doesn’t portray you to actually be the one to have zero critical thinking skills, after all?

But they are not coming over in small boats organised by criminal gangs are they?

It is the illegal/small boats “asylum seekers” that most people have an issue with.

The student/skilled migrant numbers should be able to be easily controlled by the government (whether they do us another question eg recent junior doctors thread) but there seems to be no real plan or way of stopping those coming in the boats.

I disagree...legal migration is a huge issue too. Legal migrants need somewhere to live...they will use the NHS. It's still pressure on our services. And there are far more legal migrants than illegal.

Well that’s the point I was trying to make - legal migration should be able to be controlled. Skilled migration is only an issue (unless someone is a racist/right wing nutter) if it’s not controlled.

If we needed skilled workers who actually contributed to the economy, shared our values and integrated into society, then most people would be ok with this - it’s when migrants take jobs our own people have been trained for and then cannot access that it becomes a problem. 100 highly skilled doctors/nurses/radiogrsphers/teachers migrating to fill a shortage might not be an issue but 5000 when there is no shortage is a problem.

edited to add-: how do we know how many illegal migrants there are?