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?

The problem for Labour is this.

Journalist? Looking for ‘soundbites’?

It was only a few hundred anyway over a year. And we took more than sent back.

The narrative has been for a while that immigration is all about people arriving via boat to claim asylum. Under the last government we allowed a million people in legally...

My worry was that until relatively recently, quite a significant proportion of migrants were dependents. So you might have a careworker coming and earning quite a low wage, not especially highly skilled, not paying much tax, bringing two young children. That family will need school places, healthcare for 3, could be eligible for child benefit & child elements of UC including housing elements.

Or a "student" bringing their family over.

We don't have enough housing as it is. Plus bringing people to this country to work in lower skilled, lower wage healthcare roles just suppresses the wages in those sectors which hurts our existing workforce.

I’m descended from an illegal immigrant who came over on a boat but he was white and he assimilated himself into the local population in 1800 with everyone in the UK that has the same surname is related to me.

There’s a lot that needs unpicking.

UK infrastructure and public services are incredibly stretched and struggle to serve the population due to either a lack of investment, or population growth (the end result is the same whichever way you look at this).

Population growth is mostly inevitable and a worldwide pattern which has already been set in motion (starting with the postwar baby boom) and will not stabilise until approximately 2080. There is more info about this here: https://ourworldindata.org/demographic-transition

However, the UK does also (currently) gain more than it loses from migration (ie, more people move to the UK than move out of the UK). Because the birth/death rate in the UK is currently fairly equal and predicted to invert (death rate will rise higher than birth rate) migration is now a MUCH higher source of population growth than births/deaths.

Therefore some people think that it would be better if we had less immigration, in order to slow population growth and therefore relieve pressure on services.

An opposing argument is that since population growth has been happening for 70+ years and it was extremely clear and easy to predict, there ought to have been more long term planning and investment into public services and infrastructure so that they could cope with the numbers of people they are meant to serve, regardless of immigration. It serves political parties (who may have been the ones failing to plan and fund these things) to "blame" a third party e.g. immigrants. A group who are easy to scapegoat anyway because humans are essentially naturally primed towards suspicion of people we feel are different from us. We have to actively work (or have a lot of contact with people from different cultures) to overcome this kind of bias - it's thought to be a sort of protective instinct from a time when we lived in much smaller groups or tribes.

Also, it looks really simple when you look at pure numbers of births/deaths vs immigration - why not just close that gate and then our population won't expand any more? But the reality is more complicated; our population is ageing and retired people use more in terms of public services than they currently pay in tax. Whereas immigrants are usually young and healthy. We need more people of working age in order to do the jobs involved in this kind of thing and also so that they will pay tax on their earnings and purchases. And the world population is still expanding, although it is now slowing down and will eventually stabilise, but what we will see over the next decades is a lot of migration because the poorer countries are having their demographic shift later than we have had it in the West, so there are simply more people in the world and some of them will look to move around to different places.

I’m not a journalist I’m just someone who is quite ignorant about it all.

The only people I know who complain about immigration are the racist types who have never tried to get a job in their lives.

Of course I realise that there are legitimate concerns and a lot of people probably keep quiet for fear of being called racist.

Just feels as though I’ve been reading headlines about immigration for 20 years but no government seems to have done anything.

I absolutely agree. Although not exactly the same because the Brits who are "ex pats" are not draining housing, dentist, school systems in Spain are they??

My issue is that we simply can't manage any longer it's not that I don't want people in UK fron this particular country... it's not that. There'd a housing crisis I actually wonder what my DC generation will do it's worrying!

MN gets confused by multiple link previews so here is also a video showing projected changes in the world demographics. I think we have a tendency in the West to assume that we are the majority, but demographically, that has not been the case for some time. (The video is from 2012 which is why he quotes the world population as 7 billion. Today it is 8 billion.)

https://www.gapminder.org/videos/where-do-people-live/

After 5 years though depending on where you are from. You can claim public funds and that is a huge issue! If you earn a low wage but then start a family in England.

You don’t write like an ignorant person. You are clearly educated.
Please don’t fish. Do your own research.

Legal migration is tricky because we rely on it for universities and things like care work.

Irregular or sometimes known as illegal migration is incredibly hard to fix as you have international laws to circumvent. Only one or two countries have handled it, although once they do the electorate tend to not vote the policies out.

The only people I know who complain about immigration are the racist types who have never tried to get a job in their lives.

🙄

Yep.

My first hand experience of immigration was when my partners sister arrived at Heathrow and asked to seek asylum.

Disabled - both mentally and physically - how she ever got to Heathrow I will never know, but she did.

She stayed with us for a month, then she was placed in a home for the mentally disabled, after being assessed.

She couldn't get an operation to repair a hole in her heart in her own country after being on a waiting list for many years. She had the operation after a year of being here. She was having psychotic episodes in her own country because she couldn't get access to medication. She received it straight away here.

She gets three meals a day, here own spacious room and her energy bills are paid for. She is a priority for housing and will receive a rented flat in the near future.

She's been here for two and a half years and most probably will never work in this country - she's not even 50 years of age. She is very grateful to the UK for the chance of the life she could only have dreamt of back home.

From her disabled benefits she is able to send money home to her aged mother and realises she is just one of many people who have never worked in the UK because they able aren't to, but receive a life they would never have had in their country.

When my partner went with her to get her leave to remain in the UK and the first steps to receive a UK passport, she was placed in a queue with mainly younger men. She overheard two officers talking. They commented how 'Most of these are criminals in their own country but we give them asylum'.

Why comment if you haven't seen what's happening first-hand yourself.

As far as I can see, we are making it harder for the immigrants with degrees and a good education and easier for those without.

It is not racist. The problem with the amount of immigration is the lack of housing and the cost to public services. Translation, housing, legal costs, crime and unfortunately cost of housing prisoners. Some immigration is good but the country can’t sustain the current level of immigration.

www.google.com/search?q=cost+of+housing+foreign+prisoners&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari

www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2720n2kkjo

It isn’t something that I would discuss with anyone, apart from maybe dh.

A couple of my cousins are posting a lot on Facebook about voting reform and it does make me laugh because they are 30+ year old men who still live in their parents bedrooms, have never had a job and spend their money on takeaways and video games.

I can understand why governments allow dependants when it comes to the job market. People wouldn’t want to come here to work if they couldn’t bring their families.

Why won’t governments just be honest with the public about the challenges instead of making empty promises.

I will go and research. Thank you, most of you have explained it really simply.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-25933699

cost of translation services. Honestly just google this stuff….

I live in a working midlands town. It’s very diverse. We have established polish, Romanian and Indian communities. These people are friendly integrated and get on. No issues really however the landscape of the town has changed immensely. Loads of ethnic food shops which are very interesting to visit. But all in other languages so it’s pot luck to what you are buying which can be fun. They have incredible fruit and veg. We do have issues with money laundering / illegal shops; recently Turkish style barbers and there’s a row which sell counterfeit goods and have blokes standing in the door ways. Hideous array of vape shop, bright stickered shop fronts and neon lights (that’s the councils fault really). So it looks drastically different to what it did even 10 years ago even with the type of good migration people refer to.

In terms of the more classically unwanted migration; all the country hotels have closed around us and been replaced with migrant hotels. There’s one with about 600 who are families and that one is not a problem for most people. They keep themselves to themselves.

There is a smaller one of around 150 male migrants and that one is constantly causing issue. Loitering and drinking in local parks. Gathering in groups etc. Whether this is a risk or not people do not like it and won’t let their children walk back from school or to the park.

Anecdotally things which have been going on the past month crime/ antisocial wise:
There’s a poor old man who’s some kind of homeless vagrant with mental health issues. He’s living in a church yard and doesn’t speak English but had stayed in the migrant hotel so returns to nearby. No service seems to be able to help him. it’s been months.

There was a big fight in town between Kurdish youth and English youth groups. Random bystanders scared and crying.

There’s a random woman with I assume mental health issues who keeps smacking people over the head from behind in isolated areas. Quite a few have ended up in hospital getting their skulls glued. This woman is white but no one seems to know her (small town) and if it turns out they have a clearly foreign surname then again it’s this type of thing which makes people anti immigration.

So in short; in some areas things are changing a lot. Fast. That’s social and cultural not even service based or access to housing, work etc. And this area isn’t a bastion of British social uprightness. It’s a working class town. It’s scummy in places and has its own typically white British problems. But I think the sentiment is generally we don’t need more additional problems. We do have enough already.

I’m not saying that anyone with concerns about immigration is racist.

Apologies if that’s how it came across.

It’s just not something I’d discuss with anyone in rl and the only people I know who ARE very vocal are that sort of person.

I also strongly object to us giving nhs dr speciality training posts to overseas doctors, when there are not enough for our own uk medics.

This a) steals doctors who've often been trained at great expense from poorer countries, which i find morally bankrupt, and b) also means that a hefty chunk of uk junior doctors, educated at huge state/nhs expense, can't get a training post.

Im not a doctor but have read up this recently (there are statistics publically available) after hearing about it on here, and was frankly horrified by the numbers.

We also have the issue that a millionaire has left the uk every 45 minutes since Labour came to power. More HNW individuals leaving more low skilled people coming in not good not as much tax collected more pressure on public services it’s a bloody mess