One million immigrants claiming benefits

[AnxiousApocalypse]

Just been reading the comments sections of the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail articles about the one million foreigners claiming benefits in the UK. It feels like the final nail in the coffin and a lot of people will feel even more justified in expressing their anger and hate towards immigrants. What happens when Reform win the next general election and come into power? Will people be rounded up en masse and put in detention centres like the USA?

I live in a city with 3 hospitals. Amongst the British born staff are a fair number of immigrants. From housekeeping to admin to medical consultants. The hospitals could not function without them. Only the lowest paid will get benefits I’m sure.
I’m cross with two types of claimants. The boat people, many who are economic migrants not true asylum seekers. Also, the section of British people (mostly white) who could work in care homes, shops but choose not to. They are why UC was brought in. To make living on benefits so awful it would drive people to work. This system hasn’t worked and has punished people in genuine need of benefits.

Couldn't agree with @CatLady476more

No other European country is so generous to illegal immigrants -mostly young men. The French and Scandis etc laugh at our generosity and are shocked by our broken system. Macron referred to this on his recent visit.

Personally, I think it's very sad that we have our own homeless (many ex-forces) living on our streets while, at the same time, the government accommodates asylum seekers in cosy hotels with three meals a day.

Skin colour or ethnicity isn't necessarily indicative of levels of first generation immigration though. You may be correct about Newcastle having low levels of immigration but being 90% white isn't proof of that. Boston in Lincs and Peterborough in Cambs are probably more than 90% white, but they've seen some of the highest levels of immigration outside of London in the last 20 years. Not all immigrants are black and brown.

The Blair boys went to a highly oversubscribed Catholic school where entry requirements will be regular mass attendance and living in catchment area or specified parish.
The school is in a very wealthy area so local children will naturally come from wealthy backgrounds with just a few non wealthy families where the Tory councils in Westminster or Kensington and Chelsea couldnt get social housing tenants to move away.
Mrs Blair is a lifelong Catholic (only one parent needs to be).
I would imagine many of the boys at that school have tutors as well

Ove no issue with people coming here to work in health care.

We don't need to import people to work in kebab shops or in supermarkets etc.

Even if an immigrant is contributing if that is at the cost of a Brit not working then they should go. There is no point having a French graphic designer if it means that a British graphic designer doesn't have a job.

We need fundamental change rather than just tweeking round the edges.

Indeed. Back in the 90s, it was pretty bloody easy to buy a house without working. Credit checks as we know them today just weren't a thing you had to worry about.
A family member of mine (white British btw) bought a house in 1995 without having worked and didn't intend to carry on working. She just got her partner at the time to write a letter to say she worked for him (she didn't - and he didn't own a company or employ anyone). Fraud, I know, but easily done back then. She paid her mortgage with benefits.
She bought that house for £37k, sold it three years ago for £300k, downsized, and now lives comfortably off the profits she never lifted a finger to get, and is even a landlady to tenants in the two studio flats she bought with both her profits and the inheritance she got once her parents died.
Alright for some, eh?
But that's not what this thread is about, people are here to bash immigrants, as you were.

Because areas swamped with migrants aren't going to vote for right wing parties who are against migration because the migrants won't be turkeys voting for Christmas.

There are a lot of young uk graduates who are claiming universal credit while they search for jobs - they are over qualified for care home work as the employers know that they will be off like a shot as soon as something more appropriate and better paid comes up. Even the major supermarkets are reluctant to have them

I already knew that people were going to be wound up by my post but some people just refuse to accept that there are genuinely lazy people who just want to claim and not work, immigrant or not; making it worse for people who actually do need to claim

Absolutely this

It's the Lib Dem mentality. All for immigration and open borders, but they live in well to do areas that only sees well off and integrated migrants, if any.

The dregs and asylum hotels get dumped in working class areas who are then called racist for objecting that women can't even walk the streets.

You see it on here all the time. Until it intrudes on the leafy middle class towns and villages, nothing will change.

Our cities have already been destroyed.. but middle England don't live in them anyway, unless it's the nice parts with low migration.

Frankly this is make believe. I bought my first house in 1991 and remember the process vividly. What’s described here has never been possible.

I referred in my post to "native people" living in multicultural cities (I should have made that clearer).

There is a clear trend that they tend to vote less for right-wing parties than "native people" living in areas with low immigration.

I think a lot of people don’t understand and just think the solution is taxing the rich more and building council houses. Personally happy to take less of a pension than having loads of immigrants. I’m sick of the foreign diliveroo driver one I’m sure was considering mugging me of my phone and another shouted at me as I had my AirPods in and didn’t give him directions. I’m scared going out for walk now.

Speak to anyone who works in housing, Dr surgery or benefits office, if they were a liberal bleeding heart before they soon change.

They’re claiming universal credit and housing and I suspect we will find the PIP claims are high for them too. Are people in Britain really up for funding this?

I think for me it’s a watch and see once it starts affecting the middle class and it becomes socially acceptable to say enough that’s when it ends. It may well end in civil war and that’s caused by allowing such high amounts of uncontrolled immigration, should never have been allowed in the first place.

i will be retiring to the Highlands as I don’t personally like being around so many migrants and like the life of being able to take my phone out without being constantly on edge for crime and people who don’t want to integrate.

By native people it's whatever few actually remain once their area is taken over. The people in lower migration areas don't want their areas going the same way and see it as only a Boriswave away from happening. That's why they'll vote Reform.

The middle classes are more immune to it.

You will be an immigrant, yes. And without the context of a breakdown of that 1m headline figure, we've no idea how many are like you plan to be - working and contributing (legally). The problem with sensationalist headlines like the one in the op is that it encourages the assumption that either 1. They are here illegally; and/ or 2. They're scroungers who are not integrating, not contributing. Arguably, many will be contributing far more to our economy through work than a good number of retired UK pensioners are contributing to, for example, Spanish coffers.

I thought immigrants can not vote. Unless we are talking about local elections.

It is 100% what happened.

OK, I'll admit it, it was my mum, and it actually would have been 93 or 94. I may have been a child at the time but I am very much aware that my mum, who solely owned the house, did not work ever again after she left my dad in 1989. She used the money she got from the sale of her marital home for a deposit, she paid the mortgage in benefits, and she faked a job to get the mortgage. I've even seen the letter as my mum keeps huge folders of all her life paperwork, I found it right next to the love letters her and her new partner were exchanging while she was married to my dad 😅
It happened, and she's proud of it.

Well no one is generous to illegal immigrants since they are illegal and not entitled to anything

if you mean asylum seekers well you are wrong , we aren’t.

as to uk homelessness - if it was as simple to solve as ‘give them a room’ it would be! Homelessness is a complex issue with many problems that stem from trauma, criminal history, substance misuse, ACEs, poor mental health. Every local authority has a rough sleeper initiative and workers seek to engage and support those on the streets - help is often rejected

better support for mental health and substance misuse would help but that requires funding and is nothing to do with people living in hotel rooms

And I note you have no intelligent argument with which to engage or reply to any of my numerous points. It’s not bigotry to state facts. It’s the unwillingness of people like yourself to even consider that there might be legitimate cause for concern when mass immigration on a scale of which we’re experiencing might interfere with the cohesion of a nation.
I take issue with government policy and have no issue with a sensible, well managed asylum and immigration policy. Please do educate yourself instead of regurgitating insults.

Non status mortgages, based on little more than self certification of income, most certainly were a thing. Declined in the house price stagnation of the nineties were but back again before the crash.

They cost considerably more than I've ever paid in tenured employment with a provable salary but they were there for those who wanted them.

https://lendingline.co.uk/self-certified-mortgages/

He did not.
What is most attractive about the UK (and what the French complain helps cause the border issues) is the shadow labour market/black market. It's easier to work cash in hand here than in France and easier for criminal gangs to outsource work to illegal economic migrants and cream of the profit. It needs dealing with. But it's not really a benefits thing. But the French have frequently complained about this. It's an ongoing bugbear.
The other thing that Macron said had contributed to the problem was Brexit.

My immigrant parents would say they never claimed benefits - but we did get child benefit, and the statistic might include that. My immigrant parents taught us the value of education and hard work, and despite having few resources and no connections, they raised 6 higher rate tax payers all educated to degree/masters/PHD level, who are now paying into the system and contributing to the NHS.

It's a very short term view to look at the statistics negatively in that way- it's the migrant population and their children who will ensure the UK has enough workers to look after our ageing population in the medium to long term.