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?

The UK has never had "uncontrolled immigration", and nor does it have "open borders".

Yes, people have no idea about this. I am not an immigrant but am friends with a Serbian family and they pay a fortune for their visa renewals and NHS charges.

I also have a colleague, NHS consultant from India. Been here 12y. No benefits of course. Speaks great English and works on a MH ward where they cannot recruit because of the terrible conditions. But he is amazing. Calm, lovely leader, kind but firm and has transformed the care there. Payers love him, as do their families. I spoke to him last week and he is thinking of going back to his country. He says he is being tarred by the same brush and the anti-immigrant feeling is getting really bad here.

What a mess.

Immigrants are less likely to have productive spouses, they do on average have larger families.

And It’s not that hard to bring elderly relatives, otherwise it wouldn’t happen.

The millions of elderly immigrants who have contributed nothing to the economy didn’t sprout out of the ground.

I think stepping away from the Daily Mail comment section is a good idea.

Asylum seekers haven’t come over to the UK because they fancied dossing around and enjoying the weather. They are fleeing atrocities. They are coming from countries where they are unsafe, persecuted, experiencing armed conflict, civil wars and violence.

These are human beings. They have children and families to look after. Papers like the Daily Mail and Telegraph paint a picture of asylum seekers that is far from the truth and would have you believe they are all scrounging off the state. Not true. I would look at actual statistics that are available about the percentage of claimants that are immigrants or asylum seekers.

Gaslighting at its best folks. You just imagined that out of control immigration numbers.

The naivety is astounding. You really believe that asylum seekers are not economic migrants. You should get out more.

Eh? No. It's a direct reflection of the fact that a great proportion of the world is a entire shitshow currently.

For a whole variety of reasons affecting people who don't deserve it.

Would you put your small kid on a small boat of dubious seaworthiness, or send your husband to see how the land lies, hoping to join him later if it works out?

Yes but Australia doesn't let these types of migrants stay. As soon as they land, they are removed if they are illegal. If you migrate to Australia legally you can stay and work. Britain takes any rapey, child molesting migrants and puts them in a hotel FFS

About One and a quarter million foreign born people are on UC , radio4 6 o’clock news last night.
Reform demanding the numbers -
8 million receive UC, 1 million of those born overseas. 2/3 are E.U. citizens ,1/2 of those ones in employment. 100,000 have refugee status though some of those could have been people trafficked . .75,000 with temporary visas are on it (so prob should not be entitled).
Whatever …. Great stats for reform to beat the Gov with

Nothing or little will happen. You can't strip people that easy of their rights and unfortunately if they are claiming it is because they are entitled by law.
Small changes can happen but don't think is going to be from a year to another.

That’s absolutely shocking. It’s an absolute joke.

"out of control"

Yet more garbage.

People who immigrate to the UK come here at the behest of, and with the consent of the State.

If you want people to listen to any point you are trying to make, perhaps ditch the emotive but factually incorrect soundbites, else you just sound exactly like yet another tiresome, pig-ignorant racist.

Do you live in Surrey, the Cotswolds or leafy Hampshire? Try surviving and existing in the Northern towns and see what is exactly happening on the ground. With all due respect your post was bollocks sorry but it is so far removed from lived experiences we are experiencing.

70% get refugee status.

Unfortunately the government have long allowed migration, particularly of low skilled/low paid work like care& fruit picking, to keep wages for these low.

These workers have then often brought families and if you have kids and a minimum wage job, you will be eligible for a lot benefits.

The problem is the low pay & high cost of living.

So the majority of immigrants claiming benefits are EU citizens? Have I got that right?

I have a mentally unwell patient who has been trying to get his wife over here for 18 years. She has now passed childbearing age so they will never have kids. If affects his MH. He will never earn enough to get her a visa. I give him the supporting letters he begs for, knowing that they will be ignored by the Home Office. It’s pretty sad.

People thinks it’s easy for people to come and stay here. If you do it legally, it is virtually impossible for most people.

People immigrate to the UK and grow old here. Many elderly immigrants came here as young workers in the 50s, 60s and 70s. It may have been easier to bring in elderly relatives in the past but that's not the case now. Laws have changed to reduce legal immigration.

By 'immigrants' do you mean people who are here legally?

1m at any one time can mean anything, it does not signify permanently being on benefits. It could be temporary unemployment, sickness, PIP, UC, pension credit, housing benefit.

A lot of those people could have lived here for many years and now consider themselves British, have brought up families who are British. They probably worked and paid into the system, they are as entitled to government help as any of us who were born here, some more so.

The likes of the Mail and, up to a point, the Torygraph, exist to create outrage with hyperbole. There's always more to their stories than meets the eye. There are approximately 37.5 million people of working age in the UK. Of roughly 9.9 million working-age people, 22.8 per cent of the working-age population, are receiving some form of benefits, according to the latest DWP figures, in addition to 13 million above state pension age (67 and over). That amounts to 14.5 per cent of the population as a whole.

There's so much wrong with the post I just don't know there to start, but I don't think there's much point starting because it won't make a jot of difference

Everyone in Australia is an immigrant unless you are of aboriginal background.

Most of them are from the EU and were here before Brexit. Most of them are claiming in work benefits.

The minority claiming when they’ve no right to or who haven’t contributed shouldn’t be receiving a penny.

I'll just add something about the NHS.

Has anyone ever been seen by a Dr whose name badge said "Honorary Registrar"?

That means they have come from abroad, often Sri Lanka, and they are paid nothing by the NHS. In fact the Sri Lankan government pays their wage, and they pay the NHS as well.

Oh and on the talk about WWII and the generations that lived through it, don't forget many men joined the armed forces from across what was then the British Empire.

And they did not have an easy time. I think we all know how badly the Japanese treated British soldiers, Indian soldiers were used for sword practice.

Universal credit