Immigration population up another 700k

[Atallglassimdof]

I understand that this country needs immigration but if you import 100,000s of low skilled workers, in their 30s and 40s, how are they going to fund their retirement or pay for their housing?

It just seems counterintuitive to bring loads of people into this country who will need considerable financial support ( housing benefits, pension credits) when they are no longer able to work, and don’t have the means to support themselves.

This is a good summary. There is nothing inherently skilled about care work compared with other equivalently paid work. In other cultures there is less paid care work as relatives will most of it. If we want to have care system and outsource all care work for the elderly, then it needs to be paid for.

Market rate wages are artificially being suppressed by mass uncontrolled immigration. Anyone will do any job. It’s like selling a house. Everything, literally everything has a price. You pay the right price and someone will do it.

Having worked in the care sector, the main problem preventing British people working in it is the conditions, not the pay. If you could get guaranteed 5 hour fixed shifts, say 6-11am or 5-10pm the same three weekdays and one weekend day each week, paid minimum wage including travel time between houses and petrol allowance for home carers, people would want to do it.

It's the constant shifting rotas so you can never plan, expecting to cover others without notice, not being paid for travel time, 12 hour shifts where you are not paid for half of it but don't have enough time to go home, expected to take on too many clients etc. etc. Immigrants will put up with it because they have no choice, but if you have caring responsibilities of your own it's impossible to deal with such an unreliable work pattern for such low pay.

I’m not surprised that the vast majority of MN comments are gaslighting the OP about this issue. After all, they are in elite jobs and have very little to do with immigrants on a daily basis.

I’m from an immigrant background- have lived here for 33 years. When I first arrived, London still had British values and I felt lucky to be here. In the last 15 years more people kept arriving and I didn’t mind that. I thought that Britain’s future was rainbow coloured, a future where the average Londoner or British citizen would look mixed… some kind of futuristic utopia where people are educated, cultured and somewhat British in values and happy to be here and keen to assimilate.

But f’’k me, that hasn’t been the case at all. One day, I woke up in the most multicultural area of Europe and it was no longer beautiful. I felt bewildered and sick
Since the pandemic, immigration has turbo charged. People are no longer peacefully living side by side in segregation somewhat following the laws of the land. It’s become jarring and discombobulating. Anti-social and selfish behaviour has skyrocketed.

No one cares about pregnant women, the elderly or disabled on buses anymore. The number of times I’ve seen a new arrival type person sitting in a priority seat not giving a sh’t about anyone else. The number of cars that went past at a zebra crossing without stopping was weird. The number of people (Bulgarian Turks, Latin Americans, Somalis) who wouldn’t let me or my buggy have an equal chance to get on the bus because it was more convenient for them to get on first was shocking. In the end, a European man (who looked German or Dutch) let me go on first when he saw me waiting there for ages. The only time someone was gentlemanly or kind was when there were visitors to the stadium (someone from Essex or another home country).

There are immigrants like me and then there are immigrants freshly arrived who come here and see that it’s a liberal and individualist society with plenty of free money if they wait a few months and get some sort of settled status. They are the dregs of society back home, they have nothing to lose, they are in survival mode and come from a dog eat dog society, they are rough as f, some of them are even criminals. They see this country as a free for all and can see that they don’t need to have any responsibilities for all their rights. So they become selfish, nihilistic, playing their shitty TikTok videos loudly on buses, cracking sunflower seeds in parks and leaving the shells everywhere.Their children littering the parks with vapes, stealing those hire bikes and finding a way to ride them without paying for them. This is not multiculturalism, this is a dystopian hellscape. F this Sh’

London has fallen. There are so many barber shops side by side, they’re not making much from cutting men’s hair, that’s for sure.

Yesterday, I took my baby to Hampstead Health and was walking around the residential areas of Gospel Oak to get to it and I thought, ‘yep, these residents are totally insulated from what’s going on because they live a life of privilege’ in their low traffic zone neighbourhood with their beautiful homes. No new arrivals are going to be able to afford to live there. There, the drivers stopped for me to cross at the zebra crossing and someone helped me get the buggy onto the bus even though I didn’t need the help. The difference between night and day.

And up north, those gaslighters are living in posh villages or towns, nowhere near Rotherham or Harehills, so it’s all too easy to call someone Nigel or a bigot when they don’t even know anyone who was affected by the CSE scandal.

I feel sorry for this beautiful country. It’s elite is sleep walking in sharia law. Blasphemy laws. My family escaped from Turkey to live in a liberal society but religion followed us here and soon illiberal attitudes will be the norm. Soon, English women will refrain from showing any cleavage, wearing any shorts or sleeveless tops because they will feel preyed upon. Bravo, liberal elites, bravo.

Pay/cost. Same thing. Care homes will do this because it’s cheaper than having fixed shifts. The have two choices, absorb costs by paying more for flexible working or have flexible shifts but more people on standby. It all amounts to the same thing.

It is not mostly feeding, cleaning g and company. They are part of it but there are also hoists, stand aids, medication....Its a lot of responsibility for very poor pay.

I wasnt referring to the poster who stated the stats

What a crock of shit. I know lots of immigrants. My Dr and dentist are both immigrants as are two of my consultants. I know “nice Europeans” in similar roles. You don’t sound like you have embraced the kind of values you profess to admire. You seem to have brought your own prejudice with you. How depressing

Great post.

Why are the Left (and I include Labour in this even though they aren’t really Left on many things now) so dismissive of the average working man and woman and their legitimate concerns. They seem to despise them, and yet they bizarrely think they represent them!

That isn't what I said. I said that caring is a vocation, and your x=y, 'taking people off benefits and putting them in care settings' solution, completely misses that point.

I want the people caring for old and vulnerable people, to want to care for them, and be temperamentally suited to it. This is not casting any aspersions on benefits claimants. I am not a benefits recipient, and I am in NO WAY suited to be a carer. You could increase the salary, do a comms campaign on how important and worthy and valuable it is, raise the status of carers, and I would still be fundamentally unsuited to that role. Just like many other roles I am not suited to. I couldn't teach, either. Teachers are amazing. Heroes. I don't have the right temperamental skillset for it, the patience.

I have no issue with facts and data, but you are using them so simplistically ("There's loads of people on benefits, half of them don't work, they can work in care homes") that it's not worth talking to you about them, especially when you're being so needlessly aggy.

My god, what a way to misinterpret a post! She’s not saying all immigrants are “bad”… she is one! Your experience sounds like you’re the very privileged “liberal” that the OP is talking about, with only rose-tinted perspective on reality!

@Ohthatsabitshit - but you’ve reinforced that poster’s point! Your doctor and dentist are both immigrants as are two of your consultants

These people are not roaring around on e-bikes, not sitting in parks, not hissing at passing girls, not dealing drugs, not dropping litter indiscriminately or fighting amongst themselves.

Nor were fhey brought as continual first generation family members with no English language and no intention of anything other than continuing their own way of life.

Yeah so you ‘know’ lots of immigrants. And that somehow trumps an actual immigrants lived experience. Thats what is a crock of shit.

I thought you ‘be kind’ brigade were supposed to be all about minorities ‘lived experience’. Except when it doesn’t chime with your sheltered views.

So you think the current system is OK?

Let's carry on bringing in hundreds of thousands of people every year, leave the unemployed languishing on the dole, not worry about the effect that has on rents and competition for scarce resources, especially in the poorest communities.

Sounds great. What could possibly go wrong?

Yeah, sounds like you could count the number of immigrants you know on one hand 😂 and they’re all educated professionals 😀

I have neighbours who trash their gardens. I see hundreds of newly arrived Londoners who are working class or poorer than that. I didn’t bring any values with me, I was a small child who rapidly learned how to speak English, embraced British values and then noticed others not doing that anymore.

Do you think the immigrants pass one kind of ‘compassion’ test where they are tested for being carding and sharing. Nor do they have social care degrees. They are coming to earn money. If locals were paid going market rate, they would do it.

There is nothing simplistic about being rational. You can use lots of words to come up with not a lot, aka intellectual contortionism or mental gymnastics. Or you can accept basic rational points which stare you in the face.

Who is going to look after you when you are old and in a home. Not your kid, I guaranty. Also ask yourself why this country has to depend on foreign care workers to take care of its citizens. Wind your neck in.

Would it not have been possible to take a fresh UK graduate or young person who had achieved good A levels but had no experience, invested that £15k into training them in-house specifically in the skills necessary for the job and in a year had someone at the same skill level as the worker you hired from abroad? This is a genuine question, I'm not looking to make a point.

I imagine they are interviewed and go through a recruitment process in the same way as any other applicant.

My DM had care recently from the local Rapid Response Team. As I saw them twice a day we got chatting and they were all immigrants from different countries in Africa.

Then her palliative care was passed into a local private care company - I saw these women four times a day and we definitely got chatting. They were all immigrants from India.

Both teams were absolutely wonderful to a man (or woman). They gave my mum gentle care, dignity and respect and I had no concerns about any of them.

If we really can't fill vacancies with people in this country then we do need immigrants for these roles - when we were in the EU they were largely from Europe. Now we aren't in the EU they come from further afield, and there were massive shortages when people left from EU countries. In my experience they seemed so good at what they do and hard working, so good luck to them. I'd hate to think my DM couldn't have had this excellent NHS terminal cancer care because of shortages in the workforce.

UK worker visa threshold is £ 41.7k. You might be eligible for lower rate either £30 k or so if you're under 26 years old. In 2022, 1.3 million unfilled jobs across various sectors.

If there's a lack of workers in a sector then the wages and conditions should improve, supply and demand. Bringing in people from abroad who will work for less has disrupted this.

Of course big business and govt love it.

Who said we can’t fill the vacancies. Do you accept the concept of market rate wages? If so, we can fill any vacancy we like as long as we pay people market rate wages. Immigrants in low skilled low pay jobs suppress wages. The argument about not paying market wages and then saying we need to import people is economically false.

Yeah and way more than that number of people out of work. Pay people market wages or have businesses automate more work. Both of these things raise productivity which means a better life for all those who are here.

The immigration we have is damaging to this country and to those already here. It is actively harming people here.

We actually need to stop pushing everyone down an academic route and GCSE Maths for example is beyond a lot of people now and should not be asked for in a lot of jobs as you only need basic arithmetic. The Government should actually ban employers asking for degrees for things like basic office jobs. I think I would honestly struggle if I were doing it now without a lot of tutoring as it is way beyond the GCSE Maths I did 30 years ago which I scraped a C in.

With Maths and English you need a basic level which would be tested at 14, end of Y9 then you should be able to have a free choice of subjects after that. Considering the skills we need for the country, technical college age 14-18 would be a better route for many.

Do you think employer's first consideration is overseas worker and they offer higher salary to bring them?

Also I’m afraid you imagined wrong. A lot of low skilled immigrants pay agencies in their home countries to ‘buy’ work visas. The agencies do all the so-called vetting. Qualifications, if required, are often forged and sold to the paying visa applicants. The whole things is a racket. The British taxpayer is subsidizing this racket, and having their own wages suppressed as a thanks for funding this racket.