To be worried about emigration

[YourOpenNavyAnt]

Our neighbours, 2 highly skilled Indian immigrants, who have been in the UK for 8 years are emigrating to another country. He’ll get an 50% pay increase for doing the same job in another country, plus a lower housing costs. According to him, a sizeable cohort of his friends, also want to leave the UK.

I have two cousins who have spent £10000s for their children to study for a masters in another country to make it easier for them gain the right to work.

A colleague’s children (both junior doctors) have both migrated to Australia, with no plans to return. Another colleague’s daughter (a dentist) has moved to New Zealand for 6 months, to determine if she wants to settle permanently.

I have a large circle Aussie friends and acquaintances from my time living in London and most (8-10 people) have either returned or are planning to return. These are people who’ve lived here for 10+ years and have British citizenship but they view the UK as being in terminal decline.

Has anyone else noticed this trend? Is this country really that shit?

You may have noticed that we had a dry spring, which warmed quickly, and then a long hot summer which has affected crops. I'm old enough to remember 1976 when we were moving thousands of gallons of water every few days for the cattle, and watering the veg with our washing up and bath water.

I think the people who are able to leave or have qualifications and a bit of money aren’t bothered that it is expensive to live in some of the countries mentioned. There is much more to this than the cost of living. People are prepared to pay tax and higher prices when they can see that society is functioning and it feels safe. It feels as though the UK is in a downward spiral unfortunately. I too am encouraging mine to leave if they want to.

I'll be encouraging mine to leave but mainly because this country has become a gerontocracy. We seem to deliberately make life difficult for the young. It's difficult for them to be able to afford homes, employers dont want to train them ( and would rather rely on immigration) The student loan system is a graduate tax but just for young graduates and has punishing rates of interest added on so that many people would have paid back what they borrowed but will still owe thousands because of the interest payments. It seems to be a system designed to devalue and demoralise graduates purely for the entertainment of people who want to bang on about graduates doing 'worthless' degrees and never paying back their student loans.

Labour have made the requirements for the Skilled Worked Visa stricter. The minimum salary threshold is rising significantly for many occupational categories.

Reddit is full of Indians on such visas panicking that they will have to return home soon as UK companies are becoming much less likely to sponsor such visas.

My cousin emigrated to Canada about 15 years ago. He says there has been a marked increase in racist attitudes particularly towards Indians who've moved to Canada within the last 5-10 years.

This is a common pattern in a lot of industrialised countries. Even the likes of Japan and Korea with quite low levels of immigration are starting to see demonstrations against foreigners. Those countries are two of the most racially homogenous in the world.

Changing the visa requirements is good but until we go back to companies having to find staff here first I don’t see that much changing. Presently foreign companies can make money out of finding staff from abroad by putting the cost of sponsorship onto the worker using loans or agencies and even making money renting accommodation to staff. They also prefer sponsored staff for many other reasons.

Great. So they do their training here and then bugger off.

I came from South Africa, along with my husband 27 years ago. We have loved living in the Uk, and have built a wonderful and very comfortable life through hard work. We thought we would retire here, but are now making plans to head back to SA.

UK used to be welcoming, positive, people were different, it’s not a nice place to live anymore…I would rather take my chances in a country with huge crime levels than spend the rest of my life in a country with so much hatred for outsiders.

I believe the country is in managed terminal decline, as in deliberate. If I had no family here and I didn't care about my heritage, and I didn't care about where I lived, I'd have left years ago. I'd probably be living in Florida.

Yup. It come down to that

I agree re in a state of a decline. I’d love to leave too if I didn’t have family ties here.