11 million immigrants since 2000. When I

[Uggbootsforever]

Sorry, it’s another immigration one.

I always see immigration discussed in terms of race, religion, who may or may not be a good fit for the UK, whether it’s by small boats - to be honest, this is not the biggest worry for me.

The biggest worry is the sheer increase in our population and how many people this country can reasonably accommodate. We are now 8th in Europe for population density - only behind Belgium and the Netherlands, and a handful of places like Vatican City and the Channel Islands. At present we have net migration of around 500,000 a year.

I’m worried that the key issues of overpopulation are being overlooked to make this conversation all about race. What about our pollution levels, wildlife habitats, flood risk, food security, infrastructure? Will this eventually be a polluted city state country? It seems to be heading that way.

Posters always say we need immigration, but we have already welcome 11 million since 2000. If that still isn’t enough; what is? Or do we just keep going?

You don’t see overpopulation as a problem that can exist?

You personally might not be. But we all know it’s the thin end of the wedge. And I still think the bigger problem is how we’ve been let down by successive governments not fixing the infrastructure. As I said in an earlier post, if you stopped immigration tomorrow things would still be sh*t for most people.

So we destroy the environment, elevate our flood risk, wipe out a few hundred species, pollute our air, continue the housing crisis all to ‘prop up an economy’ which despite net migration of nearly million a year is still failing?

.Nope, it's not that many, it's only 41 million.

I think they should be shit for a while. We owe it to future generations to take the hit for a longer term solution. Everyone on here bemoans the lack of long term thinking on behalf of the government but supports a population Ponzi scheme?

Look, yiu are just being massively manipulated. Let me spell it out for you:

• politicians have f**d up because they only look to short-term populism.
• Brexit happened. Crisis in supply chains.
• covid happened. When it was over, other countries recovered quickly. Not so much the uk.
• the Brexit deregulation means the uk becomes a heaven for money laundering, fuelling already spiralling supply chain driven cost of living
• government f***s it up a little bit more by increasing employer NI. Jobs market freezes and goes into decline. Except for manual jobs that only immigrants will do because brits don't like getting their hands dirty.
• politicians will not accept that thet chased populist lies over economic real-life, so they tell oriole like yiu ‘it’s the immigrants’. It’s a playbook as old as the hills.
• people like you have seen their quality of life go down as a result of bad political decisions. You need somebody to blame. You are easy prey for immigration conspiracy theories.

you are just one of millions who don’t think for themselves and so are easily manipulated. You should read the Financial Times instead of watching Googlebox tv or whatever reality show you watch.

According to Oxford's migration watch, net migration accounted for 65% of the total population increase between 2003 and 2024. Extrapolated to the period you are talking about (2000-2025), in which the population increased by 10.4 million, this is approximately 6.76 million net migration. Of which the vast, vast majority is legal migration, where most legal migrants have to pay a surcharge to access the NHS, have no recourse to public funds (I have been one of said legal migrants, and would have been unable to access benefits at all) and are overall net contributors to the economy.

I take your point OP about population growth, but I also believe that legal migration is essential to sustain the economy and public services and restricting or eliminating this will do far more harm than good.

Not what you’re really concerned about, is it?

I wonder if Ballerina has fallen off her chair on realising that the country has almost double the number of people than she thought. Maybe she gone to join Reform.

@Uggbootsforever I get your points, but can you post a link to the proof from the ONS that the UK has had 11 million immigrants since the year 2000?! (You said you saw it there...)

Coz I can't find this 'fact' anywhere. Not calling you a liar, (honestly,) I just can't see how it can be true.

What do you mean by "take the hit"? What are expecting that to look like?

I disagree. We’ve had shit for decades already. There are other better solutions. Reversing Breshit (Brexit) for a start might help.

Impossible. They don't want us back 😂

I don’t know why some people can’t discuss this without being childish.
For context, I’m descended from immigrants and my husband is an immigrant ( 20+ years here)
I hate Reform and Farage.
However, it’s clear from the net migration graphs in ONS that there has been a huge spike in the last couple of years. Anyone living in a city, using their local hospital or schools can’t fail to notice the increase in recent immigrants. I recently spent time in hospital and I’d say about a 3rd of the women on my ward needed a translator.
The reason for the huge spike is that right wing policy of the past 15 years has been to flood the country with cheap labour. Yes, we need some immigration, but in a controlled way, not floods of people, and their entire families, all from the same few places. Most countries are quite careful about how many new people they let in, and how fast-it’s not automatically racist to be concerned. Immigrants should be able to assimilate and contribute sonething.
As for work, nearly a million young people have none, and this is going to rise- a lot. We need to invest in the people already here, create actual public transport (which is not fit for purpose outside of London) invest in training and infrastructure, farming and health.
I’m so frustrated by the current government tinkering round the edges, actively screwing over farmers and small business. And I voted for them!

Going back into the EU would NOT stop or slow down immigration. Then again, leaving it hasn't worked either!

Who would blame them!! 😂

They would take us back but it might take some time.

Except the British aren't a race. We're a big mix-up of two thousand years of DNA being swirled about.

We might be a nation. And in that case, the implicit criticism is of that nation's characteristics - which is fine, I think, coming from a Brit. In the same way that you can slag off your own family, but you don't want anyone else doing it.

Net migration and a concern over population size are one and the same. In an ideal world we run a meritocracy where we would let in people who contribute and kick out people who don't but if the government was to start to talk about kicking out Brits there would be uproar - the days of transportation to the colonies are long gone.

This is really misleading. This number have to be measured against population growth, people dying, leaving, being born. The more accurate estimate would be population growth compared to what it would have been if there were no immigrants. I would imagine we would have a population decline with very high % of old people unable to work.

I think you're being somewhat disingenuous. If you didn't feel malice towards immigrants as anything but an homogenous group you wouldn't have started this thread. Stoking hatred of course affects them as individuals.

Crap public services that do the bare minimum.

Do you think a population of 70 million is too high for a relatively small island country?

How can they predict that immigration is going to fall when numbers of asylum seekers coming on boats are increasing? Hard to predict when we dont know when the figures are going to peak.

@BallerinaRadio
The population has increased by 11 million.

Our birth rate is falling.

Do the maths - we haven’t had that sort of increase from people having more babies, have we?

Why are you trying to discredit the data?

People can’t discuss and often refuse to accept when they are wrong or misinformed.. reminds me of Brexit.