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?

I guessed you wouldn't....

Is that ongoing? If it’s needed for these reasons should population keep going up?

She hasn’t stoked hatred though. She specifically mentioned she was only talking about population numbers.

This is exactly the problem she raised in her OP. People (like you, sorry) CANNOT separate the economics from emotive subjects like race and religion, which is why we’re sleepwalking into a crisis that everyone’s too scared to talk about.

OP YANBU.

I don't know what the numbers are. However I do know that I live in an area not too far away from where I lived 30 years ago.

You can't fail to notice roads are much busier, it's harder to get away from people when walking, basic services can't cope with the number of people, houses are more crowded than they used to be and on smaller plots.

If we hadn't messed up the housing market by allowing BTL and then making it worse with the pension freedom act so lots of people at 55 took out cash and bought BTL. I know this is all been clamped down on now but house prices are just far too high now compared to incomes. We would have been far wiser to stick to what was working 30 years ago. More babies would have been born here as families could afford to survive on one wage and buy a house. (I know it is more complicated than that for example pension annuities stop being viable because interest rates were slashed after 2008 etc so thus people turned to BTL)

The biggest problem I see now is nobody will just stand up and go STOP. Close the gate now. We are full. Then start to fix all the problems.

If we did that we could start to sort out the current position and eventually in 10 years or whenever we could evaluate if we are still full or if we now have further capacity.

There are some areas that are just costing the goverment a fortune and they don't add any value and need to be addressed.
These are amongst others-
1 Council paying for temporary housing for months/years at a time as no where to put people entitled to help. We either need to build council houses or take away the entitlement of these people so the goverment is no longer paying a fortune to private landlords or hotels or whatever.

2 Immigrants in hotels. Just obvious. Basic barracks would be fine. I hope they go through with this. I suspect they won't.

3 Social care for elderly. I know from personal experience after watching how my own elderly mum was handled. She had attendance allowance £400 per month, carers in 4 times a day paid for by council. I don't know how much the council would pay to the carer agency for these staff but quite frankly they are a waste of money. Now there was the odd one that was good but many of them were young girls clearly just doing the job for the sake of a job (okay can't blame them for that). However my mum was meant to have say a half hour visit. They would come in and ask my mum if she needed help with anything. They would make my mum a cup of tea and occassionally empty the kitchen bin. There was loads of stuff they weren't allowed to do. Most of the time they left after 5 mins as my mum said no she didn't need washed (even though she did).

So actually i did most of it (daughter) which meant I gave up working for 5 years and never went back to work. We either need to pay for these carers but have them actually do the caring or accept this system is very expensive and not really working. This has got to be why councils are struggling so much with these huge bills.

4 Benefits - enough said on this. We all know how the bill has increased by spades. We can't afford it. Full stop. If your kitchen cupboard is empty you don't feed next doors kids for free to be nice do you.

5 NHS - we either make people pay an amount to use it which would help fund it and stop people being so wasteful or we scrap it and just have a funded insurance based system.

6 Goverment Debt - much like people who find themselves in a spiral of credit card debt our goverment is using a ton of it's money in interest payments and worst of all continuing to increase it's debt each month. Where does anyone think this is going to go. For anyone who has got their selves overextended you will realise this is a bad place to be.

Okay so I have digressed but how sensible to just say stop, close the gates. Now start working on all the above issues. We either have council houses or we stop with the obligation to house people. We can't afford it etc

It's very hard to assess and start to fix problems when it's a moving target ie numbers coming in keep going up. We have to 'stop the rot' and then start to repair/replace as necessary not patch things up while the roof is still leaking and bills to the trades are going up and up.

I am just interested, not invested.

What is it you think should happen, always increasing population?

For the health of wild animals and birds and for the benefit of having fresh air and water and being able to grow our own food, there always NEEDS to be miles and miles and miles of countryside.
The planet can not sustain unlimited population growth.

Citizens do not want to sustain unlimited population growth. They responsibly choose to have fewer children. It's unfair to keep consuming finite resources and developing countryside into concrete.
People in countries with poorer facilities need to curb their own populations until they CAN provide peaceful and meaningful infrastructure - education, homes and healthcare.

It is okay for citizens to decide how many people they want to sustain long term.

Exactly-and I value our countryside, I value our farmers being able to produce food.i value the need for space, I value the need to have a lower population density. Being more self sufficient in resources for our own population. is the way to go.

Staying in someone else’s house is a privilege not a right. I wouldn’t rent out a 3bed house to 50 people because there’s room to squeeze in 20 mattresses in the living room. Unless you’re going to be good tenants, and keep being good tenants, positively contribute, live by the house rules and I don’t need that property for my own use - fine, but as soon as one of those things are broken - I don’t want you in my house.

The peak was in 2023, immigration has come down ever since.

Have you seen any reports predicting a rise in net migration?

The top places for emigration are Canada and Australia, where they have a points system. Thats whats called controlled immigration. So I guess the people who are already living there are happy with that. That's all we are asking for too. Controlled immigration.

Why aren't you posting a link to the ONS proof of the 11 millions immigrants since 2000 @Uggbootsforever ???

Maybe we need policies like Dubai or the Netherland or even China that looks to grow the size of the country. We could dam the wash for example or create a new county off the side of North Yorkshire by reclaiming some of the North sea - I'd call it Humpshire since that is what it would look life.

Sorry, not clear on the question - is what ongoing?

The health surcharge (currently just over £1k per year for most visa holders - visitors/holidaymakers excepted - and around £750 for student visas) is ongoing, yes. And most visa routes have the "no recourse to public funds" condition applied, meaning they are not eligible for any benefits.

Also interesting to note that net migration significantly increased after Brexit, which was supposed to have the opposite effect (if the pro Brexit politicians were to be believed)

I can separate the economics, thanks. I live in London, a city that runs on immigrant workers and the taxes generated here prop up the rest of the country. What I can't separate is the idea that immigrants must be treated as less than pond algae because they are non-British.

You can fix the problem with people coming in.

Fed of people wanting better public services but are against changing the tax system. There are massive problems with how we collect tax and who we tax. If some of these were resolved we could have much better public services.

Also people banging on about the environmental impact of immigration but they won't support green policies!🙄

Making people pay upfront for the NHS is a batshit idea - do you want us to be like America.. where health becomes a business rather than what is needed at point of need!

That’s simply wrong though, isn’t it. In 2000 the UK population was just over 59m, and the latest numbers have it at 67.6m (2022). 8m more is a lot less than 11m, and despite that we had, until Labour trashed the economy, what economists would describe as full employment.

The issue isn’t that you’ve got too many people in the UK, it’s that the economy has stalled and people are worse off. If everyone felt better off then this far left/right obsession with immigration would never have reached the absurd level that it has.

The trouble is the disaffected individuals used to be Labour voters, though now The Party can’t take their vote for granted they are saying out loud what the Westminster party has always thought. They have always thought that their ‘working class’ voters were slightly thick, slightly bigoted and easily manipulated for their own ends. They used that to their advantage for decades, but now others like Farage are using the methods they used they are denigrating them. A more cynical manipulation then abandonment of a class of voters is hard to find in recent history!

As bemoresloth has repeatedly posted Immigration numbers have fallen.

It peaked in 2023 to combat the 4-6% knock to GDP caused by Brexit.

I mean the essential line at the end of your post. If it’s essential does that need to continue and population will need to keep going up?

You’re looking at all the wrong numbers. You need to consider net migration and what it looks like in relation to population growth.

For example, what if the country’s current population growth was only supported by positive net migration, but the country is already heading towards population plateau and then decline by mid-century; what would your stance be then?

Because I can tell you that from where I’m sitting, that is exactly the situation that Scotland faces.

This is perhaps the most pathetic argument on here. It’s like you doing 200% of your target on one bumper year at work. Next year when they say you’ve done less than last year and completely ignore you’re still 175% of previous years that’s basically your argument. Utterly ridiculous

This is shocking in itself

Well, there’s nothing you or I can do about it. Surely you would know that? It’s down to the Government to ensure we have effective border controls in place. I would think that’s pretty obvious really 🤷‍♀️

From ONS -

Mid-year population estimate 2000 - 58,886,100
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/timeseries/ukpop/pop#:~:text=Table_title:%20Table%20Table_content:%20header:%20%7C%20Period%20%7C,%7C%20Period:%202002%20%7C%20Value:%2059365700%20%7C

Mid-year population estimate 2024 - 69,281,400
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/annualmidyearpopulationestimates/mid2024

Population growth resulted mostly from net international migration

Increase of 10,395,300 estimated, driven primarily by immigration. The projection is that we will hit 70m in 2025.

We decide the government! It’ll be Reform next because of this 1 issue. Crying shame

Thanks for your thoughts

We can't reverse the 2023 numbers, it happened.

Immigration will continue to happen, both to and from the UK