Where do we draw the line?

[Olderkids]

I appreciate that we rely very heavily on immigrants to fulfil many roles in our society and support those people who come here to work and make a valuable contribution in our country.
My question is to those of you who are not concerned about illegal arrivals and label those of us who are concerned as racist:
At what point will YOU say enough is enough?

I'd say enough has passed, tbh

We reached ‘enough’ in 2005ish.

If 8 million migrants is not enough to ‘fill key jobs’, then what is? Is immigration even working?

But it's not illegal immigrants we are relying on. The ones we really need are doctors and nurses in the NHS, care home workers and people helping to harvest crops. These are all jobs British people don't want to do in enough numbers. Possibly builders and tradespeople too.

Of course they want to do them!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly147075p2o.amp

I work in corporate parenting and all of our agency workers are immigrants and they are fantastic so i'm all for it in a selfish way!

I totally agree that enough is enough. Enough pretending that desperate people in dinghies are the problem when it’s our own government that shut down every safe route they could have used and whose involvement in various overseas conflicts over the years have fueled people's need to flee.

No human being is illegal. People don’t cross the Channel in a rubber boat because it’s a laugh, they do it because we slammed the door on every legal alternative, tore up our EU cooperation agreements with Brexit, and then we act shocked when they find another way.

Having concerns about immigration isn’t racist but let’s not kid ourselves, a lot of what’s being pushed right now isn’t concern, it’s scapegoating dressed up as toxic patriotism. The far right loves to stoke fear, because fear wins votes and the likes of Reform are capitalising on it with the stirring up of of views that definitely are racist and are emboldening their supporters to openly act in ways that are racist too.

Essentially, if people don't want to have their views labelled as racist then maybe they shouldn't express racist views?

Hi Zarah.

Who?

I don't agree we need migrants to do these roles.

We had tradespeople, we had carers, we certainly had Drs, nurses and teachers.

The influx of massive immigration led to stagnation of wages, lack of training of our own people in those roles and a lazy attitude from employers and government that immigration was cheaper than investment in our own people.

In fact the mess we're in now is a combination of over welfarisation, far beyond what we can afford with a total lack of investment in public goods that would make the country better for everyone in it. We have focused on individuals and not society as a whole.

The UK has been asset stripped and flooded with people who compete for resources such as housing and jobs.

We now have basic goods that should have been public - water, energy, health, transport in private ownership and we are all paying through the nose for very poor service.

People do want to do those jobs - the employers don't want them - they want cheap already trained people who have low expectations and will accept poor conditions.

In covid many people offered to harvest crops - the farmers refused because they would be too slow, and the farmer would be forced to pay them minimum wage for a poor pick rate.

Carers used to have better conditions - not split shifts or to use their own transport.

@user1471538275 but we do need them. In my area my friend is a social worker for adults and works closely with care agencies. Jobs advertised for months on end and nobody applied, or they did and lasted a week. There’s been a recruitment drive overseas and most of the care workers are African. If they didn’t come who would do these vital jobs?

I fully support you asking the question, how much immigration is too much. I think part of the current febrile climate is due to people with concerns being shut down and dismissed. In a similar way to the trans issue - the attempt to push self ID through whilst shutting down valid debate and concerns - produced extreme anger and resentment, when it didn’t need to be that way.

I feel this issue is the same. The general public need robust, independent facts and projections about immigration, which most don’t have and there’s a lot of emotion and lack of knowledge. And a healthy dose of actual racism for some of those expressing these concerns.

For me, in my community, I have no concerns about the numbers of migrants, I like multiculturalism, I have no sense of the amount of people taking anything away from my family or others in my community. I want a world where we help others who are struggling. So I don’t have a figure in mind of how much is too much, but in my own personal experience we don’t even feel close. But I appreciate that others don’t feel the same so we need to talk about it and make decisions as a wider society.

https://nhscampaign.org/issues/staff-shortages/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/workforce/medical-staffing-in-the-nhs?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Vacancies are high though - although clearly not for new graduates.

Doctors are leaving the NHS due to stress, working conditions, pay etc.

From the BMA link above: “The NHS would not be able to function without international medical graduates (IMGs), who provide an invaluable contribution. As well as numbers, IMGs bring a diverse range of skills, knowledge and experience to their medical practice in the UK, which has been beneficial to patients and the NHS.”

If they are receiving no applications it is likely because they are terrible employers with far too high workload and expectations of their social workers and insufficent reward.

We need to actually pay and treat people who do vital roles in the UK better not bring people in from elsewhere who do not understand the NHS, our cultural expectations or our legal framework.

We don't have enough nurses, doctors, teachers or social workers because we have not trained them or treated them well - they exist in our country, and if treated better would return.

Sticking plasters on gaping wounds won't help, it will make it worse, it is making it worse.

Is the NHS getting better with the overseas workforce? With carers that have insufficient language and continually give wrong medication or cannot access help from outside agencies?

My question is to those of you who are not concerned about illegal arrivals and label those of us who are concerned as racist:

This kind of thinking and way of speaking is what is causing division.

I don't know anyone who wants uncontrolled immigration.

I don't know anyone who doesn't want some kind of control or effective system of dealing with people who enter the UK.

Who do you know OP who isn't in any way concerned about uncontrolled immigration or the people who arrive here in boats?

There are some people who try to be balanced about it. I hope I am. I want a better, quicker system of dealing with immigrants. I want a fair route into the country for people who are able to work here or are in desperate need and that keeps our country's safety and best interest at heart. I want a system that benefits our country and have written to my MP to that effect.

Then there are people who aren't balanced. Who are just angry. Who put up flags on motorway bridges.

And there are racists.

Reasonable people can see the difference.

Carers were treated appallingly in covid, the only group to be forced to have vaccines and sacked if they chose bodily autonomy.

They moved on - to retail work or admin where pay and conditions were better.

If they can't find carers, simple economics - supply and demand mean they need to pay better/improve working conditions.

But no - instead they just trawl overseas for people who are desperate to come here - and are prepared to do care work to get here (at least for a short while)

So if you want a quicker system to help people claim asylum, presumably with safe routes in their home countries from where they can claim, what limits would you impose on such a system? In theory, there would be hundreds of millions who might qualify. Would they all be able to apply? And if not, how would you decide who was and wasn’t able?

I think this is what OP is actually asking.

I was specific in saying that I would want a system "that keeps our country's safety and best interest at heart and benefits our country".

I am a gardener, not a politician or economist so can't give you an exact number.

Our best interests would be to invent a Time Machine and go back to 2005 and halt immigration there.

Why 2005 @Anthempart2 ?

You put it very well

Well we have plenty of jobs in the care sector so if they were processed quickly or allowed to work maybe they could be of good use. I imagine most of those young men would work their arses off given the chance. I don't believe they all have valid asylum claims and many are economic migrants but I don't blame them, we all try to do better in life right? Also, how shit must it be where they come from for them to up and leave their families and spend money they don't have to put their lives in danger to get here?

I don't think all people who are worried about "illegal" (I don't like that term and prefer undocumented) are racists. I do think they are misinfomed about the impact of them on society. I think there are much bigger issues in society that we need to focus on.

The racism issue for me is where some people say they are all criminals when they are not. They then pretend to.be concerned about the safety of women and girls when they have never been marching the streets about the 2 million kids living in households with domestic abuse going on or the women killed every week by a man.

How useful will a bunch of mostly young men from Afghanistan and similar countries be in the care sector? Rather than propping up the population Ponzi, why not recruit from the million unemployed young people we already have? And before you say about them not wanting to do it, I’m fairly sure doing it for a Visa isn’t great either

Easy to say when you’re privileged enough not to risk your life going to a country that is safer than where you left…

Alot of the supposed "need" for immigration is companies (and the UK government) not willing to shell out to actually train people.

I'm an example. I tried making a career shift into software, with excellent qualifications in a technical subject, but was told I lacked experience (and would therefore require training). Instead the company I was interested in (a leading retail bank) imports more and more Indian nationals who already have several years of software experience in their own countries. There needs to be some balance where we are at least training some UK talent, rather than just greedily hiring already trained people from other countries.

Similarly in Medicine. I'm in my fourties now, but I remember how tremendously competitive it was to get into medical school, with extremely smart people I knew with all A's getting rejected. There were not enough (funded!) course spaces. And yet we claim not to have enough doctors. The maths is not mathsing. We just don't want to bear the cost of actually training people to do jobs.

And I also wonder how fair it is for the countries where these highly skilled workers are poached from. They have actually gone to the expense of training people, who are then just "poached" from them because of the uk's higher status, leaving THEM with insufficient doctors, nurses etc. I wish they could charge the UK for poaching their skilled labour. Then there would be an economic incentive for the uk government to actually train people.