Latest immigration stats released & they are gigantic again

[BritBrit]

The final immigration stats from the ONS before the EU referendum have been released with immigration for 2015 at 630,000.

-630,000 immigrants came to the UK
-Net immigration was 333,000 up 20,000
-EU immigration was 270,000
-Romanian & Bulgarian immigration tripled in 2015
-42% of EU immigrants did not have a job when coming to the UK
-EU immigrants took more new British jobs (224,000) than British workers (185,000)

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/migrationstatisticsquarterlyreport/may2016

I'm not sure what your definition of gigantic is but 630,000 immigrants out of a population of approx 65 million is less than 1%.....

You do know that the world population is growing? Right? Right?

There is going to be a strain everywhere.

The UK population is aging. Its increasingly unhealthy due to lifestyle rather than poverty. We will have a period where there is a lot of elderly people, so we actually do need a certain level of health fit younger people to support this. Economic migration is actually a good solution to the problem.

The thing is we have no effective strategy about population maintenance when it comes to the birth rate anymore than we do about immigration on a global scale. This is not a national problem but an international problem.

Do you think education and improving living conditions elsewhere in the world or Shutting The British Gates is the solution that's in the best long term interests of the country.

I'll give you a clue. We can't Shut The Gates. Its impossible. If you think we can, you are wrong. And until you see you are wrong the problem will persist even longer.

We can't as a country budget for these extra people because we don't know in advance how many are going to choose to come.

We can't as a country budget for the extra people we do know are on their way and are on our national birth statistics, because we have fuckwits in government planning. Never mind thinking that a bit of slack in the system might not be a bad idea. Or dispersing the problem evenly around the country somehow.

How about the guys who work in the dozens of car washes that have popped up in my town? Do you think these people are net contributors to this country? Really?

How about each British Worker is only responsible for British 'spongers' and each Non-British Worker in the UK is only responsible for each Non-British 'sponger' in the UK. Would that satisfy you?

You see the problem with this, is with Non-British Workers being net contributors, then the British 'spongers' would be the ones to suffer more than the Non-British 'spongers'. Which is perhaps why we don't discriminate between British and Non-British 'spongers', because overall we end up better off....

Or is it you are saying that only Non-British 'spongers' are the problem? The British 'spongers' are a different type of 'sponger' and not a threat to our Britishness.

Why don't we just sort out 'Crime' and 'Unemployment'?

we quite clearly have a plague of 'spongers' out there and I am in no way using the term to highlight nasty attitudes

To be honest big business are the ones doing rather nicely out of all this. They get away with paying many migrants only minimum wage and fiddling with contract terms to get the max out of them whilst just remaining legal. I've seen this with my DH work, it is legal but they keep cutting any perks that they have more and more. The company that now owns them is American and the profits are the all important thing to them. They couldn't care less that these people have to live 10 to a house. Personally I do as these people are some of our friends, we see them get more and more disillusioned that they often come here and cannot move their lives on in terms of opportunities, to buy a home to get on. Some of them end up going home because it just doesn't work out. My blood boiled when I saw the Sports Direct documentary, that they could treat human beings with such little respect, but they do, and all in the name of profit. Yes we are benefiting by lower prices but sometimes at the expense to others quality of life. But as my DH says, when he talks to some of them he realises that where some of them come from, things are so much worse this is better than what they could expect in their home countries. That is what I find sad as I thought that joining the EU was supposed to improve things for them, but it hasn't.

Yes , We have houses packed with EE men hot bedding around here too. It's not nice to see people exploited like this.

It's even worse when they are your friends and nice people and you feel absolutely crap for them because yes everybody deserves a chance. At the start when people came over in 2004 the first lot of people actually had better chances to get established and many of those have gone on to better things but as time has worn on the big firms have cottoned on and you can practically see them rubbing their hands and saying "its like a licence to print money". If anybody gets to see the dcoumentary about Sports Direct try and watch it.

I once applied for a job with them (in the design dept) but it was too far for me. I'm now glad I didn't, and I've noticed that they have a very high turnover in that dept too!

I'm for immigration but too aware it seems to have a very dark underbelly.

sportinguista, by all means then, let's campaign further for a higher minimum wage applicable to everyone, british and non british. The 'dark underbelly' you describe has to do with extreme capitalism, not immigration.

Normandy
I'm not sure what your definition of gigantic is but 630,000 immigrants out of a population of approx 65 million is less than 1%
Well, net migration is 330,000, so around .5%. That means to say we need .5% more houses, schools, hospital beds etc. Who's going to pay for all that?

The question we should be asking is do we need (net migration) 330,000 people coming on to the country per annum? The immigration figure in most other countries is determined by the need of the labour force for example if the country is short of doctors, then yes, we need immigrants.

Zorion
They're either starting their own businesses (in which case they're actually creating jobs),
Creating a company that doesnt result in exports does not make the country richer. For example, suppose immigrants decided to set up estate agents, and supposing they were very successful and they doubled the amount of estate agents in the UK, having more estate agents will not result in more houses being sold. It will result in more competition in the market, the income for house sales being spread amongst more agents and therefore the amount of money being generated by house sales being diluted. Your average estate agent will end up making less money as profits are spread more thinly. This is just very basic economics.

or they're skilled labourers taking jobs there just aren't enough trained British people to take (such as doctors or surgeons), Yes, immigration should be on an as needed basis.

or they're unskilled labourers taking the jobs that you don't want (like toilet cleaning or washing dishes). If an immigrant with no contacts, no skills and no local knowledge of the language and/or culture can steal your job,
maybe, just maybe, you're shit at your job."
Nice contempt there for the low waged Brit.
People on low wage jobs get lots of in work benefits and are a loss to the economy, this includes immigrants.

Creating a company that doesnt result in exports does not make the country richer.

It still does.

Even if they are estate agents, they also need houses built for them to live and purchase goods. Those houses and goods still need to be produced.

And if those immigrants are mostly whole families going in (or close relatives of existing recent immigrants), it means that they are settling in the UK, it reduces the amount of money sent abroad in relation to the amount spent internally, so win win for the UK.

Lweji, you are missing the point. People coming onto the country and competing with existing businesses do not make the country richer. It dilutes the client base. The only way a country becomes wealthier is when its exports exceed its imports. It is exactly the same as a business; in order to be profitable it needs an income which exceeds its expenditure. What the UK needs is creativity, inventiveness, producing these things and exporting them anywhere in the world that results in money flowing into the UK and making the country richer.

The country will not get richer simply by having more people living and working within it. Simple, irrefutable macro economics.

You are missing the point.

People coming in compete and contribute. They don't exist in a vacuum. They need and pay for housing, food, education, and they pay taxes.

A lot of people send money out of the country and live here very cheaply.

Mostly when their families stay behind. Which makes it a good thing to let the families join the first immigrants.

Although it could be argued that by having more money they'd be able to purchase goods from the UK and thus increase exports. :)

AnnaForbes you are also missing the point. People who move to the uk don't move here because 'the U.K. needs them too' or to 'make the country richer'. They come here either because they need to or because they want to. How the U.K. responds is a separate question. I am sick and tired of hearing everyone talking about this as if all that is at stake is the 'financial contribution' of immigrants or whether they 'drain the economy'. These are people ffs not numbers.

People coming in compete and contribute. They don't exist in a vacuum. They need and pay for housing, food, education, and they pay taxes

So 330,000 people arrive in the next 12 months and we assume there is an average of 2.4 children per family, that's 137,000 additional homes just for immigrants before the general population increase. At an average of £200,000 per house would cost £27.4 billion pounds. First of all, who will pay for all this? Secondly, those extra 137,000 need other infrastructure such as roads, schools, hospitals, amenities, etc. Who will pay to have these built?

Stilllovingmysleep, yes, they are people but the stark reality is the infrastructure needs to be paid for to accommodate them.

They come here either because they need to or because they want to
Please dont conflate refugees (the need tos) with the economic migrants (the want tos). I'm talking about economic migrants and people shouldnt be able to come here "just because they want to", it is unrealistic to think this is a sustainable policy.

However, both the need tos and the want tos need accommodation, services and facilities and these do all need to be paid for.

Those thousands are 0.5% of the population.
And immigration means population growth. It's the countries with negative growth that are struggling because their older (unproductive) population is increasing in relation to the active population.
Immigrants already go in with education, or at least fully grown and ready to start wealth production, and have cost nothing to the UK. Cheaper than young people raised in the UK and ready to enter the workforce.

Disagree, some of them bring in their elderly who have not contributed plus they will age to themselves. Some people work cash in hand on building sites or car washes.

Why does everyone believe that leaving means that immigration will stop?

Why will it? How will it?

We are going to have problems with housing in or out of the EU.
We are going to have problems with the NHS in or out of the EU.
I could go on.

Yet the only solution that is on the table is, oh if we leave it will improve.

The fact is there is no plan to improve or solve these issues from either side. Do we think this is good enough?

We are being distracted by things that are not really going to solve our national problems.

LWEJI

And immigration means population growth. Well that's obvious! Population growth doesnt mean a country will get richer,. Here's an analogy for example a company employees 1000 people and then decides to employ a further 100. The company has more people but is it better off?

A measure of a country's wealth is its income divided by its population. i.e. GDP per capita. So where 2 countries that have the same income with one having half the population of the other, the country with the smaller population is better off than the country with the large population.

Here's an interesting stat. In the top 10 highest earning countires GDP only one is in the EU (Luxembourg pop. 550,000) Non-EU, European nations in the top ten are Switzerland (pop. 8.2 million and Norway (pop. 5.1 million).

1. Qatar
2. Luxembourg
3. Singapore
4. Brunei
5. Kuwait
6. Norway
7. UAE
8. St Merino

10 Switzerland and Honk Kong joint

So your theory that large populations make a country richer isnt borne out by this evidence. However, if you can prove otherwise, please do so.

Surely it would reduce it somewhat if there was no free movement

So Redtoothbrush you are in favour of EU immigration? Unlimited EU immigration. Why not the rest of the world?

Why does everyone believe that leaving means that immigration will stop?

Nobody believes this, because it isn't true. But leaving will mean that immigration can be controlled, and therefore the associated provision for housing, public services, etc. can be properly planned. Reduce the oversupply of cheap labour, reduce the unemployment rate, reduce the welfare dependency.

Economies of (non_EU and with their small populations) Switzerland and Norway grew faster in 13 years to 2015 than UK, Germany, France, Italy (which shrank).

Redtoothbrush, immigration problems are not going to vanish overnight. However, the only way we can control our border is by leaving the EU. If we remain, we will have an open door policy to 550 million migrants plus the populations of the countries awaiting accession. We have passport checks but not border control, they are very different things and the remainers often conflate the two. We will remain the first choice of many Europeans because we have a comparatively strong economy and (currently) less unemployment.

In the top 10 highest earning countires GDP only one is in the EU (Luxembourg pop. 550,000)

& interestingly 44.5% of Luxembourg's population are foreign nationals, so immigration hasn't done them any economic harm.