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 don't think Boris will be PM.

If we Brexit, it is important to remember that we do not have to follow the Norway model. We can negotiate something else. EU will play hardball of course, but we have to as well. Negotiation is all about everyone getting at least something they wanted, but not everything. The Remainers keep saying that it will not be possible to negotiate differently, but that is a scare tactic.

There is also some muddying of the waters in the term 'EU migrant'. It appears that anyone who migrated to an EU country and after a few years changed nationality is being referred to as an EU migrant. For me, an EU migrant is a person from one of the European countries who joined the EU.

It is not a person who came from outside of Europe, and is now referred to as 'EU migrant.'

If I were the EU, and some too big for its boots country made a huge fuss and upped and left, I would make it as tough as possible for them, if only to stop other countries from thinking about doing the same.

I'd make trade hideously expensive, I'd make visas compulsory, I'd make them accept free movement anyway if they wanted to do any dealings at all....

The EU is massive, and we're one poxy little country on the outskirts.

Housing crisis - its the immigrants occupying all our houses
Not the international offshore companies holding UK real estate as a commodity and inflating prices
Not the multiple home owners with a second home.
Not the land lords with buy to let properties they rent out at ridiculous rates.

The NHS - its the immigrants using all our services
Not the poor state of the health of British people who make poor lifestyle choices
Not the aging population of the country
Not the fact that proportionately we have cut our national spending on health back to levels which are far below the rest of Europe
Not the fact we drink to excess more than anyone else in the EU and alcohol is responsible for what percentage of A&E admissions???

Food - Its the immigrants eating it all
Not our supermarkets that dominate food production and buying
Not our taste in exotic or out of season produce
Not our wasteful nature
Not our taste for snacks and fast food

Schools - Its the immigrants taking all our places
Not the planners who have had 5 years to see there has been a boom in the birth rate and did feck all to increase capacity despite it being bloody obvious that there was going to be a bit of an issue with children born in the UK.
Not the creation of academies in areas where there was no need for a new school and the closure of schools in areas where there was a shortage.

Employment - Its the immigrants taking all our jobs and not enough of them are skilled
Not the pushing of university education and a snotty attitude to apprenticeships and trades for the last 20 years which is only just being beginning to change.
Not the gap in skills this created meaning there was a market for lots of 'polish plumbers' to come an establish themselves here
Not the fact that we can't get enough British born NHS staff. And I don't mean doctors. I mean care workers.
Not the fact that net migration has increased, because the biggest change has been less BRITS moving abroad

Terrorism - Its the Immigrants
Not the British Born extremists who blew up the underground, or are going off to Syria for a holiday
Not an issue we had prior to 9/11 and we like to forget called Northern Ireland

Crime - its the Immigrants
Not the Brits. Nope there are no Brits in UK jails. There's no room for them anyway as they are stuffed full of immigrants who we are not allowed to deport.
Not our poor mental health provision
Not our dreadful track record of rehabilitation

And then there are the other little issues:

All EU nationals will have to have a work permit to ensure they are skilled enough.
How much is this system going to cost to run, enforce and manage? I guess it will create a few British jobs.
However will this also mean we will have to apply for work and education visa to work in Europe, therefore making it likely to further reduce the number of Brits working in Europe. And making our net migration figures worse in the process.

Are we going to put a wall up between Northern Ireland and the Republic to keep out all these immigrants?
Do we think this will be very good for national security or cause something of a domestic political issue?

Nope, closing the drawbridge to Fortress Britain and having a set figure or quota so we can all see that immigration is under control will magically solve all the UK's problems and no other strategies or thinking are needed.

We will be able to do this, and maintain trade agreements with the EU, even though the EU has enforced rules about movement of people on Non-EU partners of Norway and Switzerland. Even though the timing is a bit rubbish with a bit of a refugee issue going on. There will be no resentment or trying to push the problem onto us as part of negotiation. At all.

There is no point in talking about an 'acceptable figure'. It is unenforceable. We are dependant on immigration at levels that would be deemed 'unacceptable' to the virtually every Brexiter.

We would be better to spend our energy and money looking at how to solve problems rather than looking at someone to blame - who isn't actually to blame for most of them anyway.

Solutions which include investiment in over seas projects in poor areas in the EU, to give the locals more opportunities for employment so they don't have to move to the UK to find work in dreadful conditions in the first place.

Oh. Wait.
What's the EU Regional Development Fund?
That would be, the fund to 'strengthen economic and social cohesion in the European Union by correcting imbalances between its regions'.

Ah Feck. You've got me.

Yep, you are right, I take it back. I admit it.
We need to Leave the EU to get rid of all the migrant workers. Then Britain can be Great again.

Winter I saw that programme too. His dad wasn't convinced he was determined to be PM though.

Just sayin' ...

There are two things to consider, who is leaving vs who is coming and if those who come plan to stay and raise families in the UK.

Then of course there is the sticky issue that an increase in unskilled workers drives wages down further and perpetuates a two tier society. I might be in the top tier income wise but I don't think it's right to further depress the wages of the lower tiers of our society.

I've seen posts on here referring to the underclass and how they are too lazy to take these jobs. I don't think its that they are too lazy. I think the real problem is that it's easier and often financially better for them to stay unemployed than it is to take a zero hour contract paying minimum wage.

IMO the underclass in the UK is a product of the policies put in place by our elected officials. Put the right incentives in place and you will see changes to that underclass.

Red the Leavers don't want to stop immigration, just control it.

Would you advise any upper limit to EU immigrant numbers?

Here's an interesting piece from someone who went undercover to look at the impact of migration on small town Britain.

He takes apart the myth that Brits are lazy - rather than native Brits have higher minimum standards for the type of work they'll do, and simply won't put up with the back-breaking work and poor conditions.

www.ibtimes.co.uk/what-working-undercover-factory-taught-me-about-eu-migration-1561735

This raises some questions if we were to leave. Who would do this? It's unlikely Brits would immediately find such work more attractive. Either employers will be forced to make it more attractive - for example by paying more, and being pushed to raise employment standards - or people will be coerced into taking it through further punitive measures in the benefits system.

The former raises inflation, but the public's appetite for the latter is close to breaking point.

As several people have already noted, if we want to get trade deals we'd need to accept free movement. But as we won't have a strong negotiating hand that could easily be a deal that's worse than we currently have - eg with the right to impose transitional controls and limit access to benefits. So could have the perverse result of putting immigration UP, not bringing it down.

Surely the upper limit should be under the maximum that the country can absorb at any given time. And considering job market needs, housing availability, NHS and education capacity.
For this there would have to be tight control over who leaves (also important) and who stays.

Thinking about it, no controls, and leaving migration to market influence with no government regulation should be a right wing position. Along with lower taxes and more privatisations.
Control should be a left position. With higher taxes and key infrastructures and services under state control.
Interesting contradiction.

The episodes of How To Get a Council House have been riveting.

All of you, tell me if the following makes you very uneasy.

A homeless Romanian family with 5 children have been staying a night with a local pastor – a splendid West Indian man who put the family up and made them an English breakfast the following morning. However, the family can only stay one night so they set about going to the council, which is the L.B. or Hounslow.

The lady there checks their papers, listens to their story and what the pastor knows. She is aghast at what the parents have done. The man was in England for a short time, returned to Romania and then upped sticks and he & wife + children travelled to England with no place to stay, no contacts, no job offer. They have been in England 2 days so far. But amongst his papers are forms for the transfer of education of the children to England.

Long story short, they return to the council offices this time with an interpreter, and it is established that they have actually registered for JSA. How on earth they expected to be contacted by the Job Centre is a mystery, because they have no cellphone, and without an address how is it possible to receive JSA?

Anyway, it has been decided to give them a 4 bedroom house. In the Hounslow area that would cost £2,000 a month, but council has sourced one in Birmingham for £750. They are given rail passes, keys to the property and sent on their way. They are told that Housing Benefit will continue for 3 months only, and if in that time he has not found work HB will stop. We see this family 5 weeks down the line …… he looks downcast and still has not found any work.

At the end of the programme, various people speak. It is clear that even the pastor does not think it was fair to give this family a house after being in the country 3 or 4 days. They made themselves intentionally homeless, but on the other hand they had had the presence of mind to register for JSA - and that small thing is what saved them! What do you think? A kick in the teeth for those British still rotting on the waiting list.

Rise in net figures is more to do with a decrease in emigrants than increase in immigrants (says report).

Net migration of EU citizens in latest figures was 184k (down from 191k last data release). 188k not EU.

Even if all EU but not British passports holders stopped coming to UK, there would still be almost 200,000 net non-citizen immigrants.

So how is the proposed point system supposed to work to "only get the world's best" unless the net migration target is raised to at least 250,000? Of which, many will naturally be EU citizens.

Not much will be achieved to reduce migration by voting to leave EU to cut migration. You need to campaign for much stricter migration-deterring measures than that.

Just to add, the Housing Director stated that there were tough rules about eligibility to get houses but it's clear that this is not so. We now have the burden of 7 mouths in Birmingham plus finding space on a GP register and schools. Life in Romania is very hard, but importing poverty is a very dubious and odd practice, especially as the man has no trade. He has improved his life for sure, but the UK has added supporting his family to our debt.

RedTooth
Housing. It's a simple sum .... if more people arrive they will need housing. It is not the obligation of the UK to keep building and building for either EU nationals or non-EU.

NHS. I have a senior position within an NHS Trust in central London. I hate to burst your bubble, but it IS the immigrant who is the biggest expense, especially Outpatient clinics which are more than 75% non-Brit.

The ageing patient is the one who has worked 9-5 and contributed, and once this 'backbone' of our social security system is reduced there will be far fewer contributors. In fact, there already is.

Terrorism. There are a great deal of terrorists and sympathisers who are living amongst us and are not British born such as Choudhary. It is they who inveigle the Brits with the seduction of being a jihadi.

Crime. Actually, it is a fact that our prisons - at least in the South East - do have a disproportionate number of foreign-born muslim men - 1 in 7 inmates are muslim, though muslims make up 1 in 20 Britons. Take at look at the Scrubs.

Well-written post, but fatally flawed because we do not have an obligation to build houses for anyone who wants to rock up to our door. In that programme I mention, there was just one Briton, everyone else was either EU or outside EU. The Briton was unsuccessful (of course).

Romania and Bulgaria are EU and receiving EU money. I think questions should be asked about why they are not supporting their own people.

You need to campaign for much stricter migration-deterring measures than that.

Or just bankrupt the country. There's no better deterrent.
Strong economies will always be attractive to migrants and frankly don't seem to suffer because of them. On the contrary.

You need to campaign for much stricter migration-deterring measures than that.

Would that be more likely to be successful by campaigning to the EU, or to the British government?

Immigration is a good thing?
This is London/Oxford.
Glad to see we have all these skilled workers helping out our economy.
Glad to see they have such a great standard of living when they get here.

I find the idea that the problems of the underclass, as they are so charmingly referred to, being caused by immigration breathtakingly naive. The issues relating to families who are now third generation unemployed are very complex and absolutely nothing to do with immigration.

LightstepPeter0

I'm curious, have you registered on MN in the last couple of weeks to specifically post about anti-immigration?

Bird of course not every problem with the underclass can be related to mass immigration from very poor countries.

However smaller charities who have tried in the past to help UK people who are very poor and struggling, (the charity is struggling too), have found themselves swamped with very poor people from Eastern European countries.

So, how much is there to go round? People at the bottom get less. Its a question of do you care if the UK person gets even less, or whether they should share their meager quantities with the poor from EE?

I say the UK governments first priority is to the poor of the UK ( please note I am NOT including - desperate refugees fleeing from war here, just EE)

I mean, when someone who is homeless - at the so called bottom of lifes heap, selling the Big Issue, says his life is even more shit due to the Roma begging community in London, does that mean anything to anyone? Because my heart sank and I felt for this man - when he said that.

I don't suppose this matters to many posters, I can totally understand the need and want to welcome all the poor people in the whole world' But I personally question, why our government has taken action, that has affected people like this Big Issue seller in a negative way?

I question why people running smaller charities have been over whelmed by the poor from other countries.

It all seems about face to be, upside down, crazy logic.

As several people have already noted, if we want to get trade deals we'd need to accept free movement

Once we leave we are in the stronger position and we would never accept total free movement of people, seeing as immigration is one of the BIG issues that has led us to this point.

Its ridiculous to keep saying this.

we will probably have very little choice but to accept a Norway deal

again!

In what way is the UK like Norway? We are nothing like Norway and we and Norway have different needs and wants at the point of new negotiation.

The issue with the man selling the big issue isn't the Roma people begging alongside him. Is that the level of our hopes for this man, that we want his begging to be less crowded.

Immigration is a good thing
This is the NHS
Glad to see we have all these skilled workers helping out our economy.
Glad to see they have such a great standard of living when they get here.

very poor people from Eastern European countries.

There is another perspective on this. Presumably most of those people would prefer to stay in their homes and near their families and relatives.

The EU ideally would contribute towards development of those regions, so migration would likely diminish.
Not so different from people in struggling regions of the UK migrating towards big cities, which also have to deal with incoming national migrants taking the place of struggling people who have lived there all their lives.

red

In the nicest possible way I couldn't respond to such a black and white post.

Its a bit silly.

Its like - have immigrants ruined the NHS.

No, however if the NHS has massive staff shortages, incl for instance mid wives, which they did back in 2006/2007 - do you think the government of the time, did the right thing to lift working restrictions to Poland and therefore encourage hundreds of thousands of new people here who....will...at some point use the NHS, the baby boom was largly fueled by foreign born mothers.

Do we blame the immigrant?

No, but i have never heard anyone blame the immigrant !

Do we blame the government - YES. But we still have a situation, where - we have more and more people using a service that we can never give provision for.

I dont understand why this is so hard to understand.

If you have a shop, you have an idea of what stock is being purchased and you buy accordingly. You cant do this, if one day you get 1 customer the next you get 10000!

There is another perspective on this. Presumably most of those people would prefer to stay in their homes and near their families and relatives

Of course, where I am - many generation have come over, and friends, and huge networks sprung up very quickly.