This migrant problem is going to let Reform in isn’t it?

[EvangelicalAboutButteredToast]

Honestly it’s such a bloody nightmare. Reform are making a total hash of local government from what I’ve read, putting teenagers in charge of whole departments with no relevant experience. What are they going to do if they are elected to run a country!!!! I’m honestly terrified. Labour need to be seen to be actively doing something to quell the far-right momentum that’s gaining traction from ordinary folk. I’m amazed at the average, usually pretty sensible people around me who are now telling me they are going to vote Reform.

there was an interview I saw yesterday where the minister said that thousands of people were being deported regularly. The interviewer asked why there were no videos of this and she said there could be. Well let’s see it! It would absolutely help.

I live in Devon. I'm far more scared of Reform than "boat people". I live near a hospital and many of the ethnic minority residents in our neighbourhood are NHS employees. A significant minority of the children at DD's primary school speak languages other than English at home, but this isn't really a problem. Young children tend to become fluent in English very quickly.

I agree that any immigrants who commit sex offences should be deported. It would be great if we could expel all our home-grown sex offenders too, but of course that is just wishful thinking.

Friend in Wales works in housing. They're being hounded for empty houses to be released to them on long leases. The owners won't budge. Because of our rental laws coming soon to England many small landlords sold up. So rental stock has dived.

The long standing housing waiting list is no more. No-one is moving up.

The labour government in Wales will need to do more than double/treble the rates on empty properties here. They will have to forcibly repossess empty homes, compulsory purchase farmland at agricultural prices and build on it.
BUT there's an election next spring so they'll wait until they get another five years in power.

Visit Bradford or Burnley or Rochdale and see if your opinion changes.

Experiences of immigration around the country are very different. It is not a problem when you have a school where children speak a VARIETY of languages other than English at home. In this case English becomes the lingua franca.

Where ALL or MOST of the children come from the same immigrant background and ALL come to school speaking only that language - they only start learning English at 5+ and then only a limited amount of English because they still speak their home language in the playground and in outside school settings. Staff in the schools are often also predominantly from the “home culture”

Children from these backgrounds who are often also struggling with social deprivation rarely if ever catch up.

Devon is a predominantly White area. According to the 2021 census, 95.8% of the population in Devon county identify as White, according to Plumplot. This is significantly higher than the England and Wales average of 81.7%. Within Devon, the percentage of White individuals varies slightly by district, with some areas like North Devon reaching 97.9% White.
Here's a more detailed breakdown:
Devon County: 95.8% White, according to Plumplot.
North Devon District: 97.0% White, according to North Devon Council.
East Devon District: 97.4% White, according to East Devon District Council.
Mid Devon District: 97.8% White, according to the Office for National Statistics.
South West England (general): 95.3% White, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Spot on 👏

@Cattenberg Just to clarify, I am not a fan of Reform either. But I do think that politicians and commentators who ignore the legitimate concerns of usually poorer white communities - or vilify them as racist - are playing straight into the hands of Reform.

Friends and family born and bred west Yorkshire folks have family in the NHS, police, and factories.

It's really bad in pockets of this beautiful area. Policing is different where the immigrant population is high. There are no go areas for middle aged and elderly established immigrants who also have a hard time from gangs.

Girls are going missing in the area desperate families and friends putting up pictures and stories on FB. You'll never see it in the media though.

I'm sure there's other parts of the UK like this . But I can only speak of this one.

Lets be real here, regardless of whether they throw their papers away of not, we find it extremely difficult to deport economic migrants.

Where would YOU send them? when in the vast majority of cases, their home countries refuse to take them back, as is their sovereign right, as we have done to former British citizens, or their home country is at war and we have no flights there....

The EU/France wont accept them....

and those that disappear in to the black economy are stuck here, even with a passport, they wouldn't get through immigration to leave as no entry stamp.

Nail on the head. People in "naice" places are enjoying the benefits of quality ethnic restaurants, professional workplace colleagues, etc. People in run down towns get the money laundering kebab shops, the modern slavery car washes and nail bars, brothels, lawlessness on the streets, etc. Two very different "experiences" of immigration!

Thats down to austerity & lack of laws/punishment.

Austerity slashed Police numbers, trading standards, no updating of laws and regulations, shops closed down, re open the next day, enforcement, lack of Police..... when it comes to law or regulation enforcement, the UK is dire, a Sky news reporter had an issue with music venue noise, she moved, the council would do nothing.

& is not restricted to immigrant areas, it happens in so naice places as you put it too.

Just had our local parish mtce team robbed of machinery and a vehicle, crime report number, that was it, white area, few if any migrants.

Drugs readily available, drink driving a real issue, never see the spot checks we used to get when i was a kid.

Far right fascists very nearly came into power in the 1930s - really swings and roundabouts isn't it...could be the 2030s are equally as dark as the 1930s but let's all hope that's not the case and if it is...we all must step out of our little houses and comfortable lives and fight back against it, just as they did in the 1930s!

London is like this - stuff is reported in London but not elsewhere - Sadiq wouldn't want tourist numbers affected

Where's the evidence of all that? Any reports other than from Daily Mail? Hoards of brown people are taking snatching away your kids? give me a f**kin break!

So many people like this.

It isn't a county's sovereign right to refuse their deported citizens, unless the citizen is a dual national (as Shemima Bugum is).

A country isn't allowed to make a citizen stateless, which a dual national wouldn't be.

So many people here who are racist for sure!

A system that reduces people arriving stops this problem anyway. If we ever look to countries who have done it.

Calling people racist is how grooming gang rapists were protected by the public sector.

The word has been discredited by this and can be legitimately turned back on it's user as evidence that they too would use it in those circumstances without hesitation.

That's your reputation now.

The fact that if there’s a news item the Daily Mail reports and it’s not reported by the BBC and Sky, that does not necessarily make the story false. Other media outlets no longer have the same objectivity as they had 12-15 years ago and if you are able to look at what they report (without bias), there’s a clear pattern that’s emerges, that what they report is as much based on an agenda as the Daily Mail (assuming you insinuated that the Daily Mail was biased)

English is spoken around the world more than French.

Full marks for perseverance but you can never answer where we - the UK - would send enough migrants to act as a deterrent....

If its 1 or 2% as per the Rwanda scheme that cost £1/2 billion and never deported a single migrant, then a few 100 per year will not stop 40 or 50k people crossing pa.

I'm not against such a scheme per se but i want to see some details, sch as where we could send migrants? which country wants to take in say 5k to 10k men of, according to many on here, are a collection of rapists, robbers and sexual deviants.

Australia managed it because they had a strong economic hold over Nauru and PND, plus numbers sent far lower than we have had, will have crossing.

I await your non- answer..... or no answer!

Asylum seekers aren’t native English speakers. Or not even remotely proficient. They come here because they know that the UK Govt welcomes them with open arms and throws money at them in a way that most European governments don’t.

Full marks to the pp perseverance. If nothing else is offered up bar ‘weather’ as I’ve seen recently then I’m fairly confident the voters will give mandate for change.

Yes we need to change this

too much of a pull factor

@Cattenberg

i don’t think you live in a part of the country that has any real level of difficulty from immigration, legal or otherwise. I think if you visited other parts of the country, you’d be surprised.

If you look at the profile of the average asylum seeker, they will be a net recipient. It’s just a fact. It was also true of the average non-EU migrant before Brexit too according to the government’s own statistics (that’s not to say that all non-EU migrants are not contributors, obviously, but many migrants from certain nationalities will on average migrate to low wage professions and bring dependents, so they may not cover their tax take. Which is fine if there are genuine shortages that cannot be covered any other way, but not so good if the reality is that we are paying benefits to people to be under occupied and underinvesting in training our own nationals). When you consider that American, NZ, Aus immigrants are statistically net contributors on average, that does mean that there are some nationalities that are generally associated with being net recipients. That doesn’t mean that individual migrants from particular countries are not net contributors and no one on this thread is arguing that we should not let people who will be valuable net contributors in from whichever country they come from, only that we can’t just assume that all immigrants will be net contributors without knowing where they come from and what skills they arrive with as this is just not what the statistics say.

I totally understand that you want to be kind to people that you see as vulnerable and that’s worthy of discussion as to what we should do as a country and whether we are doing enough, but that’s separate to the objective fact that there is a financial cost to the country in taking both asylum seekers and low wage immigrants. And the cultural cost is not being born by the citizens of Devon.