UK immigration: why public opinion is at odds with reality
https://www.ft.com/content/5a00c171-8194-4c54-9ac6-63ca292522e2
by NoDealsMrBond
UK immigration: why public opinion is at odds with reality
https://www.ft.com/content/5a00c171-8194-4c54-9ac6-63ca292522e2
by NoDealsMrBond
30 comments
I know that the cultural identity of london and other cities is changing and I dont like it. The church i celebrated christmas and easter at as a boy is now a mosque.
If the electorate continually vote for something (i.e., a reduction in immigration), does the government have a moral obligation to enact that?
Or can the government safely ignore the electorate in that regard? It’s an interesting question.
Of course the article in question here fails to address any cultural issues that can arise from high levels of immigration (which we have seen play out the past 20 years or so) nor does it mention anything about the possibility and importance of integration policy. The issue of immigration isn’t solely a numbers game.
Yes, any modern country needs a certain level of immigration to boost and fill holes in the economy, but the free-for-all that we’ve had under the Tories is not good as evidenced by our falling standards of living and rising cost of living. We also have an asylum system that isn’t fit for purpose, which constantly loses track of thousands of asylum applicants who enter the country.
Poll after poll shows that the majority of the British public think immigration has been too high. The British public have subsequently voted for parties and a referendum that promised to reduce immigration throughout the past 14 years – so why has no effort been made at starting to address this issue in that time?
After all, we are always told that if we want change we must vote for it. Or is it the case we only recieve the kind of change that is acceptable to the ruling class?
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I think a lot of people just want less immigration (not none), more opportunities for British people rather than just relying on foreign workers and for people to understand that our asylum system is broken.
What is Labour planning to do about immigration because all the signs are the floodgates remain open.
Immigrants to a country should mostly adopt the behaviours of the place they go to, including language. If not, why did they go there?
“White people’s hostility to other racial groups increases in proportion to their awareness of a drop in White population share.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_demographic_decline#:~:text=Coleman%20estimates%20that%20by%202056,having%20an%20overall%20white%20minority.
The fundamental problem with immigration since Windrush is, it’s always the poor, White Working class that immigrants get dumped on. We all know #twotierkier plan to “redistribute” will come to nothing. There’s no way these NIMBYs in charge will allow that. (I’d love to see it though – look on surburbia Jane’s face as she comes home from her anti-facist march, “refugees welcome here” banner in hand and there’s a building plan notice for a new mosque on the end of her road would be a priceless joy to witness).
I wonder where the guy is who was demanding of me where we were going to house 40 million refugees, the other day…
Ever thought that economic growth might not be infinite?
Markets mature and fall off. Perhaps it’s the same for mature economies.
What is left – more people or working more efficiently and effectively? AI could be the saviour.
Plus GDP is a highly flawed measure. Should be GDP per capita adjusted for inflation.
I don’t want lots of migration and refugees because I don’t believe it is in my interest nor the interests of the average person in the uk.
From a financial perspective, those coming in are typically willing to work for less than a British worker and is simply indulging in a race to the bottom/ stagnant wages.
From a cultural perspective I believe that a lot of those entering do not share similar values to myself and I do not want to see the makeup of the country and it’s values change drastically through immigration over time.
I do not feel a moral obligation to take refugees in from here, there and everywhere just because their homeland is not a good place because it’s not in my interest. When people think about countries that aren’t signed up to all the human rights conventions they think of Saudi Arabia etc but they should be thinking of Australia too.
I don’t blame people for wanting to come because they will have a better life, it’s in their best interests but it isn’t in mine and I don’t want to be paying for them.
As for the rioters, they are all idiots and there is nothing less British than forming a mob and attacking the police.
Most of working immigrants in NHS et al are sponsored by the government. As they are cheaper to employ. Source: I was working on dealing with documents of people from other countries employed by NHs
I suppose a good test for the poorest in society is to ask yourself how much your rent has risen in the past 5 years and then feel secure in the knowledge that you’ve “only” lost 0.5p per hour due to immigration.
We produce 60% of the food we need as a nation. We’re a small island. This pyramid scheme cannot continue indefinitely so regardless of the economic argument which normally conflates EU and non-EU migrants where they’re a net drag on the economy, something needs to change.
The base idea (“stop the boats”) is solid and should be something that everybody wants. It’s a frankly inhumane situation where human traffickers are allowed to prey on the desperate and make millions by putting lives at risk.
Even Nige’s proposed solution (“If they didn’t get here legally, deport them immediately”) sounds great on the face of it. If people know that crossing the channel illegally will result in deportation rather than housing and government support, it would very quickly stem the tide.
The problem is, all that depends on there being an actual legal way to get to the UK and claim asylum. And at the moment, there isn’t. The boats are coming because there’s no other way to get here, and the result is that there’s a massive bottleneck of asylum claims when these people reach our shores.
Put in place a proper, legal way for people to claim asylum in the UK, and you can restrict the number of people coming in legally to the capacity of whatever system you introduce to deal with them. The bottleneck then moves to the other end of that legal route, which would clearly be outside the UK. At that point, you’ve got a much stronger argument that the UK is “doing its bit” and that anybody arriving through an illegal route should be deported.
I enjoyed that a lot of the data conviently stoops at 2016 and the study on violence doesn’t include non EU immigration.
I’d hardly call this a fair comparison as it excludes countries like Albania who has a decent % of its male population in UK prisons.
https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/520/is-immigration-a-threat-to-uk-security
Also looking at more centre and left wing sources it shows that while wages in real terms have been reduced 0.5p per year for the bottom this effect hasnt been seen on the higher earners. This is marketed as a win for immigrant but in practice the poor are getting relatively poorer compared to the rest which is almost as bad and is exasberating the underlying issue here which is there’s a shit load of very poor people in the UK who have been left behind for 40 years.
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/immigration-and-crime-evidence-for-the-uk-and-other-countries/
A bit of an odd article which bases all it’s economic projections on studies on EU immigration only.
EU immigration has been consistently showing higher net contribution than native, whilst non-EU migration is overall lower throughout their entire lifetime regardless of which age they migrated to the UK.
More recent 2nd generation non-EU “migrates” also tend not to be net contributors across the boards with the exception of a few groups.
Yes and overall healthier, better educated and a population cohort that doesn’t tend to retire in the UK is overall a net positive. But Brexit aside this isn’t the cohort currently who those that take issue with what they see as unchecked immigration are talking, protesting or well rioting over.
People who are affected by mass immigration don’t see the overarching benefits that knobs who write newspaper articles do.
They see lower wages, hugely worse working conditions, higher costs, harder to access and overburdened public services.
The twats who live on reddit and write newspaper articles get cheaper contractors and luxuries due to higher competition. The migrants they interact with benefit them.
When you’re a middle aged half crippled local, running themselves into the ground trying to make a living on the industrial estates, when the targets are set to the level of a 22 year old fit young immigrant and the conditions are set to a single person who has nothing better to do than work, not someone with 2 kids and a fuckload of medical appointments, them you may have half an inkling of what people think about immigration and their reasons for protesting.
Nurses and doctors form 2.6% of all legal immigration to the UK
I honestly think if Labour does nothing to greatly lower immigration levels then we’re gonna see a lot more votes for any party that promises a hard-line stance on immigration. Probably the Tories again.
There’s just too many people on our shitty little island. NHS is on its fucking knees, everything costs shitloads and we earn next to fuck all.
Right now any government that doesn’t cut immigration is probably sucking some big corporations dong under the table to ensure cheap labour.
I love when they use academic studies that lump all immigrants together to argue that immigration makes us all richer and safer by default.
Of course highly paid professionals who immigrate will be net contributors and not add to crime. We need to separate high-wage immigration from low wage economic migration from asylum/refugee policies, which are essentially charity immigration.
I believe there are many issues why the public feels that way and it’s down to the economy and hardship that many are facing and the government the last one in particular looking unconcerned about the issues.
Issues regarding wages, jobs, cost of living, many depending on food banks, housing etc. and then immigration being used as a distraction and excuse as the cause.
We can’t really run at net 700k/year immigration without building a ton more houses.
Labour would make a lot of this house go away by throwing money at building houses (not giving planning permission to greedy developers, actually building themselves), if we get to the next election with rents being even 10% cheaper than now people will feel better.
Of course it will make it easier to reduce housing costs by limiting immigration back to the ~100k we were experiencing pre Brexit.
Liberals need to understand and understand **quickly** that people make determinations that have little to no regard for short-term economics. Electorates and foreign states **do not** give a shit about what you view as being in their economic interest. Brexit, the invasion of Ukraine, and China increasingly standing up to the USA are all prominent recent examples of where your economic interest can go.
A lot of talk of wages in here and how migrant workers are willing to be paid less than British workers. So the problem isn’t immigration it’s exploitative employers who are underpaying us all.
Hell, you donate enough to the political party in power you can get free labour by giving people on job seekers “work experience” for a few weeks without paying them. Oh and then not hire any of them because you know, costs too much/eats too much profit
I’ve worked in immigration for close to 3 years. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s how little the general public knows.
It starts off by calling it ‘irregular immigration’, a red flag that shows their bias from the get-go, but we’ll let that slide.
>Immigrants commit crime at the same rates as natives
There’s a huge discrepancy amongst immigrants – some commit dramatically fewer crimes, some much more. It makes little sense to bundle all migration and use that as a statistic.
>Research has shown that while immigration hit lower-paid workers harder than higher-paid workers
I’ll stop you there. Any reduction in pay for the poorest, most vulnerable in society is obviously a bad thing, no matter how you try and twist it.
They go on to talk about how immigrants contribute more to the NHS than they take. Ok, then allow in the productive ones who work in the NHS, and don’t allow in the unproductive ones who don’t. Not rocket science, is it?
Not mentioned: non-EEA migrants being a [drain on the economy](https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-in-the-u), the pressure immigrants put on things like school places, GP surgery places, dentist places, housing, etc.
So what number do we have to let in before things start to fall over. Or is that number unlimited?
Seems to me with the recent push back with enourmous numbers against the racists rioting and the stonking majority Labour just won, that the bigots and racists cn be safely ignored.
They lost, no? Should they not just get over it?
Why do we include students and worker visa arrivals in the same stats as refugees and illegals? It’s rediculous.
Students, visa workers etc should be removed from the statistics.
When you do that it looks alot mkre realistic.
Then we should acknowledge the Ukrainians and the Hong Kongers and remove them as well as they are exceptional circumstances.
So what’s left? A much smaller figure
That’s not to bury our heads in the sand.
What I see is that the problems such as housing, education, poor wages, poor opportunities, poor access to health care, poor transportation and collapsing infrastructure means its natural for people to looks for scapegoats.
Unfortunately we are gaslit.
Governments turn on immigrants cause its easier to say we are overrun than they have utterly failed. That government policies allowed these people to come and stay and didn’t provide the infrastructure.
It’s the system at fault.
I’ve seen lots of talk on why the cost of living and austerity has driven anti-immigration feeling, but not enough seem to be speaking about how lots of people in this country do not like how their communities are changing, demographically nor culturally. No, this isn’t ‘Great replacement theory’, it’s an established demographic fact. Around 1 in 5 UK citizens will be muslim in 2050. You may not think that’s a bad thing. I don’t particularly think that’s a bad thing. There are undeniably lots of people that think that’s going to be problematic. I think the main reason they think it’s going to be problematic is because there will be significant numbers of urban population centres that are overwhelmingly muslim majority. In a democracy, your job is to go out and persuade people why you think that’s a good thing. Good luck.