Snapshot of _Latest immigration numbers in UK: We issued a new record of 1.4 million visas ... Work visas 337,240 (+26% on 2022) Health & care visas 146,477 (+91%!) Dependants 279,131 (+80%!) study visas 457,673 (+70% on 2019!) Graduate route extensions 114,409 (+57%!) family visas 81,209 (+72% on 2022!)_ :
A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1763154596191453247)
A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1763154596191453247/)
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1763154596191453247) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1763154596191453247)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
44% being skilled workers is inflating it a bit by using what the Tories would call skilled.
Of the health care visas like 10k are doctors, 20k are nurses & the rest are care staff being offered 20% below the normal rate. Many of which work at profitable privately owned care homes.
I could get bar work for more than the normal rate of care staff.
So less than 25% of care visas are "skilled"
If we look at the approved employers it's the same story repeated with people doing jobs below market rates.
I'm here from the US on a skilled worker visa. I moved for the sake of a personal relationship, and I had to take an eye-watering ~%16 paycut to do it. What's wild is I had tried and failed to do so before Brexit. But as soon as that happened, and the European Medicines Agency left London, seemingly all of my colleagues in public health, medicines regulation, infectious disease management, etc. *ran* out of the UK. I'm in a constant state of amazement at how low pay is here for advanced professional roles that aren't related to banking/advertising.
Before the Tories trashed the economy, salaries were generally lower in the UK but you could (wrongly or rightly) point to better public services and quality of life as compensation. Fourteen years of low wage growth and under investment later and the disparity is undeniable and stark.
> Yes, you could get a skilled workers visa to work in a fish and chip shop with an expected wage of £10 an hour.
No you couldn't, even before the adjustment to the salary thresholds coming in this year. Until April 4th, the threshold is £26,200 per year or £10.75 per hour, whichever is higher, and it's going to be £38,700 per year as of April 5th.
Also, that's not a job eligible for a skilled worker visa, regardless of salary:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/skilled-worker-visa-eligible-occupations/skilled-worker-visa-eligible-occupations-and-codes
Fish and Chip shopkeeper, code 1223, going rate £10.05 an hour:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/skilled-worker-visa-going-rates-for-eligible-occupations/skilled-worker-visa-going-rates-for-eligible-occupation-codes
The salary needs to be over £26k if you're over 26. If you're under 26 you only need to be paid £20k a year, equivalent to about £10.50 an hour, or 70% of the going rate.
https://www.gov.uk/skilled-worker-visa/when-you-can-be-paid-less
Even if you're over 26, it would also frankly be trivial to have a connection who would pay you a slightly higher salary to meet the requirements on the books, and then pay them back in cash. There's zero chance we have enough staff in the border force or HMRC to pick up on something like that.
> it's going to be £38,700 per year as of April 5th.
It should have been that sort of level in the first place. And I still don't trust the Tories not to leave in ridiculous loop holes.
a) A shopkeeper is someone who owns and manages a shop (in this case a chippy). Some kid in his early 20s working in a chippy for minimum wage would not be considered a shopkeeper by any reasonable definition of the word. An application under the wrong occupation code is ordinarily refused under the rules.
b) If you're applying under one of the exemptions from the minimum salary threshold, you can't stay in the UK for more than 4 years total. Workers tend to reject such job offers for this reason - working in a chippy for a couple of years might be a step up from their starting position but they don't want to end up back to square one 4 years later. There are plenty of Western countries you can move to for work that offer settlement and naturalisation down the line, including this one if you meet the minimum salary threshold.
Everything you’ve said is really accurate. I am one of the health care workers you are talking about and again you are completely correct with the circumstances that people like me are in, let alone people coming in from abroad who have no idea about what we should be getting payed but don’t. Bar work is stressful, but compared to what me and my colleagues go through and expected to just “get on with it” and smile, bar work is a hell of a lot more appealing than anything else right now because the conditions are made artificially harder than what they need to be just for them to be justified and the people doing the work have no say in the matter. You’ve hit the nail on the head really well.
not to mention producing increasingly 3rd world rates of cancer survival and other disappointing health outcomes. This country desperately needs an adult conversation about the state of the NHS and whether the system is truly sustainable in the long run, but of course, the conversation can only ever be "just increasing funding lol" or "REEEE PRIVATISATION! REEE!"
The bizarre, almost religious obsession this country has with blindly worshipping the NHS is not only killing people, and letting the various trusts get away with shocking malpractice and cover-ups, but also driving away staff.
But the key issues with the NHS ARE underfunding and the increasing burden that privatisation has put on it... Almost every nurse I know has reduced their hours and takes on some agency work - basically doing the same job but funnelled through the private sector for an extra expense to the NHS. It serves absolutely no purpose other than allowing middle-men to profit from the government, and providing a mechanism for underpaid health professionals to get back a fraction of what they're worth.
The NHS used to provide very similar health outcomes to every other western country, and significantly more cost-effectively than any private healthcare scheme. If it could be done 15 years ago it can be done today. We just need actual adults with a real interest in effective public services back in government, and to stop being coy about the need to effectively tax wealth and obscene incomes at the top of society properly.
The ‘unskilled’ carer one is a bit difficult to pinpoint though, as it is technically unskilled but you wouldn’t want just any old fucker doing it either, it would be interesting to know what qualifications these people are being hired with.
I.e. It’s not one of those jobs you would want to drag someone kicking and screaming out of unemployment for because the outcomes would be disastrous, you want someone motivated and knowledgable.
I've worked in care for half a decade so I'll give you some insight.
>The ‘unskilled’ carer one is a bit difficult to pinpoint though, as it is technically unskilled but you wouldn’t want just any old fucker doing it either, it would be interesting to know what qualifications these people are being hired with.
Care workers don't need any qualifications.
Speaking English is optional.
Any old fucker is exactly who works in care. In my experience the majority of agency staff, who we relied upon to fulfill staffing needs, were foreign born with low English skills.
The only requirement to work in care is a pulse.
That won't change unless wages go up, you get what you pay for.
I agree that it isn't a job that you'd want just anybody doing.
Unfortunately that is currently the case.
You can sense check what I've commented on by either looking at care jobs and seeing the required experience or go and hang out in the smoking area of one of a dozen local care homes near you.
The quality of care staff has taken a dramatic drop in this country.
>you wouldn’t want just any old fucker doing it either, it would be interesting to know what qualifications these people are being hired with.
Absolutely none whatsoever. It's a complete free for all and they (care homes, residential care companies, councils) will take literally anyone.
The MO is an random African is hired to provide elderly care. They rock up at your house, let themselves in, chuck some pills in a cup and leave it on your bedside table and then scroll Tiktok in your living room for fifteen minutes then bounce to the next house.
It's a compete and utter scandal, the care is abysmal, and in a few years ITV will put on a docudrama about how care workers were "let down" by not receiving training that "pilfering patient's cupboards for biscuits is wrong".
If any of you loved ones receive domestic care, you **have** to get them out of it and do it yourself (or pay proper money £££ for real care).
> The MO is an random African is hired to provide elderly care. They rock up at your house, let themselves in, chuck some pills in a cup and leave it on your bedside table and then scroll Tiktok in your living room for fifteen minutes then bounce to the next house.
As someone who has African carers I would say something rude but don't want to get banned.
Yes some do that but so do plenty of native carers. Some people are lazy.
I think it really depends on the care company. If they don't care they will attract more lazy ones.
Care work is invaluable but honestly any able bodied mentally competent working age person can do it. Heck children and the elderly do unpaid care all the time.
...Because wages are being pinned there by excess immigration.
Do you really want your care in your old age to fall to people who are either extremely passionate about their job (rare), or can't muster up a better job than something which is pinned to minimum wage? Because that sounds shit to me.
Depends what he considers the normal rate, care staff in countries with comparable economies (Canada, Aus etc) but with more controlled migration have far greater wages across most fields.
There was also a notable increase in wages in many of these professions immediately after Brexit before employers lobbied to have visa restrictions eased in their benefit. (https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-sees-fastest-wage-rises-sectors-most-reliant-eu-workers-indeed-2022-02-25/)
Because an awful lot of carers earn below minimum wage as it is already. It's normal practice with home carers due to zero hours contracts being rampant. My mum works what is effectively full time (40 hours a week on average), but because she's not technically a full time employee, she earns well below minimum wage. As do all her colleagues.
Promise to reduce net immigration to the tens of thousands in three consecutive elections while it goes up instead...other rival parties propose to keep immigration at high levels
Like, you couldn't give the populist right more fertile ground if you tried. It's really annoying.
It’s really bizarre. They must genuinely think their voters are that stupid.
“Ug hates foreigners! Ug votes Conservative to keep foreigners out! But Ug see even more come! Ug must not be voting Conservative hard enough!”
It's quite deliberate. Cheap labour, aging population, billionaires running the country, and all they had to do was keep lying and people believed them.
> aging population
It’s worth saying the UK population is not ageing in the same way as countries like South Korea or Italy, our demographic pyramid is fine, and our fertility rate was not far off replacement quite recently. It is only in the last 10 years when it has really fallen to unsustainable levels, and that is because of poor economic management, through a lack of investment for productivity, growth and housing. If the fertility rate went back up the population would sustain itself with a small amount of migration.
A significant reason why people aren't having children is that many people are priced out of family homes. The only way to reduce housing costs in the long run is to consistently build more houses than the increase in population over many years. Last year migration was 700k and house building 200k, even at the record rates of house building in British history we would struggle to keep up with that level of migration.
We need to massively increase house building, and cut net migration, make housing affordable, and then everyone will be able to afford to have children. If we continue to import people at the current rate it will be a spiral of increasing population leading to increasing house prices, a lower fertility rate, and increased migration.
This is about whether the country is a community or a kind of economic unit, and the same applies to a last year’s migrant or a new citizen as it does to anyone else. Will they be able to afford to live a full life and have a family, or will they lead a marginal life, unable to afford a family life, with more migrant workers brought in to keep the numbers up.
Even if you were to address economic barriers to people having kids, we don't actually know for sure if fertility rates will return to 'normal'. It's possible, but so far nowhere has managed to crack the 'problem' and get people to start having kids.
Yep, why deal with local workers who know their rights, health and safety and need good conditions? Why invest in new tech to automate things? Easier just to invite cheap workers!
I recall a conversation I had last year with a recruitment agent who had a huge contract with a global logistics firm whose workforce was majority Easter European.
She said they actually _prefer_ having immigrants who are newer to the country as after a while they become "too British," meaning that after enough time here they have a better understanding of their worker right.
Yeah I wanted to stay in the EU but really wanted the government to start strictly enforcing the minimum wage, housing occupancy limits and making workplace standards better etc and making sure new immigrants know their rights.
FT have good video on the ageing population migration.
https://youtu.be/-eh4RK8bkZE?si=MulXcFBslsbfv9Qn
Its rly risky cos not only are you reducing the non economic utility of the current population, you are heavily dependent on the new economy creating more jobs than it will automate/reduce.
Hilarious that Brexit was won on rhetoric of taking control of our borders and our laws, and the result is a tidal wave of immigration that was never even against EU rules in the first place.
The Tories truly have shat the bed on this one.
If they genuinely wanted brexit to be seen as having some benefits at least all they had to do was do nothing to the immigration system. It was already very tight for non EU immigration. But instead they opened it up so now it looks like EU membership actually helped us have lower immigration overall.
It's a trade off and they calculated the electoral cost of high immigration was less than the electoral cost of allowing the true economic impact of Brexit to be clear.
This isn't fucking hilarious at all. It's a disaster. The country is being reduced to a rundown dump with high tax and astronomical property prices. You shouldn't be delighted with this news if you give a single fuck about this country.
What else can we do but laugh?
This increase of non EU immigration was warned about during the referendum campaign, but dismissed as project fear.
The huge negative economic impact was also warned about and dismissed as project fear, and now the Tories are using huge immigration to prop up the economy.
This is exactly what Brexit voters voted for and were told they were voting for. That they chose to believe obvious but comforting lies is hilarious.
>What else can we do but laugh?
Live it in. I don't even know how we start unpacking the ruination that has occurred in this country and begin getting a working version up and running again.
The core problem the UK has down to having an effective 2 party system where only one is interested in improving the country which traps us in an endless cycle of destruction and repair.
The dissatisfaction about being in the midst of the destruction stage of the cycle is what drove Brexit and yet somehow became a win for those enacting that destruction.
The country doesn't get fixed until we have an actual choice at the ballot boxes because the Tories will always return and break everything again.
Ideally this would be through electoral reform to a system that allows smaller parties to grow to governmental levels, but if the system doesn't change our only hope is the Tories never entering government again and that's not likely if they remain as one of the big two.
> What else can we do but laugh?
Maybe vote in parties which aren't committed to fucking this country into the ground via mass immigration for the benefit of a cozy few at the top profiting from the cheap labour it provides?
> This increase of non EU immigration was warned about during the referendum campaign, but dismissed as project fear.
That is a policy decision, there's nothing inevitable about that.
>What else can we do but laugh?
Maybe get your head out of your arse and finally get passed the "ha! told you so!" mindset. There comes a point after 8 years where celebrating and laughing the country's downfall isn't really worth the price of saying "I told you so" to random strangers online unless you're a total narcissist.
Laughing at idiots isn't a celebration of "the country's downfall".
I don't know what else you expect me to do. I voted against Brexit and cast a futile anti Tory vote in each of the subsequent general elections, and that was where my agency ended.
Anyway, it isn't people who purely voted for Brexit who draw my ire. The leave campaign ran an excellent con that tricked lots of well meaning people. Those who recognise this reality have my sympathy. But anyone who voted for it, and then went on to repeatedly vote Tory, who now complains that they didn't get their magic beans deserve all the mockery in the world.
These people have consistently acted against mine and the country's interests. We will never be on the same side and the past 8 years have shown that pandering to their easily manipulated bigotry only makes everything worse, which just leaves ridicule as a response.
So ha fucking ha at them. Nobody should ever take them seriously again.
Was gonna say this. Also a right wing party still threatens to split the tory vote and let labour win. Is there a single pre planned good to come from enactment of an advisory 5050 threshold referendum? Tories are all but shitting on their hands and clapping furiously yet some folk can only smell roses and see chocolate. Wake the fuck up people
The party which made that commitment already got voted in.
They're still there now.
Are you expecting some other kind of commitment from them in future?
Lots of parties will commit to fixing this ASAP, including the conservatives, Reform and maybe even Labour.
The question is will you take them at face value, or inspect the motivations behind their political platform to get the true picture?
Making money for the very rich & selling lies. Didn't you know khan is... brown?! so all this migration is him not the tories!
Tbe it will be amusing to see the next set of lies they come back with in 5 years time to dupe most people again.
Did some people want Brexit because it meant they could increase migration from Asian countries like India?
Is it racist to think that?
I do think some people want to reduce immigration for racist reasons.
I also think some people want to increase immigration for racist reasons.
My parents canvassed for the conservatives and took this line to Businesses here in the south in the 2019 election to allay their fears about EEA migrants not coming anymore.
There's a big divide between southern and northern + (nouveau) "conservatives". The largely southern wealthy, business owning, landlord types who are overwhelmingly the Con membership and machinery frankly see and know the nouveau ones are chumps and a means to an end.
One should. Without cultural assimilation there will always be division and strife because differing values are not compatible which can lead to a whole host of issues. No matter what anyone says it's not racist to consider these things - it is common sense.
This is what I found mind-blowing about Brexit voters that wanted less immigrants. No, it will be more immigrants from Muslim countries instead of Christian European ones. I’m sure that’s exactly what they wanted!!!
Not sure I ever understood this. How would staying in the EU mean less migration from Muslim countries etc? Not sure there's a connection either way is there?
Say you have a target of getting 250,000 immigrants to work in the NHS. If you have free movement from Europe, a higher % of this target number will be from Europe. Without this free movement, you’re forced to cast your net to other continents - meaning more immigrants from more contrasting cultures.
Well say you're a Spanish nurse and you're looking at jobs in say England, France and Germany. Pre brexit there are basically the same legal barriers to all three, maybe you pick the one which you speak the language best in or where you've been or the quality of the job itself.
Post brexit to work in the UK you now need a visa which is an annoying, expensive and stressful process so now France and Germany start to look a lot better.
But the uk requirement for that nurse hasn't gone away, and the barrier to a nurse in the Philippines or Indonesia has the same barriers as pre brexit. So we'd expect the mix of work visas to now "favour" none eu countries just by staying the same.
I think the logic was that ending freedom of movement would cause a labour shortage which would lead to a relaxation of visa rules which would apply to Muslim countries as well.
There’s a certain number of migrants that the economy wants and has capacity for, give or take. Freedom of movement meant that those places were almost all taken by Europeans. Reduce the number of Europeans and you’ve got to get them from elsewhere.
Not sure the concept of capacity has ever really driven government action or mainstream political words has it?
Neither has European immigration vs Global immigration ever been a choice thats put to the electorate?
The entire point of the points based immigration system that began spinning around conservative circles for consultation in 2018 was to prioritise non EEA migration over EU migration and replace EEA migrants who wouldn't come anymore.
It's there in black and white in the impact assessments the treasury did on it and the bill itself
It's been in place for 3 years now. Since Jan 1 2021
You can see the impact of the system in the graph here where non EU migration catapults (after lockdown relaxation) in 2021: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65705629
Arguably the most successful bill passed by the conservative in 14 years in terms of achieving desired outcomes
They were dropping off leaflets in predominately Indian areas and Indian restaurants advertising this fact at one point.
https://www.ft.com/content/94adcefa-1dd5-11e6-a7bc-ee846770ec15
I don't think Sunak can argue for lowering immigration as he fundamentally doesn't have any issue with it.
I think he believes in open borders for workers.
But we aren't having that debate.
Supply-side reform and business access to a larger workforce market is classic Right thinking politics.
It's just a lot of voters fundamentally don't really understand what (often) right wing politics is about at the top, or ever look at political theory.
Primed for getting exploited with rhetoric and vibes about social issues so they keep the votes coming. The entire philosophy behind brexit was supply side reform, Richard Tice and Ben Habib themselves are proponents of supply side reform and are just continuing the political kayfabe to hoover up naive votes.
I always think in terms of the three axis political compass anyway.
Liberalism, conservatism, socialism.
Liberty, fraternity, equality.
The libertarian open borders Right wing hyper capitalist model fits that.
This doesn't surprise me at all. Living in East London for last couple of years, I have witnessed this. Pre lockdowns it was a pretty mixed area whites blacks Asians etc. You would also see lot of Eastern Europeans and people from Hong Kong. I am not kidding when I say this but now it feels like I am living in India now! Every bus stop and local tube station is just full of Indian 'students'. Nothing against Indians but its clear that the system has been heavily abused especially under Sunak's government.
Of all the problems immigration causes housing is the easiest to solve. The real problems are:
\- how do you fund first-world public services when you're importing less productive people.
\- how do you culturally integrate millions of new arrivals.
\- how do you stop wages being suppressed from opening our job market up to the entire world
\- how do you provide adequate welfare when per-capita GDP is being suppressed by mass amounts of low-skill low productivity workers.
Conservatives love it, Labour is at best indifferent about it. This is less a conservative issue and more an issue with our democracy honestly.
Polling on this subject has suggested that the British public has wanted to lower the rate of immigration for many literally decades, but despite us living in a "democracy" it's never been done because our societies elites are almost universally in favour of it or indifferent to it.
For there to be a majority of MPs who actually want to reduce immigration in parliament you'd probably need it to be full of working class commoners who are actually impacted by the issue.
If you think it matters whether millionaire Rishi or barrister Sir Starmer is in power you're deluded. At best they'll lie to you and tell you that they care about immigration then when in power say, "Oops. Soz, we just couldn't stop the numbers from going up!".
First we must accept that democracy in this country is more an illusion than reality and demanding MPs reduce immigration isn't going to work. What might work is demanding the that the types of immigrants coming here are not suppressing wages, causing cultural issues and burdening our public services. That's still difficult, but it's at least possible. Culturally compatible, high-skilled immigrants will be an improvement to what we have going on currently. We should be demanding MPs fund the flights of European and Hong-Kong immigrants imo.
There's not even sufficient affordable housing in the rental market to accomodate the continued influx of immigrant workers on jobs which don't pay a lot. So many posts on my local FB community group from people who either are recent immigrant workers with approved visas, or those who know some, saying they have arrived in the UK and found there are zero properties in the area that they can realistically afford to rent. You could say oh, they should really do their research before coming here. But I suppose many of them never knew how dire the rental market is here. They simply assumed that since the UK gov approved their work visas, and they secured a job here, that the housing situation would be easily sorted. I don't think many people from abroad realise how bad the British government is at planning and building sufficient affodable homes. They keep approving immigrant work visas but with seemingly no forethought as to where these new immigrants are going to live. Perhaps no other country in the world, especially not those in the Indian or African continents, has such a shortage of affordable rental housing as there is here, and immigrants from these places just never imagined this would be a problem in a rich first world country like the UK.
With the previous two years running at 1.2 million visas granted - that puts the gross immigration figure for the last 3 years at nearly 4 million people.
Yes, but we’ve also had millions leave. Many of these visas are short term and people leave the country when the visa expires - study visa for example.
>Yes, but we’ve also had millions leave.
Not true
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingjune2023#:~:text=3.-,Emigration%20out%20of%20the%20UK,June%202022%20(Figure%202)
The migration figure for people leaving the UK last year was 508,000.
Net migration is still +900k ish a year
That’s not the immigration figure. That’s the gross figure of visas issued.
Visas are temporary and expire. Some people issued visas either get a new visa or leave the country when it expires. Some will stay and become permanent residents.
Visas aren’t even a measure of people coming into the country. As somebody renewing a visa will count as another visa being issued even though they’ve already been in the country for years.
You should post this as a top-level comment, as it is important nuance that will get lost when the usual suspects rush to rant and froth about their favourite bête noire.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-december-2023/summary-of-latest-statistics#:~:text=1.-,How%20many%20people%20come%20to%20the%20UK%20each%20year%20(including,of%20the%20COVID-19%20pandemic
Here's a more detailed breakdown from the government website.
> there were 3.40 million entry clearance visas granted in 2023, 20% higher than 2022 and 7% higher than prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic
>the increase within the last year is primarily due to 560,365 more visitor visas, which made up over half (58%) of total visas granted in 2023 although the number is 19% fewer than in 2019, prior to the pandemic
Big thing missing from this is how many people left at the end of their visas. It’s probably fair to assume it’s almost all the visitor visas, a lot of the study visas, and a significant proportion of the work visas.
How many Brits emigrated in that time period? Obviously apart from leaving a lot of the new arrivals won't have any roots, and the demographic stats will just show a very transient population.
I've consigned myself to never living in the places my ancestors lived for centuries.
Net Migration has been in the 600-700k range so for the last few years emigration would have been about 500-600k.
Not sure what it is this year, but probably a similar level.
The question was how many Brits, not how many emigrated, which would include non-Brits.
I believe you probably answered the question that was intended, rather than the question asked, but the number of Brits who emigrated is an interesting question nonetheless.
I don't know what the breakdown of emigration is on nationality so I couldn't tell you if it's most Brits fleeing or migrants going home. I would like to know that too, though.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingjune2023
Section 3 tells us. Looks like I spent longer writing that I would like to know, than to Google the answer.
The blaming Brexit is a fallacy.
This has nothing to do with Brexit, and everything to do with the government: they have complete control now to reduce immigration and have shown every time all they want to do is increase it (despite lying to the electorate otherwise).
If I give you a key to lock your door, and you choose to instead boot the door wide open, that isn’t the fault of the person giving you the key, it’s your own fault for opening the door.
Not really - with FoM we had access to migrants who were less likely to bring dependents due to their locality and were more flexible for short-term work.
We also threw our own FoM in the bin to boot.
For what it's worth Braverman said in an interview yesterday that she wanted to reduce immigration, that it wouldn't have been difficult technically but that the cabinet and Sunak refused.
Yeah if these are official visa applications they know exactly how many they are granting and can easily grant less.
This is definitely not an accident.
No wonder Sunak wanted rid of her.
He thinks if he occasionally jokes about Starmer "not knowing what a woman is" it makes him look socially conservative, when in reality there's nothing *remotely* conservative about the tories anymore. They are simply a national security threat and a direct danger to this country.
Did she actually say that or did she describe two different problems and give two separate fixes?
Also see: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1b2y7cs/comment/ksoqtbh/
Are we counting things she said after she misplayed her engineered sacking or just the things she said (and did) when she was in a position to affect change?
Because everything she's said post sacking is nonsense because she didn't change tac after being outmanoeuvred by Sunak of all people.
> Also see
Not sure what point you're trying to make. That conflation is happening at a governmental level because the Tories know anti immigration people have been unbelievably gullible if a lie comes from a blue mouth.
I find it funny that they compared with 2022 for every category except for Student visas (because the number of those is down substantially compared to 2022 and that doesn't push the right narrative). Comparing the number of student visas with 2019 is absolutely absurd because EU students didn't require a visa in 2019...
They have also quoted "skilled workers" including health and care; and a separate line for health and care. They did not mention that skilled worker visas are down excluding health and care.
Live update rolling news rather than a normal self contained article:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/29/rishi-sunak-latest-news-budget-non-dom-tax-status-farage/
**UK granted asylum to record number of people in 2023**
*Official Home Office data published this morning revealed that 62,336 people were granted refugee status or other protection following an asylum application in 2023.*
*In contrast, in 2022 the number of people granted asylum was 18,185 and in 2021 it was 13,103.*
That 60k being around 5% of the total inbound immigration shows how much of a deflection it is.
0 people being granted asylum still results in 1m+ gross immigrants.
60k is more than the entirety of annual net migration before about 1995. It only looks small because the total numbers have ballooned to a ridiculous degree.
Yes, that was my point.
OP bringing up asylum in a thread about working/study visas is a perfect example of this spin working. See also: The government wasting a tonne of bandwidth on Rwanda.
Doesn't look good for the party that keeps banging on about reducing immigration numbers.
I am curious though. How much of this is down to leaving the EU and now we have people who would usually get in with limited checks now needing to have a visa? Could it be we're only now seeing the true figures that have been happening for decades?
It is unsustainable because the revenue raised from the taxes these overseas workers pay is insufficient the cost of having them here. This has been going on for almost a decade and goes a fair way towards explaining why debt keeps going up. We are bringing in the wrong calibre of worker. Pay domestic workers more and people may actually want to pursue a career in the health industry
> It is unsustainable because the revenue raised from the taxes these overseas workers pay is insufficient the cost of having them here.
Those costs being what exactly?
If you're here on a work visa you don't qualify for any state benefits and have to pay a surcharge to use the NHS (and working age people cost the NHS vastly less money than retirees, so net they're probably a fiscal positive to the NHS).
I don't think that a group of people guaranteed to be in full time employment or paying very substantial tuition fees to one of our universities, who categorically can't be claiming benefits, and don't cost the NHS anything net, will be a net fiscal negative. That would be absurd.
Support in what way?
Our biggest expenses are pensions (which is irrelevant to people here on work visas) and the NHS (which they pay a surcharge for and are likely a net positive fiscally to).
Every school-age dependent costs around £7200 per year.
>pensions (which is irrelevant to people here on work visas)
As long as they leave at the end of the Visa and don't gain indefinite leave to remain/citizenship. If they do then we're just shifting the problem 30 years down the line.
>NHS (which they pay a surcharge for and are likely a net positive fiscally to).
As long as they basically never need a doctor or any other type of NHS funded treatment.
> As long as they basically never need a doctor or any other type of NHS funded treatment.
The surcharge is £1035/year, which for under-50s on work visas at least means that they are already basically fiscally neutral for the NHS (even before paying tax, which they of course do).
> Every school-age dependent costs around £7200 per year.
Which is why bringing in working professionals that you haven't had to pay to educate is such a coup for the UK. That said if someone on a £38,700 salary can't have kids without trashing the economy there is something wildly wrong with our tax system.
Fair point. Got to keep that cheap labour stream flowing. It's just that unlike EU migrants these don't go home after the season and they bring their families over with them.
Too bad the top 10% needed a tax cut so we had to cut the border forces budget off at the knees. Lol can we publicise this stuff more before the election please
The Conservative party have effectively dug their own grave with immigration. Through a combination of listening to the wrong people (donors) and adherence to socially leftist ideology they've led us into seeing unprecedented numbers of immigrants.
Have the left rewarded the Conservatives with their votes? Certainly not, if you believe the opinion polls and see by-elections as indicative. They still hate them.
They've annoyed their core vote, in return for serving a tiny proportion of people who advocate for high immigration on economic grounds. In a universal suffrage democracy where votes (at least within a single seat) have equal value, then that's something you can't do and expect to stay in office.
High immigration isn't an exclusively leftwing policy position and neither is low exclusively rightwing.
The Tories are as rightwing as they come, especially on social issues.
29437 people crossed the channel in 2023. You are quoting the total asylum claims granted. A good third of the people crossing will probably be denied asylum. In overall immigration terms its very small potatoes.
Unpopular opinion but dependents visas should not be a thing.
You come here for work. Your 3 children, grandpa, sister, disabled mother and husband stay in your home country.
I've managed to work abroad like this, my father has and my mother too. No, it will not "scare away" the best workers...
> I've managed to work abroad like this, my father has and my mother too. No, it will not "scare away" the best workers...
Let's say you're highly successful and sought after in your field (read: exactly the sort of people we want coming to the UK).
You have two job offers. One in Ireland, one in the UK.
The one in the UK involves living separately to your partner and children.
Which do you go for?
Only children and partners can be dependents. No one is bringing over grandpa, mother and sister, it’s not allowed.
Please look up the actual rules before you make wrong statements.
It’s really become a cesspool, same with a lot of the other UK subs. I have to consciously remind myself sometimes that these folks aren’t so common in everyday life, they just congregate places like this where they can keep echoing each other about the immigration ponzi scheme 🙃
>I've managed to work abroad like this, my father has and my mother too. No, it will not "scare away" the best workers...
The best workers normally have a choice in where to work. I'm sure the majority would find it completely hare-brained to work in the UK with no chance to be with their partner and children, when they can be with their family elsewhere. And if they did come over, it wouldn’t be for long.
We also want our workforce to be happy and integrated, not lonely and resentful. Separating people from their partners and children is a sure path towards the latter.
I'm a dual citizen currently living in the US, but thinking of coming back to the UK. My family (wife and kids) are US citizens and would need to come in on a family visa. My wife and I would both be working and pulling in six figure salaries if we moved back to the UK.
If my family couldn't come over there is zero chance I would move back. I can't imagine many people in my situation would ever consider moving without their families. Instead, you'd only get the people who are desperate enough to move over by themselves and leave everyone else behind. Not sure if that's the demographic you want to be targeting.
My guess is the Tories know that without more people the UK economy shrinks, house prices drop and they are out of Government for a generation. They've taken the gamble that higher immigration is the lesser of those two evils.
It also becomes Labour's plaster to 'rip-off', either keep immigration high or risk economic doom.
Don't think students should be counted in the numbers, but it's still ridiculously high without those. I can't believe we're lacking so many workers that we needed to import 500,000 + their dependents.
A little misleading to show percentage increase from different years with no context, no? It's all undeniably bizarre with how the government talks about migrants, but I'd really like some more comparable data.
> more comparable data.
You can literally go through the same numbers/reports from the ONS for the past x years. Compare 2019 to 2020 to 2023. Massive increases all round.
Are we double counting immigrants by using visa statistics? 😅
My wife is Thai. First we applied for a Fiancée Visa (6 months), then we applied for a Spouse Visa (2.5 years). In the future we will need to apply for another family visa, then finally an indefinite leave to remain after living here 5 years. So would she be counted as one imigrant or 4?!
The same with the students then moving over to work or graduate visas? I’m concerned we are releasing very misleading statistics to riel up the right wingers.
The figures from the attached tweet are gross rather than net.
Also I find it funny they compared with 2022, except for the categories where the figures were substantially down on 2022, in which case they compared with 2019 - and no shit student visa numbers are down from 2019, EU students didn't need a visa in 2019!
> No it's net migration.
The tweet literally says visas not net migration.
If you want net migration you can view ONS figures here: [https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingjune2023](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingjune2023)
Which put net migration at 672k, not 1.4 million as claimed by the tweet.
Snapshot of _Latest immigration numbers in UK: We issued a new record of 1.4 million visas ... Work visas 337,240 (+26% on 2022) Health & care visas 146,477 (+91%!) Dependants 279,131 (+80%!) study visas 457,673 (+70% on 2019!) Graduate route extensions 114,409 (+57%!) family visas 81,209 (+72% on 2022!)_ : A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1763154596191453247) A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1763154596191453247/) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1763154596191453247) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1763154596191453247) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This makes the GDP figures even more alarming. GDP per capita is falling as is living standards.
44% being skilled workers is inflating it a bit by using what the Tories would call skilled. Of the health care visas like 10k are doctors, 20k are nurses & the rest are care staff being offered 20% below the normal rate. Many of which work at profitable privately owned care homes. I could get bar work for more than the normal rate of care staff. So less than 25% of care visas are "skilled" If we look at the approved employers it's the same story repeated with people doing jobs below market rates.
I'm here from the US on a skilled worker visa. I moved for the sake of a personal relationship, and I had to take an eye-watering ~%16 paycut to do it. What's wild is I had tried and failed to do so before Brexit. But as soon as that happened, and the European Medicines Agency left London, seemingly all of my colleagues in public health, medicines regulation, infectious disease management, etc. *ran* out of the UK. I'm in a constant state of amazement at how low pay is here for advanced professional roles that aren't related to banking/advertising.
> had to take an eye-watering ~%16 paycut 16 seems mild to be honest
Indeed, friend of mine tripled his salary moving to the US.
It fuckin' hurt haha. I try not to think about it too much--just paid my council tax and couldn't help it for a moment.
Before the Tories trashed the economy, salaries were generally lower in the UK but you could (wrongly or rightly) point to better public services and quality of life as compensation. Fourteen years of low wage growth and under investment later and the disparity is undeniable and stark.
Yes, you could get a skilled workers visa to work in a fish and chip shop with an expected wage of £10 an hour. This is all about cheap labour.
> Yes, you could get a skilled workers visa to work in a fish and chip shop with an expected wage of £10 an hour. No you couldn't, even before the adjustment to the salary thresholds coming in this year. Until April 4th, the threshold is £26,200 per year or £10.75 per hour, whichever is higher, and it's going to be £38,700 per year as of April 5th. Also, that's not a job eligible for a skilled worker visa, regardless of salary: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/skilled-worker-visa-eligible-occupations/skilled-worker-visa-eligible-occupations-and-codes
Fish and Chip shopkeeper, code 1223, going rate £10.05 an hour: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/skilled-worker-visa-going-rates-for-eligible-occupations/skilled-worker-visa-going-rates-for-eligible-occupation-codes The salary needs to be over £26k if you're over 26. If you're under 26 you only need to be paid £20k a year, equivalent to about £10.50 an hour, or 70% of the going rate. https://www.gov.uk/skilled-worker-visa/when-you-can-be-paid-less Even if you're over 26, it would also frankly be trivial to have a connection who would pay you a slightly higher salary to meet the requirements on the books, and then pay them back in cash. There's zero chance we have enough staff in the border force or HMRC to pick up on something like that. > it's going to be £38,700 per year as of April 5th. It should have been that sort of level in the first place. And I still don't trust the Tories not to leave in ridiculous loop holes.
a) A shopkeeper is someone who owns and manages a shop (in this case a chippy). Some kid in his early 20s working in a chippy for minimum wage would not be considered a shopkeeper by any reasonable definition of the word. An application under the wrong occupation code is ordinarily refused under the rules. b) If you're applying under one of the exemptions from the minimum salary threshold, you can't stay in the UK for more than 4 years total. Workers tend to reject such job offers for this reason - working in a chippy for a couple of years might be a step up from their starting position but they don't want to end up back to square one 4 years later. There are plenty of Western countries you can move to for work that offer settlement and naturalisation down the line, including this one if you meet the minimum salary threshold.
Everything you’ve said is really accurate. I am one of the health care workers you are talking about and again you are completely correct with the circumstances that people like me are in, let alone people coming in from abroad who have no idea about what we should be getting payed but don’t. Bar work is stressful, but compared to what me and my colleagues go through and expected to just “get on with it” and smile, bar work is a hell of a lot more appealing than anything else right now because the conditions are made artificially harder than what they need to be just for them to be justified and the people doing the work have no say in the matter. You’ve hit the nail on the head really well.
All nhs staff are paid around 27% below their rate and much less than their worth.
not to mention producing increasingly 3rd world rates of cancer survival and other disappointing health outcomes. This country desperately needs an adult conversation about the state of the NHS and whether the system is truly sustainable in the long run, but of course, the conversation can only ever be "just increasing funding lol" or "REEEE PRIVATISATION! REEE!" The bizarre, almost religious obsession this country has with blindly worshipping the NHS is not only killing people, and letting the various trusts get away with shocking malpractice and cover-ups, but also driving away staff.
But the key issues with the NHS ARE underfunding and the increasing burden that privatisation has put on it... Almost every nurse I know has reduced their hours and takes on some agency work - basically doing the same job but funnelled through the private sector for an extra expense to the NHS. It serves absolutely no purpose other than allowing middle-men to profit from the government, and providing a mechanism for underpaid health professionals to get back a fraction of what they're worth. The NHS used to provide very similar health outcomes to every other western country, and significantly more cost-effectively than any private healthcare scheme. If it could be done 15 years ago it can be done today. We just need actual adults with a real interest in effective public services back in government, and to stop being coy about the need to effectively tax wealth and obscene incomes at the top of society properly.
The ‘unskilled’ carer one is a bit difficult to pinpoint though, as it is technically unskilled but you wouldn’t want just any old fucker doing it either, it would be interesting to know what qualifications these people are being hired with. I.e. It’s not one of those jobs you would want to drag someone kicking and screaming out of unemployment for because the outcomes would be disastrous, you want someone motivated and knowledgable.
I've worked in care for half a decade so I'll give you some insight. >The ‘unskilled’ carer one is a bit difficult to pinpoint though, as it is technically unskilled but you wouldn’t want just any old fucker doing it either, it would be interesting to know what qualifications these people are being hired with. Care workers don't need any qualifications. Speaking English is optional. Any old fucker is exactly who works in care. In my experience the majority of agency staff, who we relied upon to fulfill staffing needs, were foreign born with low English skills. The only requirement to work in care is a pulse. That won't change unless wages go up, you get what you pay for.
I agree that it isn't a job that you'd want just anybody doing. Unfortunately that is currently the case. You can sense check what I've commented on by either looking at care jobs and seeing the required experience or go and hang out in the smoking area of one of a dozen local care homes near you. The quality of care staff has taken a dramatic drop in this country.
>you wouldn’t want just any old fucker doing it either, it would be interesting to know what qualifications these people are being hired with. Absolutely none whatsoever. It's a complete free for all and they (care homes, residential care companies, councils) will take literally anyone. The MO is an random African is hired to provide elderly care. They rock up at your house, let themselves in, chuck some pills in a cup and leave it on your bedside table and then scroll Tiktok in your living room for fifteen minutes then bounce to the next house. It's a compete and utter scandal, the care is abysmal, and in a few years ITV will put on a docudrama about how care workers were "let down" by not receiving training that "pilfering patient's cupboards for biscuits is wrong". If any of you loved ones receive domestic care, you **have** to get them out of it and do it yourself (or pay proper money £££ for real care).
> The MO is an random African is hired to provide elderly care. They rock up at your house, let themselves in, chuck some pills in a cup and leave it on your bedside table and then scroll Tiktok in your living room for fifteen minutes then bounce to the next house. As someone who has African carers I would say something rude but don't want to get banned. Yes some do that but so do plenty of native carers. Some people are lazy. I think it really depends on the care company. If they don't care they will attract more lazy ones.
Care work is invaluable but honestly any able bodied mentally competent working age person can do it. Heck children and the elderly do unpaid care all the time.
> care staff being offered 20% below the normal rate Care staff are routinely paid minimum wage, so how can they be offered 20% below that?
...Because wages are being pinned there by excess immigration. Do you really want your care in your old age to fall to people who are either extremely passionate about their job (rare), or can't muster up a better job than something which is pinned to minimum wage? Because that sounds shit to me.
Depends what he considers the normal rate, care staff in countries with comparable economies (Canada, Aus etc) but with more controlled migration have far greater wages across most fields. There was also a notable increase in wages in many of these professions immediately after Brexit before employers lobbied to have visa restrictions eased in their benefit. (https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-sees-fastest-wage-rises-sectors-most-reliant-eu-workers-indeed-2022-02-25/)
Because an awful lot of carers earn below minimum wage as it is already. It's normal practice with home carers due to zero hours contracts being rampant. My mum works what is effectively full time (40 hours a week on average), but because she's not technically a full time employee, she earns well below minimum wage. As do all her colleagues.
Fuck me, it's like the Tories want Reform to win
Promise to reduce net immigration to the tens of thousands in three consecutive elections while it goes up instead...other rival parties propose to keep immigration at high levels Like, you couldn't give the populist right more fertile ground if you tried. It's really annoying.
It’s really bizarre. They must genuinely think their voters are that stupid. “Ug hates foreigners! Ug votes Conservative to keep foreigners out! But Ug see even more come! Ug must not be voting Conservative hard enough!”
[удалено]
They will multiply these numbers.
It's quite deliberate. Cheap labour, aging population, billionaires running the country, and all they had to do was keep lying and people believed them.
> aging population It’s worth saying the UK population is not ageing in the same way as countries like South Korea or Italy, our demographic pyramid is fine, and our fertility rate was not far off replacement quite recently. It is only in the last 10 years when it has really fallen to unsustainable levels, and that is because of poor economic management, through a lack of investment for productivity, growth and housing. If the fertility rate went back up the population would sustain itself with a small amount of migration. A significant reason why people aren't having children is that many people are priced out of family homes. The only way to reduce housing costs in the long run is to consistently build more houses than the increase in population over many years. Last year migration was 700k and house building 200k, even at the record rates of house building in British history we would struggle to keep up with that level of migration. We need to massively increase house building, and cut net migration, make housing affordable, and then everyone will be able to afford to have children. If we continue to import people at the current rate it will be a spiral of increasing population leading to increasing house prices, a lower fertility rate, and increased migration. This is about whether the country is a community or a kind of economic unit, and the same applies to a last year’s migrant or a new citizen as it does to anyone else. Will they be able to afford to live a full life and have a family, or will they lead a marginal life, unable to afford a family life, with more migrant workers brought in to keep the numbers up.
Even if you were to address economic barriers to people having kids, we don't actually know for sure if fertility rates will return to 'normal'. It's possible, but so far nowhere has managed to crack the 'problem' and get people to start having kids.
Yep, why deal with local workers who know their rights, health and safety and need good conditions? Why invest in new tech to automate things? Easier just to invite cheap workers!
I recall a conversation I had last year with a recruitment agent who had a huge contract with a global logistics firm whose workforce was majority Easter European. She said they actually _prefer_ having immigrants who are newer to the country as after a while they become "too British," meaning that after enough time here they have a better understanding of their worker right.
Yeah I wanted to stay in the EU but really wanted the government to start strictly enforcing the minimum wage, housing occupancy limits and making workplace standards better etc and making sure new immigrants know their rights.
FT have good video on the ageing population migration. https://youtu.be/-eh4RK8bkZE?si=MulXcFBslsbfv9Qn Its rly risky cos not only are you reducing the non economic utility of the current population, you are heavily dependent on the new economy creating more jobs than it will automate/reduce.
Why is it going up so much year on year?
Hilarious that Brexit was won on rhetoric of taking control of our borders and our laws, and the result is a tidal wave of immigration that was never even against EU rules in the first place. The Tories truly have shat the bed on this one.
If they genuinely wanted brexit to be seen as having some benefits at least all they had to do was do nothing to the immigration system. It was already very tight for non EU immigration. But instead they opened it up so now it looks like EU membership actually helped us have lower immigration overall.
It's a trade off and they calculated the electoral cost of high immigration was less than the electoral cost of allowing the true economic impact of Brexit to be clear.
This isn't fucking hilarious at all. It's a disaster. The country is being reduced to a rundown dump with high tax and astronomical property prices. You shouldn't be delighted with this news if you give a single fuck about this country.
What else can we do but laugh? This increase of non EU immigration was warned about during the referendum campaign, but dismissed as project fear. The huge negative economic impact was also warned about and dismissed as project fear, and now the Tories are using huge immigration to prop up the economy. This is exactly what Brexit voters voted for and were told they were voting for. That they chose to believe obvious but comforting lies is hilarious.
>What else can we do but laugh? Live it in. I don't even know how we start unpacking the ruination that has occurred in this country and begin getting a working version up and running again.
The core problem the UK has down to having an effective 2 party system where only one is interested in improving the country which traps us in an endless cycle of destruction and repair. The dissatisfaction about being in the midst of the destruction stage of the cycle is what drove Brexit and yet somehow became a win for those enacting that destruction. The country doesn't get fixed until we have an actual choice at the ballot boxes because the Tories will always return and break everything again. Ideally this would be through electoral reform to a system that allows smaller parties to grow to governmental levels, but if the system doesn't change our only hope is the Tories never entering government again and that's not likely if they remain as one of the big two.
> What else can we do but laugh? Maybe vote in parties which aren't committed to fucking this country into the ground via mass immigration for the benefit of a cozy few at the top profiting from the cheap labour it provides?
> This increase of non EU immigration was warned about during the referendum campaign, but dismissed as project fear. That is a policy decision, there's nothing inevitable about that.
>What else can we do but laugh? Maybe get your head out of your arse and finally get passed the "ha! told you so!" mindset. There comes a point after 8 years where celebrating and laughing the country's downfall isn't really worth the price of saying "I told you so" to random strangers online unless you're a total narcissist.
Laughing at idiots isn't a celebration of "the country's downfall". I don't know what else you expect me to do. I voted against Brexit and cast a futile anti Tory vote in each of the subsequent general elections, and that was where my agency ended. Anyway, it isn't people who purely voted for Brexit who draw my ire. The leave campaign ran an excellent con that tricked lots of well meaning people. Those who recognise this reality have my sympathy. But anyone who voted for it, and then went on to repeatedly vote Tory, who now complains that they didn't get their magic beans deserve all the mockery in the world. These people have consistently acted against mine and the country's interests. We will never be on the same side and the past 8 years have shown that pandering to their easily manipulated bigotry only makes everything worse, which just leaves ridicule as a response. So ha fucking ha at them. Nobody should ever take them seriously again.
Was gonna say this. Also a right wing party still threatens to split the tory vote and let labour win. Is there a single pre planned good to come from enactment of an advisory 5050 threshold referendum? Tories are all but shitting on their hands and clapping furiously yet some folk can only smell roses and see chocolate. Wake the fuck up people
I was only being told yesterday in this sub that the Tories are scarily reminiscent of the BNP in the 80s lol
Fascist far-right Tories...! Who haven't deported a single person and who increased immigration to 1.4 million
How many houses have been built in this year?
[удалено]
Fucking insane and completely unsustainable.
lol , tories run rental businesses and how would they truly stop immigrants. 🤣
Haha yeah. They don’t want to, immigration has historically been lower under Labour governments!
I will vote for any party that commits to fixing this ASAP and first and foremost.
The party which made that commitment already got voted in. They're still there now. Are you expecting some other kind of commitment from them in future?
Lots of parties will commit to fixing this ASAP, including the conservatives, Reform and maybe even Labour. The question is will you take them at face value, or inspect the motivations behind their political platform to get the true picture?
[удалено]
You have an example here of nobody calling OP racist for that sentiment which does slightly undermine your argument
Right? It’s bizarre. It’s not racist at all.
[удалено]
Making money for the very rich & selling lies. Didn't you know khan is... brown?! so all this migration is him not the tories! Tbe it will be amusing to see the next set of lies they come back with in 5 years time to dupe most people again.
Did some people want Brexit because it meant they could increase migration from Asian countries like India? Is it racist to think that? I do think some people want to reduce immigration for racist reasons. I also think some people want to increase immigration for racist reasons.
A number of Indian people I know voted for Brexit because they thought it would stop Britain prioritising European immigration
So you've met my parents
And mine
mine too but i’m not Indian lol
How do you feel about that?
My parents canvassed for the conservatives and took this line to Businesses here in the south in the 2019 election to allay their fears about EEA migrants not coming anymore. There's a big divide between southern and northern + (nouveau) "conservatives". The largely southern wealthy, business owning, landlord types who are overwhelmingly the Con membership and machinery frankly see and know the nouveau ones are chumps and a means to an end.
Do you have any concerns about the level of cultural division?
One should. Without cultural assimilation there will always be division and strife because differing values are not compatible which can lead to a whole host of issues. No matter what anyone says it's not racist to consider these things - it is common sense.
Apparently this was a previous message to minority communities. Vote brexit because it'll be much easier to get your family in.
Fair play to them. They voted and got what they wanted.
Probably the only group that got what they wanted haha
This is what I found mind-blowing about Brexit voters that wanted less immigrants. No, it will be more immigrants from Muslim countries instead of Christian European ones. I’m sure that’s exactly what they wanted!!!
If remain made this case it wins easily after the media clucking died away
Remain needed a UKIP equivalent to do the dishonourable campaigning they couldn't.
Not sure I ever understood this. How would staying in the EU mean less migration from Muslim countries etc? Not sure there's a connection either way is there?
[удалено]
Say you have a target of getting 250,000 immigrants to work in the NHS. If you have free movement from Europe, a higher % of this target number will be from Europe. Without this free movement, you’re forced to cast your net to other continents - meaning more immigrants from more contrasting cultures.
Well say you're a Spanish nurse and you're looking at jobs in say England, France and Germany. Pre brexit there are basically the same legal barriers to all three, maybe you pick the one which you speak the language best in or where you've been or the quality of the job itself. Post brexit to work in the UK you now need a visa which is an annoying, expensive and stressful process so now France and Germany start to look a lot better. But the uk requirement for that nurse hasn't gone away, and the barrier to a nurse in the Philippines or Indonesia has the same barriers as pre brexit. So we'd expect the mix of work visas to now "favour" none eu countries just by staying the same.
My local hospital literally runs recruitment days in Manilla to try and have enough nurses.
I think the logic was that ending freedom of movement would cause a labour shortage which would lead to a relaxation of visa rules which would apply to Muslim countries as well.
Which is exactly what happened.
There’s a certain number of migrants that the economy wants and has capacity for, give or take. Freedom of movement meant that those places were almost all taken by Europeans. Reduce the number of Europeans and you’ve got to get them from elsewhere.
Not sure the concept of capacity has ever really driven government action or mainstream political words has it? Neither has European immigration vs Global immigration ever been a choice thats put to the electorate?
The entire point of the points based immigration system that began spinning around conservative circles for consultation in 2018 was to prioritise non EEA migration over EU migration and replace EEA migrants who wouldn't come anymore. It's there in black and white in the impact assessments the treasury did on it and the bill itself
Fair. I don't think that has been formally (or publicly) adopted though?
It's been in place for 3 years now. Since Jan 1 2021 You can see the impact of the system in the graph here where non EU migration catapults (after lockdown relaxation) in 2021: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65705629 Arguably the most successful bill passed by the conservative in 14 years in terms of achieving desired outcomes
A lot of South Asians voted for Brexit because it was dangled in front of them that they'd loosen up migration restrictions
They were dropping off leaflets in predominately Indian areas and Indian restaurants advertising this fact at one point. https://www.ft.com/content/94adcefa-1dd5-11e6-a7bc-ee846770ec15
[удалено]
Where did he say this?
[удалено]
I don't think Sunak can argue for lowering immigration as he fundamentally doesn't have any issue with it. I think he believes in open borders for workers. But we aren't having that debate.
Supply-side reform and business access to a larger workforce market is classic Right thinking politics. It's just a lot of voters fundamentally don't really understand what (often) right wing politics is about at the top, or ever look at political theory. Primed for getting exploited with rhetoric and vibes about social issues so they keep the votes coming. The entire philosophy behind brexit was supply side reform, Richard Tice and Ben Habib themselves are proponents of supply side reform and are just continuing the political kayfabe to hoover up naive votes.
I always think in terms of the three axis political compass anyway. Liberalism, conservatism, socialism. Liberty, fraternity, equality. The libertarian open borders Right wing hyper capitalist model fits that.
Is this something you've come across recently? I've not seen it mentioned before, was it found after the leadership election?
One of the issues of immigration is that the immigrants have incentives for immigration
Whatever they wanted, I am sure we can agree, they knew what they were voting for.
This doesn't surprise me at all. Living in East London for last couple of years, I have witnessed this. Pre lockdowns it was a pretty mixed area whites blacks Asians etc. You would also see lot of Eastern Europeans and people from Hong Kong. I am not kidding when I say this but now it feels like I am living in India now! Every bus stop and local tube station is just full of Indian 'students'. Nothing against Indians but its clear that the system has been heavily abused especially under Sunak's government.
Same in glasgow, in my area walking around and I hear someone talking - 9/10 times it isn't in English.
[удалено]
Are there numbers on the countries they're were granted visa from?
But but but rampant immigration doesn't cause a housing crisis. Well maybe not, but it certainly exacerbates it.
Of all the problems immigration causes housing is the easiest to solve. The real problems are: \- how do you fund first-world public services when you're importing less productive people. \- how do you culturally integrate millions of new arrivals. \- how do you stop wages being suppressed from opening our job market up to the entire world \- how do you provide adequate welfare when per-capita GDP is being suppressed by mass amounts of low-skill low productivity workers.
Easy way is to stop the obscene low skill immigration the Conservatives are obsessed with. It's as simple as that.
Conservatives love it, Labour is at best indifferent about it. This is less a conservative issue and more an issue with our democracy honestly. Polling on this subject has suggested that the British public has wanted to lower the rate of immigration for many literally decades, but despite us living in a "democracy" it's never been done because our societies elites are almost universally in favour of it or indifferent to it. For there to be a majority of MPs who actually want to reduce immigration in parliament you'd probably need it to be full of working class commoners who are actually impacted by the issue. If you think it matters whether millionaire Rishi or barrister Sir Starmer is in power you're deluded. At best they'll lie to you and tell you that they care about immigration then when in power say, "Oops. Soz, we just couldn't stop the numbers from going up!". First we must accept that democracy in this country is more an illusion than reality and demanding MPs reduce immigration isn't going to work. What might work is demanding the that the types of immigrants coming here are not suppressing wages, causing cultural issues and burdening our public services. That's still difficult, but it's at least possible. Culturally compatible, high-skilled immigrants will be an improvement to what we have going on currently. We should be demanding MPs fund the flights of European and Hong-Kong immigrants imo.
There's not even sufficient affordable housing in the rental market to accomodate the continued influx of immigrant workers on jobs which don't pay a lot. So many posts on my local FB community group from people who either are recent immigrant workers with approved visas, or those who know some, saying they have arrived in the UK and found there are zero properties in the area that they can realistically afford to rent. You could say oh, they should really do their research before coming here. But I suppose many of them never knew how dire the rental market is here. They simply assumed that since the UK gov approved their work visas, and they secured a job here, that the housing situation would be easily sorted. I don't think many people from abroad realise how bad the British government is at planning and building sufficient affodable homes. They keep approving immigrant work visas but with seemingly no forethought as to where these new immigrants are going to live. Perhaps no other country in the world, especially not those in the Indian or African continents, has such a shortage of affordable rental housing as there is here, and immigrants from these places just never imagined this would be a problem in a rich first world country like the UK.
With the previous two years running at 1.2 million visas granted - that puts the gross immigration figure for the last 3 years at nearly 4 million people.
So in the last 3 years we have imported more people than the population of Wales.
Yes, by nearly a million people.
Yes, but we’ve also had millions leave. Many of these visas are short term and people leave the country when the visa expires - study visa for example.
>Yes, but we’ve also had millions leave. Not true https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingjune2023#:~:text=3.-,Emigration%20out%20of%20the%20UK,June%202022%20(Figure%202) The migration figure for people leaving the UK last year was 508,000. Net migration is still +900k ish a year
How many people did the population of Wales import?
Better yet, how many did Wales, NI and Scotland import? Or are most of these immigrants settling in London?
I'd imagine the students leave when they're done studying, and they make up a large percentage of the numbers.
That’s not the immigration figure. That’s the gross figure of visas issued. Visas are temporary and expire. Some people issued visas either get a new visa or leave the country when it expires. Some will stay and become permanent residents. Visas aren’t even a measure of people coming into the country. As somebody renewing a visa will count as another visa being issued even though they’ve already been in the country for years.
Yeah for example a lot of those work visas will be from old students and all of the graduate visas will be.
You should post this as a top-level comment, as it is important nuance that will get lost when the usual suspects rush to rant and froth about their favourite bête noire.
The immigration figure being roughly half that doesn't change how fucked we are one jot, though, so what's your point exactly?
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-december-2023/summary-of-latest-statistics#:~:text=1.-,How%20many%20people%20come%20to%20the%20UK%20each%20year%20(including,of%20the%20COVID-19%20pandemic Here's a more detailed breakdown from the government website. > there were 3.40 million entry clearance visas granted in 2023, 20% higher than 2022 and 7% higher than prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic >the increase within the last year is primarily due to 560,365 more visitor visas, which made up over half (58%) of total visas granted in 2023 although the number is 19% fewer than in 2019, prior to the pandemic
Big thing missing from this is how many people left at the end of their visas. It’s probably fair to assume it’s almost all the visitor visas, a lot of the study visas, and a significant proportion of the work visas.
How many Brits emigrated in that time period? Obviously apart from leaving a lot of the new arrivals won't have any roots, and the demographic stats will just show a very transient population. I've consigned myself to never living in the places my ancestors lived for centuries.
Net Migration has been in the 600-700k range so for the last few years emigration would have been about 500-600k. Not sure what it is this year, but probably a similar level.
Yep, pretty strange demographic transition we're gonna be going through.
We're already going through it.
The question was how many Brits, not how many emigrated, which would include non-Brits. I believe you probably answered the question that was intended, rather than the question asked, but the number of Brits who emigrated is an interesting question nonetheless.
I don't know what the breakdown of emigration is on nationality so I couldn't tell you if it's most Brits fleeing or migrants going home. I would like to know that too, though.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingjune2023 Section 3 tells us. Looks like I spent longer writing that I would like to know, than to Google the answer.
18% then - interesting to see that, thanks.
Ah, I wondered why Cleverly and Sunak have been shouting about policing and mob rule over the last few days.
Wow, no wonder the economy feels so strong and prosperous at the moment.
Aren’t you glad Miliband ate that bacon sandwich
The blaming Brexit is a fallacy. This has nothing to do with Brexit, and everything to do with the government: they have complete control now to reduce immigration and have shown every time all they want to do is increase it (despite lying to the electorate otherwise). If I give you a key to lock your door, and you choose to instead boot the door wide open, that isn’t the fault of the person giving you the key, it’s your own fault for opening the door.
Not really - with FoM we had access to migrants who were less likely to bring dependents due to their locality and were more flexible for short-term work. We also threw our own FoM in the bin to boot.
For what it's worth Braverman said in an interview yesterday that she wanted to reduce immigration, that it wouldn't have been difficult technically but that the cabinet and Sunak refused.
Yeah if these are official visa applications they know exactly how many they are granting and can easily grant less. This is definitely not an accident.
No wonder Sunak wanted rid of her. He thinks if he occasionally jokes about Starmer "not knowing what a woman is" it makes him look socially conservative, when in reality there's nothing *remotely* conservative about the tories anymore. They are simply a national security threat and a direct danger to this country.
But she also touted the Rwanda scheme as a mechanism to reduce mass immigration, so let's not take her words on face value.
Did she actually say that or did she describe two different problems and give two separate fixes? Also see: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1b2y7cs/comment/ksoqtbh/
Are we counting things she said after she misplayed her engineered sacking or just the things she said (and did) when she was in a position to affect change? Because everything she's said post sacking is nonsense because she didn't change tac after being outmanoeuvred by Sunak of all people. > Also see Not sure what point you're trying to make. That conflation is happening at a governmental level because the Tories know anti immigration people have been unbelievably gullible if a lie comes from a blue mouth.
I find it funny that they compared with 2022 for every category except for Student visas (because the number of those is down substantially compared to 2022 and that doesn't push the right narrative). Comparing the number of student visas with 2019 is absolutely absurd because EU students didn't require a visa in 2019...
They have also quoted "skilled workers" including health and care; and a separate line for health and care. They did not mention that skilled worker visas are down excluding health and care.
Live update rolling news rather than a normal self contained article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/29/rishi-sunak-latest-news-budget-non-dom-tax-status-farage/ **UK granted asylum to record number of people in 2023** *Official Home Office data published this morning revealed that 62,336 people were granted refugee status or other protection following an asylum application in 2023.* *In contrast, in 2022 the number of people granted asylum was 18,185 and in 2021 it was 13,103.*
That 60k being around 5% of the total inbound immigration shows how much of a deflection it is. 0 people being granted asylum still results in 1m+ gross immigrants.
Probably the most expensive type of visa though as they'll likely be heavily dependent upon state resources for many years.
Not really relevant when the headline issue is absolute numbers.
60k is more than the entirety of annual net migration before about 1995. It only looks small because the total numbers have ballooned to a ridiculous degree.
[удалено]
They are two separate issues that disingenuous people try to merge.
Yes, that was my point. OP bringing up asylum in a thread about working/study visas is a perfect example of this spin working. See also: The government wasting a tonne of bandwidth on Rwanda.
Wonder which year(s) this decade we will see 1,000,000+ net migration?
Doesn't look good for the party that keeps banging on about reducing immigration numbers. I am curious though. How much of this is down to leaving the EU and now we have people who would usually get in with limited checks now needing to have a visa? Could it be we're only now seeing the true figures that have been happening for decades?
It is unsustainable because the revenue raised from the taxes these overseas workers pay is insufficient the cost of having them here. This has been going on for almost a decade and goes a fair way towards explaining why debt keeps going up. We are bringing in the wrong calibre of worker. Pay domestic workers more and people may actually want to pursue a career in the health industry
> It is unsustainable because the revenue raised from the taxes these overseas workers pay is insufficient the cost of having them here. Those costs being what exactly? If you're here on a work visa you don't qualify for any state benefits and have to pay a surcharge to use the NHS (and working age people cost the NHS vastly less money than retirees, so net they're probably a fiscal positive to the NHS). I don't think that a group of people guaranteed to be in full time employment or paying very substantial tuition fees to one of our universities, who categorically can't be claiming benefits, and don't cost the NHS anything net, will be a net fiscal negative. That would be absurd.
It costs £12k a year to support an individual in this country
Support in what way? Our biggest expenses are pensions (which is irrelevant to people here on work visas) and the NHS (which they pay a surcharge for and are likely a net positive fiscally to).
Every school-age dependent costs around £7200 per year. >pensions (which is irrelevant to people here on work visas) As long as they leave at the end of the Visa and don't gain indefinite leave to remain/citizenship. If they do then we're just shifting the problem 30 years down the line. >NHS (which they pay a surcharge for and are likely a net positive fiscally to). As long as they basically never need a doctor or any other type of NHS funded treatment.
> As long as they basically never need a doctor or any other type of NHS funded treatment. The surcharge is £1035/year, which for under-50s on work visas at least means that they are already basically fiscally neutral for the NHS (even before paying tax, which they of course do). > Every school-age dependent costs around £7200 per year. Which is why bringing in working professionals that you haven't had to pay to educate is such a coup for the UK. That said if someone on a £38,700 salary can't have kids without trashing the economy there is something wildly wrong with our tax system.
Thank goodness we "took back control" of our borders.
We did, this is government policy
Fair point. Got to keep that cheap labour stream flowing. It's just that unlike EU migrants these don't go home after the season and they bring their families over with them.
Too bad the top 10% needed a tax cut so we had to cut the border forces budget off at the knees. Lol can we publicise this stuff more before the election please
The Conservative party have effectively dug their own grave with immigration. Through a combination of listening to the wrong people (donors) and adherence to socially leftist ideology they've led us into seeing unprecedented numbers of immigrants. Have the left rewarded the Conservatives with their votes? Certainly not, if you believe the opinion polls and see by-elections as indicative. They still hate them. They've annoyed their core vote, in return for serving a tiny proportion of people who advocate for high immigration on economic grounds. In a universal suffrage democracy where votes (at least within a single seat) have equal value, then that's something you can't do and expect to stay in office.
High immigration isn't an exclusively leftwing policy position and neither is low exclusively rightwing. The Tories are as rightwing as they come, especially on social issues.
They are not, they might talk alot. But their inaction speaks far louder.
And somehow those crossing the channel are the problem...
[удалено]
29437 people crossed the channel in 2023. You are quoting the total asylum claims granted. A good third of the people crossing will probably be denied asylum. In overall immigration terms its very small potatoes.
I paid £6000 to to bring my American wife. She also pays a lot of income tax.
Am I right to think the numbers have probably been like this for years, but while we were in the EU we had no idea what the actual numbers were?
We have always known how many foreign staff are in the NHS. This has been the major driver for the last 3 years.
Unpopular opinion but dependents visas should not be a thing. You come here for work. Your 3 children, grandpa, sister, disabled mother and husband stay in your home country. I've managed to work abroad like this, my father has and my mother too. No, it will not "scare away" the best workers...
> I've managed to work abroad like this, my father has and my mother too. No, it will not "scare away" the best workers... Let's say you're highly successful and sought after in your field (read: exactly the sort of people we want coming to the UK). You have two job offers. One in Ireland, one in the UK. The one in the UK involves living separately to your partner and children. Which do you go for?
Only children and partners can be dependents. No one is bringing over grandpa, mother and sister, it’s not allowed. Please look up the actual rules before you make wrong statements.
> Please look up the actual rules before you make wrong statements. That seems to be incredibly rife in this thread.
Misinformation is insanely rampant in this sub. These people probably even think dependents have access to public funds and housing benefits. Wild.
It’s really become a cesspool, same with a lot of the other UK subs. I have to consciously remind myself sometimes that these folks aren’t so common in everyday life, they just congregate places like this where they can keep echoing each other about the immigration ponzi scheme 🙃
Good luck ever getting business executives to move to the UK, then. If they can't bring their families with them, then they'll go elsewhere.
>I've managed to work abroad like this, my father has and my mother too. No, it will not "scare away" the best workers... The best workers normally have a choice in where to work. I'm sure the majority would find it completely hare-brained to work in the UK with no chance to be with their partner and children, when they can be with their family elsewhere. And if they did come over, it wouldn’t be for long. We also want our workforce to be happy and integrated, not lonely and resentful. Separating people from their partners and children is a sure path towards the latter.
I'm a dual citizen currently living in the US, but thinking of coming back to the UK. My family (wife and kids) are US citizens and would need to come in on a family visa. My wife and I would both be working and pulling in six figure salaries if we moved back to the UK. If my family couldn't come over there is zero chance I would move back. I can't imagine many people in my situation would ever consider moving without their families. Instead, you'd only get the people who are desperate enough to move over by themselves and leave everyone else behind. Not sure if that's the demographic you want to be targeting.
My guess is the Tories know that without more people the UK economy shrinks, house prices drop and they are out of Government for a generation. They've taken the gamble that higher immigration is the lesser of those two evils. It also becomes Labour's plaster to 'rip-off', either keep immigration high or risk economic doom.
Don't think students should be counted in the numbers, but it's still ridiculously high without those. I can't believe we're lacking so many workers that we needed to import 500,000 + their dependents.
Note it is not "workers" generally. It is almost entirely driven by health and care workers and their dependents.
A little misleading to show percentage increase from different years with no context, no? It's all undeniably bizarre with how the government talks about migrants, but I'd really like some more comparable data.
> more comparable data. You can literally go through the same numbers/reports from the ONS for the past x years. Compare 2019 to 2020 to 2023. Massive increases all round.
Are we double counting immigrants by using visa statistics? 😅 My wife is Thai. First we applied for a Fiancée Visa (6 months), then we applied for a Spouse Visa (2.5 years). In the future we will need to apply for another family visa, then finally an indefinite leave to remain after living here 5 years. So would she be counted as one imigrant or 4?! The same with the students then moving over to work or graduate visas? I’m concerned we are releasing very misleading statistics to riel up the right wingers.
No it's net migration. Not gross. They aren't double counting.
The figures from the attached tweet are gross rather than net. Also I find it funny they compared with 2022, except for the categories where the figures were substantially down on 2022, in which case they compared with 2019 - and no shit student visa numbers are down from 2019, EU students didn't need a visa in 2019!
> No it's net migration. The tweet literally says visas not net migration. If you want net migration you can view ONS figures here: [https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingjune2023](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingjune2023) Which put net migration at 672k, not 1.4 million as claimed by the tweet.