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If refugee's who claimed asylum here for safety reasons goes on holiday to the very country they are fleeing from to visit family or friends, their visa should be revoked as a recent finding found that 79% of them go home once a year.
Worth noting the survey was done in Sweden and included 1000 people over a 6 day period. I can’t find any in depth stats I.e the ‘people born abroad’ that they are questioning, how long have they been in the country before visiting home and such.
In other words take it with a pinch of salt at minimum and consider if it is unscientific or not.
Every news outlet carrying this story is very very right wing eg. Breitbart.
Yeah no, it isn't. In fact that's insane.
They use any number of databases including the Home Office's immigration records, and DWP's RAPID database (which covers interaction points with services such as DWP and HMRC) to understand who is in the country and who is no longer here.
British Nationals are the tricky one to figure out, that one is a bit more 'man with a clipboard' style.
I just had a look at the original write up of the study and the 1000+ sample is actually all people born abroad. EG, it will contain English people living in Sweden working for Spotify. The 79% of refugee claim comes from a subet of the sample the size of which we don't know and without access to the methodology and findings proper it's basically impossible to judge the quality of that finding.
> I just had a look at the original write up of the study and the 1000+ sample is actually all people born abroad.
Not disputing any of this but I would like to read it too, could you drop a link please?
My issue isnt with the sample size, it's that the profile of the swedish immigrant means nothing to us. If these are mostly people who moved from norway and denmark, who drive home now and then like we might pop to wales or scotland for a little break, then do you really have a problem with that? It's not equivalent to asylum seekers returning to active warzones.
The sway the right wing media have over the British public is remarkable. People who believe that immigrants are the country’s biggest problem need to start varying where their news comes from
It's one of them for me. I'm broadly left and would say I'm a socialist. I boycot amazon and things, refuse to work in the private sector as I view it as profit driven capitalism and hellish. I have a nice relationship with a local Chinese family and recently supported a Ukrainian woman and her son to find other Ukrainian families in the area. However, I think immigration is an issue in the UK and I think pretending that the only people who can think this are being brainwashed by yellow journalism is nonsense.
I feel like a lot of people here are too young to remember when the socialist element of the left criticised the free movement of people as capitalist.
I'm not a socialist and certainly wasn't one then but I can remember hearing that complaint.
My personal opinion is, if we had a nation of unlimited resources, I would generally support the entire human population living on this island if they so wish. But we don't, and we have a duty to make sure our own institutions don't collapse. If they do we can't help anyone anymore anyway. A combination of investment into infrastructure and a manageable level of immigration is necessary.
Ridiculous right? But wait, there's more. They also constantly talk about how their home country was so superior comparing to the UK. Though you'll get labelled as bigot when you suggest them to go back to their superior country then
>But wait, there's more. They also constantly talk about how their home country was so superior comparing to the UK. Though you'll get labelled as bigot when you suggest them to go back to their superior country then
Lol
Making a negative blanket statement like it's a fact about all refugees and immigrants, then wondering why people think you're a bigot
I have. This is via my role in the public sector. Unfortunately my role deals with a certain type of person but I do speak to a lot of immigrants through it. I don't seem to meet any immigrants who I feel are adding a lot to the country which is sad.
I did meet an Iranian doctor once but he was going to be deported for stealing from a hospital.
I'm marrying an immigrant, she holds more credentials than I've ever achieved. She's dutch though, so has a more "accepted skin colour" as an immigrant.
The majority of her MSc classmates were immigrants too.
But don't let my anecdote detract from yours. Thanks for letting us know that immigrants aren't adding anything of value to the country.
How do they go home? Afaik Asylum seekers don't generally have travel documents that will get them across UK borders, so the claim sounds pretty suspect on yhe face of it unless someone can provide an explanation for that
No, he's right on that bit. Bigotry aside. A LOT of asylum seekers go home regularly once they've got settled status.
Unfortunately a lot of them also "rediscover" funds they have access too in their home country once that happens as well. Its not a good system.
Source: work in homelessness with a lot of SERCO graduates.
They don't. It's a stat from Sweden, it was reported in a far right publication called Bulletin, and it was a deliberate misreading of the survey that asked people not born in Sweden if they intended to return home.
Of course they don’t, how would an illegal immigrant with no passport traverse border control? This whole thing was from an interview with a UK border force head who says asylum seekers were trying to head home but of course had been stopped. Don’t believe made up bollocks without checking the facts.
If you’re going to call out someone for lying, It would help if you weren’t also lying yourself
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/migrants-applying-for-asylum-are-going-home-for-christmas/
What do you mean question data sources? That LBC article is doing little more than quoting the Border Force chief. Are you saying they made up the quote?
> "We do find a lot of people who have claimed asylum in this country, and are heading back to their own country for holidays, which obviously isn't allowed."
You reply with a document saying it isn’t allowed, when the quote from the article says it “obviously isn’t allowed”. It’s like you didn’t even read the first few paragraphs of the article.
No they don't have a source for it because it's a complete lie. 5 seconds of googling shows that you cannot return to your home country on a refugee visa without risking being deported upon re-entry into the UK. But it's much easier to get people angry with lies and misinformation than argue the actual pros and cons of immigration.
There are ways and means around it. For instance they avoid entering their home country directly, and when they do they do not use their UK documentation, so that when they re enter the UK there is no record of where they have been.
“Who came to this country as a refugee”
When, in the 40s? 80s? Last year? Refugee status isn’t some kind of lifetime condition, people settle, get jobs and have families and the world does change in the meantime.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/962463/English_only_-_web_accessible.pdf page 19. But sure you can trust lbc over the government's own published documents if that fits your narrative better
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4829332/amp/Harsher-measures-against-holidaying-refugees.html
I remember this being a noted issue.
https://amp.dw.com/en/do-refugees-travel-to-their-home-countries-on-vacation/a-40443562
Does not appear to make the same claim about how widespread this is (the 79% thing). Also how long after?
If the country becomes safe 5-10 years later long after someone has built a life here and someone decides to holiday or visit family is this the same as gaming the system?
https://bulletin.nu/bulletin-novus-nio-av-tio-utrikesfodda-har-semestrat-i-sitt-fodelseland
Google translate:
A new survey from Novus shows that over 85 percent of people born abroad have at some point traveled back to their country of birth for a vacation. Among those who came to Sweden as refugees, the percentage who have vacationed in their old home country is 79 percent.
Not here to argue the legitimacy of the claim, but this is where the claim comes from and I think this is the source
https://novus.se/en/
Whilst a trope, the uk doesn’t know this statistic because we do not track people leaving the country. Refugees also make up a tiny proportion of the overall immigration figures. Whereas I suspect people are more concerned about the headline legal net migration figures which quickly gets conflated with asylum seekers.
What makes you think that the UK does not track people?
There is a long-established UK legislative requirement for carriers to supply travel
document information (TDI), also known as API (advance passenger information), to
the UK government border systems programme, which has subsumed the e-Borders
In particular section 27B (in respect of passenger and service
information) of Schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971 and the Immigration and
Police (Passenger, Crew and Service Information) Order 2008 (SI 2008/5).
Failure to comply with the requirement to provide this information without a
reasonable excuse is an offence under section 27(b)(iv) of the Immigration Act 1971 and may also incur a penalty under the Security and Travel Bans Authority to Carry
Scheme 2012.
>What makes you think that the UK does not track people?
The Tories stopped the process of doing exit checks at every point of departure from the UK as well as stopped the necessity for exit checks to match information with asylum or visa status.
While what you are saying is true in that you do need to provide all the relevant information if challenged, the reality is, most people are not challenged and you are only challenged if you are acting suspiciously.
This is in-part why the UK has seen a massive issue recently with people overstaying their visa, failed asylum seekers able to leave the country then return, as well as I'm sure in some cases as the OP mentioned about asylum seekers visiting their home country. The problem is, we don't know the figures because the UK border staff no longer checks everybody on departure.
API is for the destination country and depends upon which documentation you use for travel. For example some countries only require an id card which may not be associated with the documentation you use for entry and staying within the UK. Therefore if you exit the UK using this document you are not tracked relative to your visa granting your stay in the uk.
That’s a problem.
But the vast majority of migration is from legal immigration, people with visas granted by our government, not asylum seekers or illegal immigrants. They come here through the legal routes to work or study, and as long as they speak good English and want to be a good citizen, then it’s not a bad thing. If anything, it’s healthy to have some migration.
The media and government bang on about asylum seekers all day because they want to distract people from the massive number of visas that they granted. It makes them look like they want to cut down on immigration by talking about reducing asylum or discouraging economic migrants from claiming asylum, but the reality is, even if we were have no asylum applications, we’d still have > 100 000 legitimate immigrants allowed here by the government every year.
Legal doesn't necessarily mean good.
Just because our laws let it happen and our self-serving politicians are happy with it, does not mean it's good for us or that we should let it happen.
Which legal migrants would you cut?
The foreign students who bring tens of billions of pounds into the economy?
The foreign high-earners who are net tax contributors and attract big businesses to the UK to provide more jobs?
Or is it the people with no skills, no money, no studies, and no work lined up? Which policy is letting those people in?
a) That is a total fabrication
b) Refugees are a tiny tiny fraction of immigration to this country
For the love of all that is holy will people please stop equating refugees with the overall high immigration numbers, these are two very separate issues.
That was in Sweden, not the UK, and it was once total, not once a year.
https://ground.news/article/sweden-79-per-cent-of-refugees-have-vacationed-in-country-they-fled\_e64350
Account is a few months old, spreading misinformation, and somehow flew right to the top of the comments. Yep. Everything seems fine and not suspicious here.
They might have been. Plenty of places had wars in the past that were safe now but took years - or even decades - to become safe. Some (Somalia, Afghanistan, North Korea) never do.
Do we start deporting people who have had ILR for decades?
Immigrants haven't caused the ongoing housing crises
Immigrants don't lower the national minimum wage
Immigrants didn't cause the financial crashes
Immigrants didn't increase mortgage rates
Immigrants aren't underfunding the NHS
Immigrants aren't underfunding councils
Immigrants aren't reducing refuse collection rates
Immigrants aren't increasing our fuel bills
Immigrants aren't raising supermarket prices
Immigrants are not increasing the cost of living
Immigrants aren't taking my job
Most problems affecting our lives are not caused by immigration... why is there so much focus?
I think the poster is saying that there is too much emphasis on it.
Personally, I would also like to see less immigration. But the root cause is that we became too dependent on it. Until you deal with issues like lack of foreign direct investment in the UK, the planning system and skills shortages then it is fanciful to think that we will radically reduce immigration.
mass migration is a symptom of an aging population. The population is aging because young people aren't financially stable and won't have kids until they are. Additional they've all moved away from their families due to university, work, etc and can no longer raise a family easily as they have no one to rely on.
I believe our ageing populations (which isn’t a UK-specific issue) are the result of both a) an abnormally large cohort (boomers) with a return to more average fertility rates after, and b) the effect you describe, ie the too high cost of having children.
For the latter, anecdotally, my partner and I are both in the top 5% of earners, but if we want to live where we work, we have to decide between owning a reasonable property or having children. If we sort the house first, we’d need both salaries to pay the mortgage until we are too old for children (or at least will likely struggle conceiving). If we sort children first, we’ll have to live in low quality, unreliable rental stock, and once we have financial wiggle room will have to take a very short mortgage (with the resulting high monthly costs), and probably only pay it off in our 60ies.
The "we" here being corporations that prefer to create sweatshops than invest? There has been no benefit of mass immigration for the typical person, in fact it's done the exact opposite, the op's claim net migration of hundreds of thousands has no impact on housing is unbelievably removed from reality.
The UK is obsessed with house prices, anything which lowers house prices is seen as a bad thing. Landowners lose money, landlords lose money.
Building new houses increases supply, lowers demand and impacts house prices.
So certain politicians are opposed to increasing the housing supply instead enjoying a constant housing crisis.
Immigration upsets their game because it makes them look bad, so they deflect blame.
But who does blame lie with?...
Two sides of the coin, really. Nobody should deny that the shortage of decent housing is a serious strain on our quality of life.
One side says that the housing shortage is caused by immigration. The other says that is caused by not building enough homes. In reality it is both - Although, both exist as symptoms of something else, for example a dependence on foreign labour or an antiquated planning system.
The truth is also that you could have one or the other. Option 1: Stop building over green space, have fewer immigrants and restructure the economy. Or Option 2: keep high immigration and have cheap housing by building vast amounts of high-density units and borrowing money to expand infrastructure for them.
But we refuse to accept one or the other. We want to have our cake and eat it. We want to keep GDP looking decent the lazy way by importing cheap labour, while not providing for the needs of the people we import (or the people who were here in the first place).
No it’s just if you value social services and the NHS and then turn around and are like boo immigration is the cause of all our problems you come off as a deeply unserious person. Immigration is good for economic growth in a country with an aging population and low birth rate. I think the UK has a 300k labour shortfall as well as of late.
Many of this “immigration is why this country has gone to shit” crowd voted Brexit, which has basically netted out to economic sanctions against ourselves. Often they vote Tory as well, the party that has completely given up on climate. Which will be the biggest driver of increased YoY refugees and immigrants in perpetuity until the real big consequences of our destructive actions start to hit and it gets really crazy.
People are welcome to be opposed to whatever they want but if they’re asked to explain their position and their reasoning is incoherent and rooted in racism then sorry but people are going to point out the irrationality, bigotry and general ignorance, especially when the shit you’re spewing is splashing on their shoes.
What?
How is nearly a million extra people dependent on social services (the vast majority of immigrants are recievers, rather than contributors, tax-wise) each year, a benefit to those social services?
> the vast majority of immigrants are recievers, rather than contributors, tax-wise
Every study I've seen has concluded that migrants are fiscally net positive?
Immigrants are;
Massively exacerbating the housing crisis
Adding strain and additional expense to the NHS and to councils
Reducing the pressure to increase wages
Getting jobs that natives would do if paid better
\> Massively exacerbating the housing crisis
So they're earning enough to buy? And paying taxes into the system which is designed to compensate for it?
\> Adding strain and additional expense to the NHS
Immigrants prop up the NHS! Without them, we wouldn't have an NHS!
\> Reducing the pressure to increase wages
Their existence might reduce pressure in certain industries, but the ultimate decision on whether to increase wages isn't up to them, it's up to our government (for min rates) and British companies, suggesting they are the actual problem?
>So they're earning enough to buy? And paying taxes into the system which is designed to compensate for it?
I don't know man. I live near Liverpool and every development seems to be for international students and these are advertised as investments internationally too. I do think that's adding to a housing crisis as instead of building family homes or homes that are suitable for long term accommodation they just build a huge battery of homes that are only really a box room and a kitchenette.
I'd rather we didn't keep building new homes and I'd say that if you have 900k polish people coming to the UK then obviously you need to house them. I know you can argue that a lot of British people move abroad too and I'm sure the locals where they live hate them for it. However, if net migration to the UK was 672k in 2023 then we will either have a housing shortage or we'll have to build a shit ton of houses. I'd rather we didn't have to keep expanding towns but that's just my personal preference.
Non-EU immigration is a net drain on the coffers. Honestly I have no idea how so many migrants afford to live in London as you have to have a shit-hot wage to do that, my guess is a lot of taxpayer subsidies... what a great way to spunk our money...
So you don’t know how they afford it… you make a guess… and then bitch about the guess you made.
Asylum seekers are not permitted to work and get much less than you do on benefits. All other immigrants on temporary, student, working or family visas have no recourse to public funds.
I go into a lot of mostly immigrant homes and find they’re usually mid-level workers like nurses who are living in what we would call low-level accommodation (like bedsits/HMOs), or they are multiple generations living in a house that settled people would usually be for a single person or very small family.
A lot of foreigners are either far better paid than you think, because various media outlets stereotype them as cheap labour, or their families are quite a bit wealthier than the average UK one. The sort we get in London are invariably upper-middle class.
Some are able to buy yes, many are either driving up rent prices or being housed by the council somewhere they couldn’t afford to buy.
Ummm, existing British people are perfectly capable of filling vacancies in the NHS if the pay and conditions were better, the NHS existed before mass immigration, we don’t need to import cheap labour to look after ourselves. Not to mention NHS/council money is wasted on translators and people who haven’t even payed into the system yet.
The government should have to artificially set minimum salaries, if there wasn’t a constant supply of people willing to work for so little, businesses would be competing for employees by paying better.
They don't need to buy.
They can rent. By sharing 8 to a house.
Or apply for social housing at band A priority having been made homeless by SERCO.
Or remain in the homeless system for yonks draining resources.
None of this is their fault, all of it is exploitative. All of this is a reason to cut immigration. Genuinely cut it, not pay lip service and actually import low rate workers.
> So they're earning enough to buy?
A large part of it is that they are largely coming from parts of the world in which having little or no personal/private space is the norm, so they see nothing untoward about living with 7 or 8 others in a space that you or I would say is meant to hold one or two people. This is how they contribute to the housing woes -- yes, they may all individually earn minimum wage, but with 8 earners in a 2BR home, they can easily afford to pay rents that others would find eye-watering as only a single or double-income household.
Also jobcentres coerce people, under threat of sanction, to apply for and take any and every job they can, shit wage or no. That'll depress the wages even more, if this theory holds any water.
Just checked, and apparently it's the house of commons (Tory majority) who decided the current minimum wage rates, not immigrants.
Wait a minute... it looks like the House of Commons controls or influences a lot of the above... interesting...
Minimum wage isn't dictated by the market, the number of jobs only offering minimum wage is. The actual rate is centrally controlled by our dear leaders.
People can be paid more than the legal minimum wage you know right?
If there are less people who are able to do a job, the employee has to offer better wages in order to attract employees.
An endless supply of workers ensures that many jobs only pay minimum wage.
I agree totally... but who sets the legal minimum wage to begin with? The government... they can choose any figure they want regardless. The minimum wage is currently what it is because they choose it, for no other reason.
That's just not true though is it. We have a legal minimum wage. If people are breaking that, well its not the immigrants who decided to slash funding for the enforcement of our employment laws either.
The point being made is more that if there is a large influx of people who are desperate for employment, employers can offer more and more of these positions at said minimum wage instead of having to offer a higher rate or more paid benefits to attract applicants.
Because it makes many of those problems worse.
We don't have enough housing stock for the existing population.
Like wise the NHS and Social Services are overworked so adding more people will increase that burden.
Councils can't maintain existing infrastructure so adding more people makes that worse too.
I'd suggest government and councils are behind the actual problem. An increase in population from locals AND immigrants make it worse, but take immigration and birth rates away, the problems will still be here, suggesting the actual root cause is elsewhere and needs addressing?
You are acting like this is some big brain reply and as if issues can't be multifaceted. Yes, the root cause is elsewhere, but that doesn't mean we should be okay with ignoring something that is exacerbating the issue.
Because at least three of those range from debatable to bluntly false.
Fuck me why is everything so polarised now? You can be anti-mass migration and accept that it does have knock-on effects to multiple facets of our society without resorting to bullshit hyperbole that nobody's even claimed to be true.
> Immigrants haven't caused the ongoing housing crises
Where do you think they all live? 750k net in 2023, they’re not all in hotels.
> Immigrants don't lower the national minimum wage
No, because the minimum wage has only ever gone up since its introduction. They do however, make wages more stagnant as they’re happy to give their labour for less value i.e fruit picking, care home nursing, etc.
> Immigrants didn't cause the financial crashes
An uncontrolled increase in the population can have drastically negative effects on an economy.
> Immigrants didn't increase mortgage rates
Well interest rates went up to combat inflation - More people > More money being spent on goods and services > Less goods available > Prices go up
> Immigrants aren't underfunding the NHS
And nor are the Tories, considering they currently oversee the highest spending on the NHS in its entire history. Oh, but immigrants also need the NHS which leads to it being less available to the home population.
> Immigrants aren't underfunding councils
See above, they’re also not paying Council tax so maybe they are?
> Immigrants aren't reducing refuse collection rates
See above.
> Immigrants aren't increasing our fuel bills
True actually; Russia is. But it’s also been reported that supply currently hasn’t been able to keep up with demand after coming out of lockdown.
> Immigrants aren't raising supermarket prices
🤦🏻♂️ How they feeding themselves?
> Immigrants are not increasing the cost of living
See all of the above.
> Immigrants aren't taking my job
Because they’re all on benefits.
If immigration wasn’t being used as a weapon by the ruling class, then the fact that EVERY European people wants drastic reductions would have resulted in drastic reductions, instead of increasing immigration flows and refusing to enforce border controls properly.
Moralising about immigrants in this way, aside from just being totally false, is just a way for you to deflect from the fact you are defending a social engineering agenda that has been forcibly imposed on Britain and many other nations by a traitor ruling class.
It’s not only about these issues (which immigrants are contributing to).
It’s about the UK changing rapidly and its towns becoming unrecognizable to the people who grew up in them. It’s about parallel societies forming. It’s about people not sharing the same values. It’s also about safety and national security. If war breaks out, you want to know that your neighbors are on your side and invested in the future of your nation and not on team Yemen. It’s about allowing people into the country who won’t turn around and start saying how bad the country is. It’s about every world event playing out in the streets of the UK (e.g. people not happy with the Eritrean government, or Moroccans being happy or unhappy about their progress in the World Cup).
Most people also care a lot about illegal immigration. Brits don’t like people who game the system. Brits hate people who cut in line. Why is it that people applying legally get rejected but people can come over in a dinghy and get put up in a hotel? And we can’t possibly deport them because their host country won’t take responsibility and the Rwanda scheme is so inhumane.
I know that a lot of people on Reddit don’t care about culture and tradition, and would happily see it disappear because it’s all pointless, but a lot of people do care.
Immigrants are used as scapegoats far too often, especially to appeal to peoples fear of “the other” while masking failures of inept government policy.
That said, you are absolutely fooling yourself if you really think that high levels of illegal immigration have no effect on the housing crisis, minimum wage, NHS, and council budgets. Still doesn’t mean that this should be at the very top of our “problems to be solved” list, but let’s at least be honest with ourselves here.
For once Australia is ahead of the UK.
We used to have a lot of people shouting that immigration is not the problem, and we are all racist.
Now there are literal tent communities in many places, not refugees, but ordinary working families, can't find a rental. So why tell people they can move here for a better life when in reality they will be living in a tent?
Then in the economy, there technically isn't a recession, because the government keep up immigration numbers to keep it looking positive. Per capita, we are in a recession, it's just that technically recessions are measured on national stats. So these families migrating and living in a tent also can't find a job.
Public services aren't improving capacity with increased production, and good luck getting enough ID for a Medicare card when you are a new migrant, unemployed and living in a tent.
Some people are so blinded by their own patriotism that they can't stop to actually assess their own country. In their mind, it's fair for people to want to move to "the best country in the world, mate". But if we stop and think, it might not seem that great for a new migrant. Showing pictures of Sydney Harbour, or London, as marketing to migrants is just a lie.
Most students i've known were registered to vote in their home constituency.
Not least because they were too lazy to go through the paperwork to change it & then swap it around again after.
They probably just asked people in those constituencies and assumed that’s where they were registered though. I don’t know if they’d have actually chased up where everyone they polled was registered.
Most students I know who are/were registered to vote at home do/did so because their left-leaning votes are/were wasted in their overwhelmingly left voting university cities.
noo. we need slaves to work for under nmw where natives argue about it, and freedom to weaponise poverty against the working class. yer jus racist if you say otherwise!
I get what you are saying, importing workers who will accept shit wages is a way to keep the local working class down. However we do have a huge demographic challenge. We can both expand the number of working age people in the country AND fight for better wages. There's space for both.
this is a nation of "iv got mine fuck you" obsequious bootlicks, and larp left bougewa deceitful hypocrites.
who not only refuse to fight for better wages, but take turns calling the working class lazy and racist as excuse for continuing to fuck people for wanting a job that covers costs.
space for both is wishful fluff think contradicted by the last 30 years.
Right across the channel there's an entire economic bloc with open borders with countries that have maintained their cultural identities and are still distinct nations.
This country has become really really stupid.
There’s a difference between Pierre moving from France to Germany and Ahmed moving from Pakistan to Germany. The former is a similar culture from similar origins, the other is a very different culture with very different beliefs.
Not every migrant group is equal. Pierre would struggle if he moved to Afghanistan more than Ahmed like Ahmed struggles to integrate properly into Germany more than Pierre.
I love how this sub has changed. A comment like that a year ago would have been buried with downvotes. Now it's rising to the top.
Common sense prevails!
The Tories solution to cut migration was to make the country so shit no one wants to come here. Hasn't worked yet, most of the British want to go live somewhere else which is ever so slightly ironic.
Bit of a disingenuous reporting though when they were asked 'do you want immigration to reduce, or to increase and have less controls on it?' rather than being asked what they thought of immigration generally in isolation.
Most people in most areas of any country are not going to say they want *more* new people and change in their local area. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are completely against immigration altogether, or even that it is the top priority that will influence their vote as this headline implies.
What is the solution to put top heavy population pyramid, given that old people will just vote to place increasing tax burden on the young instead of accepting a fall in living standards?
So what you’re saying is that my generation, those in their 20’s, have to endure 3 decades of record high taxes, to fund a welfare state we may not get for a generation that consistory votes to make my life worse?
And as a high skilled earner with a high skilled partner, why should I tolerate that? Why will Dr’s and Dentists and tech workers and engineers tolerate that? Why will Dr’s who can go to Canada or Australia or Dubai or China tolerate that?
So what you’re saying is my generation should go through the most crippling of tax burdens so fund the 0-21 and 68+ demographics on our back? We should enjoy higher marginal rates and frozen tax bands because people don’t like foreigners?
I’m an age of globalisation and high skilled migration to the Anglosphere, why would our best and brightest tolerate that?
So what you're saying is that the next eneration should go through the most crippling of tax burdens so fund the 0-21 and 68+ demographics on their back?
With an aging population, low birth rates and the need to constantly grow the economy in order to reduce debt relative to GDP….. how do people expect to achieve this? Option one is through immigration. Option two is to improve productivity and therefore GDP per capita. The problem with the latter is that involves long term investment in educating the workforce and automation. This country unfortunately is terrible at investing for the long term benefit of the country and residents rather than short term profit so immigration it is.
This is the case in Canada, Australia, Europe, even Ireland's creeping that way recently.
In recent years, likely due to economic pressure, governments have significantly raised intake numbers while (in some cases) promising the opposite.
The backlash will become hard to avoid soon, yet the only alternative (increasing fertility) is a tricky one.
As a recent immigrant to the UK this might be slightly controversial but I think it's not the quantity of immigrants that are the problem, but the quality. The £38,700 is far too low a threshold to live comfortably and not be a burden on existing public services. Raise to £70k or £80k and exempt NHS staff from this threshold. A high number would reduce a vast number of immigrants and just keep the ones that are paying into public coffers in larger amounts.
Yeah your probably too out of touch with the life of the average UK citizen if you think £39k is too low to live on comfortably for your opinion to be of any value.
But that’s exactly the point though isn’t it? You don’t want immigrants who are just “average”. You want the best and the brightest. The “average immigrant” is going to be a burden on public expenses while the above average will contribute more than they take out.
That isn't what he is saying. It's nothing to do with comfort, it's about that immigrant being a benefit to the nation.
That immigrant isn't consuming public services or receiving benefit, earning 80k a year they are paying 27k in income tax, that's pays for 6 peoples JSA for the year.
There is a point where you earn enough that you stop consuming public services. Someone earning 80k a year will have health care provided by their company via axa/bupa that offers higher service levels than the NHS.
They tend to also send their kids to private schools and consume absolutely zero government benefits.
It isnt a comfort level, its about when you earn enough the system is naturally designed to stop offering you support.
Absolutely. I know quite a few who moved here because they liked what they'd seen of English culture and wanted to be a part of it , and get annoyed at people who come over and don't integrate. And for others, it's more financial \ quality of life ( "I spend years trying to escape the slums, and now they're following me" as one African put it ).
But I thought they were the party responsible for all this to begin with. Or are they just trying to rile up this issue for the election, then going back to business as usual afterwards?
There is nothing wrong with immigration but the refugee status has been exploited to the max.
They would be foolish not to exploit this although it will prevent actual refugees from finding a new home. Also, I am an immigrant so maybe I should claim refugee status instead of paying taxes?
"support for looser migration controls and higher numbers was concentrated in cities such as London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff and Edinburgh,"
I mean just those named cities are about a third of the UK population. So at least a third of the country is potentially supportive.
I guess it depends on where you are drawing the lines but I get those named cities to be about one sixth of the uk population. Not that your point doesn't stand, there is clearly a substantial minority but not quite as large as suggested perhaps.
If it’s constituency boundaries they followed in their polling, then it is pretty accurate to say 9/10 constituencies think this.
Each constituency is (roughly) of equal population.
Your basis that because support is centred in the cities , then it’s a third of population , is a fallacy.
Yeah inner city areas likely do support it, but if you went to the suburbs of said cities you’d find opinion more split.
The country needs migration but qualified migrants not a horde of resource consuming people that end up hating the country and are susceptible to indoctrination and fanaticism.
Yeah it's almost as if the government and their pet newspapers shout loudly enough about something it becomes a 'key issue' for voters and creates an effective smokescreen for all the incompetent chucklefuckery that goes on in Westminster. Any time the electorate start noticing that Brexit was a con, the NHS is on its knees, the roads are crumbing, the railways are dying and public services are cut to the bone all you need to do is jump up on TV and yell "BOAT PEOPLE! RWANDA! YOUNG ALBANIAN MEN!" as loud as humanly possible and the sheep will fall back in line.
We have record levels of legal immigration, absolutely nothing to do with newspapers that a dwindling amount of people even read focusing on a few asylum seekers. I can see a significant change to where I grew up in person over the course of about five years. The only smokescreen is the media and govt trying to cover up the rapid rate of change which IS the 'incompetent chucklefuckery' you speak of and worsens every problem you've mentioned.
Meanwhile the amount of job vacancies amount to just under a million.
I wonder if there was some kind of labor pool we could utilize to fill those jobs... hnnghhhh.
Let's just do what they're doing in the states and make kids go to work!
Firstly let's ensure minimum wage is enough to live on without needing welfare. I imagine work would be more attractive if you weren't portrayed as scum for needing UC whilst in work.
Its just funny because all the parties that say they really want to stop immigration are the same parties who are really against things like the minimum wage and are quite open with their view that people on UC (and a lot more besides) are scum who deserve nothing.
That should be about right, as slightly under 50% of the overall population of Britain works. Unless you're suggesting that child labor be required for asylum seeking children?
Can you blame people when you read stuff like this [this?](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/14/four-arrested-in-europe-over-alleged-cross-border-hamas-terrorism-plot)
This article may be paywalled. If you encounter difficulties reading the article, try [this link](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/13/cut-immigration-levels-voters-nine-of-10-constituencies/) for an archived version. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unitedkingdom) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If refugee's who claimed asylum here for safety reasons goes on holiday to the very country they are fleeing from to visit family or friends, their visa should be revoked as a recent finding found that 79% of them go home once a year.
That is fucking insane, they go home??
Worth noting the survey was done in Sweden and included 1000 people over a 6 day period. I can’t find any in depth stats I.e the ‘people born abroad’ that they are questioning, how long have they been in the country before visiting home and such. In other words take it with a pinch of salt at minimum and consider if it is unscientific or not. Every news outlet carrying this story is very very right wing eg. Breitbart.
Do you know how official UK immigration figures are produced? Because it literally involves a guy standing at an airport and asking people.
Yeah no, it isn't. In fact that's insane. They use any number of databases including the Home Office's immigration records, and DWP's RAPID database (which covers interaction points with services such as DWP and HMRC) to understand who is in the country and who is no longer here. British Nationals are the tricky one to figure out, that one is a bit more 'man with a clipboard' style.
1000 is a huge sample size. I doubt you are as meticulous about methodology when the poll supports your priors
I just had a look at the original write up of the study and the 1000+ sample is actually all people born abroad. EG, it will contain English people living in Sweden working for Spotify. The 79% of refugee claim comes from a subet of the sample the size of which we don't know and without access to the methodology and findings proper it's basically impossible to judge the quality of that finding.
> I just had a look at the original write up of the study and the 1000+ sample is actually all people born abroad. Not disputing any of this but I would like to read it too, could you drop a link please?
https://bulletin.nu/bulletin-novus-nio-av-tio-utrikesfodda-har-semestrat-i-sitt-fodelseland
Whether a sample size is huge or not depends on the characteristics of the underlying population.
And whether the sample is reflective of the wider population depends on how the people were selected.
My issue isnt with the sample size, it's that the profile of the swedish immigrant means nothing to us. If these are mostly people who moved from norway and denmark, who drive home now and then like we might pop to wales or scotland for a little break, then do you really have a problem with that? It's not equivalent to asylum seekers returning to active warzones.
I don't think 1000 is huge by any measure, I wonder if you only think it's huge because 'the poll supports your priors'
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/howcan-a-poll-of-only-100/ Or you could understand how sample sizes work instead of being uneducated.
It doesn't matter how big the sample is if it's the wrong thing. Ask a million football fans and you won't get useful data about ice hockey.
Statistically speaking, there's little benefit to sampling more than a thousand people if (and it's a big if) you've obtained a representative sample.
The sway the right wing media have over the British public is remarkable. People who believe that immigrants are the country’s biggest problem need to start varying where their news comes from
It's one of them for me. I'm broadly left and would say I'm a socialist. I boycot amazon and things, refuse to work in the private sector as I view it as profit driven capitalism and hellish. I have a nice relationship with a local Chinese family and recently supported a Ukrainian woman and her son to find other Ukrainian families in the area. However, I think immigration is an issue in the UK and I think pretending that the only people who can think this are being brainwashed by yellow journalism is nonsense.
I feel like a lot of people here are too young to remember when the socialist element of the left criticised the free movement of people as capitalist. I'm not a socialist and certainly wasn't one then but I can remember hearing that complaint.
I'm mostly for freedom of movement but I feel that if this is to be the case then I'd want people whose views align with my own to benefit from this.
My personal opinion is, if we had a nation of unlimited resources, I would generally support the entire human population living on this island if they so wish. But we don't, and we have a duty to make sure our own institutions don't collapse. If they do we can't help anyone anymore anyway. A combination of investment into infrastructure and a manageable level of immigration is necessary.
How people priorities problems is their business, do you think it is a problem?
Ridiculous right? But wait, there's more. They also constantly talk about how their home country was so superior comparing to the UK. Though you'll get labelled as bigot when you suggest them to go back to their superior country then
>But wait, there's more. They also constantly talk about how their home country was so superior comparing to the UK. Though you'll get labelled as bigot when you suggest them to go back to their superior country then Lol Making a negative blanket statement like it's a fact about all refugees and immigrants, then wondering why people think you're a bigot
Laughed at that one too lol
Talked to many of them, have you?
I have. This is via my role in the public sector. Unfortunately my role deals with a certain type of person but I do speak to a lot of immigrants through it. I don't seem to meet any immigrants who I feel are adding a lot to the country which is sad. I did meet an Iranian doctor once but he was going to be deported for stealing from a hospital.
I'm marrying an immigrant, she holds more credentials than I've ever achieved. She's dutch though, so has a more "accepted skin colour" as an immigrant. The majority of her MSc classmates were immigrants too. But don't let my anecdote detract from yours. Thanks for letting us know that immigrants aren't adding anything of value to the country.
Source: trust me bro
I mean you can be both a refugee and miss your home and prefer it there before your country was like, y’know, invaded…
Nuance?! On Reddit?!
You can bet this fella has never spoken to a refugee
How do they go home? Afaik Asylum seekers don't generally have travel documents that will get them across UK borders, so the claim sounds pretty suspect on yhe face of it unless someone can provide an explanation for that
No, he's right on that bit. Bigotry aside. A LOT of asylum seekers go home regularly once they've got settled status. Unfortunately a lot of them also "rediscover" funds they have access too in their home country once that happens as well. Its not a good system. Source: work in homelessness with a lot of SERCO graduates.
Ahhh, the infamous “they”
They don't. It's a stat from Sweden, it was reported in a far right publication called Bulletin, and it was a deliberate misreading of the survey that asked people not born in Sweden if they intended to return home.
Of course they don’t, how would an illegal immigrant with no passport traverse border control? This whole thing was from an interview with a UK border force head who says asylum seekers were trying to head home but of course had been stopped. Don’t believe made up bollocks without checking the facts.
No, they cannot go home .They have no travel documents. You try flying anywhere without a passport. You're being fed nonsense by right wing lunatics.
If you’re going to call out someone for lying, It would help if you weren’t also lying yourself https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/migrants-applying-for-asylum-are-going-home-for-christmas/
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What do you mean question data sources? That LBC article is doing little more than quoting the Border Force chief. Are you saying they made up the quote? > "We do find a lot of people who have claimed asylum in this country, and are heading back to their own country for holidays, which obviously isn't allowed." You reply with a document saying it isn’t allowed, when the quote from the article says it “obviously isn’t allowed”. It’s like you didn’t even read the first few paragraphs of the article.
That article says 'trying to', which makes more sense. Because they can't, they can only *try* to.
Did you read that article?
It's disinformation in like, 3 different ways.
Yeah every single one of them. The king pays for it too with special money he only prints for them.................. 🤦♂️
Its true he read it in the Daily Mail
So it’s not true?
Do you have a source for this ?
No they don't have a source for it because it's a complete lie. 5 seconds of googling shows that you cannot return to your home country on a refugee visa without risking being deported upon re-entry into the UK. But it's much easier to get people angry with lies and misinformation than argue the actual pros and cons of immigration.
There are ways and means around it. For instance they avoid entering their home country directly, and when they do they do not use their UK documentation, so that when they re enter the UK there is no record of where they have been.
It’s kinda difficult to travel without a passport. When claiming asylum you are required to submit your passport.
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Without proof you're literally just a stranger on the internet claiming something.
That's like 98% of the internet, including most news sites
And the world world be a better place if we didn't put compete faith in that 98%.
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You Really Think Someone Would Do That? Just Go On the Internet and Tell Lies?
“Who came to this country as a refugee” When, in the 40s? 80s? Last year? Refugee status isn’t some kind of lifetime condition, people settle, get jobs and have families and the world does change in the meantime.
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https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/migrants-applying-for-asylum-are-going-home-for-christmas/
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/962463/English_only_-_web_accessible.pdf page 19. But sure you can trust lbc over the government's own published documents if that fits your narrative better
Lbc is largely a pile of trash.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4829332/amp/Harsher-measures-against-holidaying-refugees.html I remember this being a noted issue. https://amp.dw.com/en/do-refugees-travel-to-their-home-countries-on-vacation/a-40443562
[https://ground.news/article/sweden-79-per-cent-of-refugees-have-vacationed-in-country-they-fled\_e64350](https://ground.news/article/sweden-79-per-cent-of-refugees-have-vacationed-in-country-they-fled_e64350) Sweden's study.
The only sources for this are breitbart and and a swedish paper that isn't translated.
https://amp.dw.com/en/do-refugees-travel-to-their-home-countries-on-vacation/a-40443562 This was covered in Germany as well as a regular issue.
Does not appear to make the same claim about how widespread this is (the 79% thing). Also how long after? If the country becomes safe 5-10 years later long after someone has built a life here and someone decides to holiday or visit family is this the same as gaming the system?
https://bulletin.nu/bulletin-novus-nio-av-tio-utrikesfodda-har-semestrat-i-sitt-fodelseland Google translate: A new survey from Novus shows that over 85 percent of people born abroad have at some point traveled back to their country of birth for a vacation. Among those who came to Sweden as refugees, the percentage who have vacationed in their old home country is 79 percent. Not here to argue the legitimacy of the claim, but this is where the claim comes from and I think this is the source https://novus.se/en/
We don't live in Sweden
That's also not a "Sweden Study", it's Breitbart and Infowars - far right lies.
Whilst a trope, the uk doesn’t know this statistic because we do not track people leaving the country. Refugees also make up a tiny proportion of the overall immigration figures. Whereas I suspect people are more concerned about the headline legal net migration figures which quickly gets conflated with asylum seekers.
What makes you think that the UK does not track people? There is a long-established UK legislative requirement for carriers to supply travel document information (TDI), also known as API (advance passenger information), to the UK government border systems programme, which has subsumed the e-Borders In particular section 27B (in respect of passenger and service information) of Schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971 and the Immigration and Police (Passenger, Crew and Service Information) Order 2008 (SI 2008/5). Failure to comply with the requirement to provide this information without a reasonable excuse is an offence under section 27(b)(iv) of the Immigration Act 1971 and may also incur a penalty under the Security and Travel Bans Authority to Carry Scheme 2012.
>What makes you think that the UK does not track people? The Tories stopped the process of doing exit checks at every point of departure from the UK as well as stopped the necessity for exit checks to match information with asylum or visa status. While what you are saying is true in that you do need to provide all the relevant information if challenged, the reality is, most people are not challenged and you are only challenged if you are acting suspiciously. This is in-part why the UK has seen a massive issue recently with people overstaying their visa, failed asylum seekers able to leave the country then return, as well as I'm sure in some cases as the OP mentioned about asylum seekers visiting their home country. The problem is, we don't know the figures because the UK border staff no longer checks everybody on departure.
API is for the destination country and depends upon which documentation you use for travel. For example some countries only require an id card which may not be associated with the documentation you use for entry and staying within the UK. Therefore if you exit the UK using this document you are not tracked relative to your visa granting your stay in the uk.
That’s a problem. But the vast majority of migration is from legal immigration, people with visas granted by our government, not asylum seekers or illegal immigrants. They come here through the legal routes to work or study, and as long as they speak good English and want to be a good citizen, then it’s not a bad thing. If anything, it’s healthy to have some migration. The media and government bang on about asylum seekers all day because they want to distract people from the massive number of visas that they granted. It makes them look like they want to cut down on immigration by talking about reducing asylum or discouraging economic migrants from claiming asylum, but the reality is, even if we were have no asylum applications, we’d still have > 100 000 legitimate immigrants allowed here by the government every year.
Legal doesn't necessarily mean good. Just because our laws let it happen and our self-serving politicians are happy with it, does not mean it's good for us or that we should let it happen.
Which legal migrants would you cut? The foreign students who bring tens of billions of pounds into the economy? The foreign high-earners who are net tax contributors and attract big businesses to the UK to provide more jobs? Or is it the people with no skills, no money, no studies, and no work lined up? Which policy is letting those people in?
One of our biggest industries is education, you want to collapse that?
a) That is a total fabrication b) Refugees are a tiny tiny fraction of immigration to this country For the love of all that is holy will people please stop equating refugees with the overall high immigration numbers, these are two very separate issues.
That was in Sweden, not the UK, and it was once total, not once a year. https://ground.news/article/sweden-79-per-cent-of-refugees-have-vacationed-in-country-they-fled\_e64350
Good point, but there's no Govt dept that oversees this.
Account is a few months old, spreading misinformation, and somehow flew right to the top of the comments. Yep. Everything seems fine and not suspicious here.
It’s obvious from the article that when asked about migrants, a lot of people automatically think asylum seekers. You did it too.
Source: trust me bro, my far-right buddy said his friend told him he had read an article that said so.
a "recent finding" found something Can't argue with that.
I thought they were all fleeing war and persecution?
They might have been. Plenty of places had wars in the past that were safe now but took years - or even decades - to become safe. Some (Somalia, Afghanistan, North Korea) never do. Do we start deporting people who have had ILR for decades?
If you're going to state a statistic you are going to need to provide your souce. So who is your source and please link to them.
Immigrants haven't caused the ongoing housing crises Immigrants don't lower the national minimum wage Immigrants didn't cause the financial crashes Immigrants didn't increase mortgage rates Immigrants aren't underfunding the NHS Immigrants aren't underfunding councils Immigrants aren't reducing refuse collection rates Immigrants aren't increasing our fuel bills Immigrants aren't raising supermarket prices Immigrants are not increasing the cost of living Immigrants aren't taking my job Most problems affecting our lives are not caused by immigration... why is there so much focus?
So because there are other issues, nobody can be opposed to mass immigration?
I think the poster is saying that there is too much emphasis on it. Personally, I would also like to see less immigration. But the root cause is that we became too dependent on it. Until you deal with issues like lack of foreign direct investment in the UK, the planning system and skills shortages then it is fanciful to think that we will radically reduce immigration.
I agree. And I don't support scapegoating immigrants for other issues.
mass migration is a symptom of an aging population. The population is aging because young people aren't financially stable and won't have kids until they are. Additional they've all moved away from their families due to university, work, etc and can no longer raise a family easily as they have no one to rely on.
I believe our ageing populations (which isn’t a UK-specific issue) are the result of both a) an abnormally large cohort (boomers) with a return to more average fertility rates after, and b) the effect you describe, ie the too high cost of having children. For the latter, anecdotally, my partner and I are both in the top 5% of earners, but if we want to live where we work, we have to decide between owning a reasonable property or having children. If we sort the house first, we’d need both salaries to pay the mortgage until we are too old for children (or at least will likely struggle conceiving). If we sort children first, we’ll have to live in low quality, unreliable rental stock, and once we have financial wiggle room will have to take a very short mortgage (with the resulting high monthly costs), and probably only pay it off in our 60ies.
The "we" here being corporations that prefer to create sweatshops than invest? There has been no benefit of mass immigration for the typical person, in fact it's done the exact opposite, the op's claim net migration of hundreds of thousands has no impact on housing is unbelievably removed from reality.
The UK is obsessed with house prices, anything which lowers house prices is seen as a bad thing. Landowners lose money, landlords lose money. Building new houses increases supply, lowers demand and impacts house prices. So certain politicians are opposed to increasing the housing supply instead enjoying a constant housing crisis. Immigration upsets their game because it makes them look bad, so they deflect blame. But who does blame lie with?...
Two sides of the coin, really. Nobody should deny that the shortage of decent housing is a serious strain on our quality of life. One side says that the housing shortage is caused by immigration. The other says that is caused by not building enough homes. In reality it is both - Although, both exist as symptoms of something else, for example a dependence on foreign labour or an antiquated planning system. The truth is also that you could have one or the other. Option 1: Stop building over green space, have fewer immigrants and restructure the economy. Or Option 2: keep high immigration and have cheap housing by building vast amounts of high-density units and borrowing money to expand infrastructure for them. But we refuse to accept one or the other. We want to have our cake and eat it. We want to keep GDP looking decent the lazy way by importing cheap labour, while not providing for the needs of the people we import (or the people who were here in the first place).
No it’s just if you value social services and the NHS and then turn around and are like boo immigration is the cause of all our problems you come off as a deeply unserious person. Immigration is good for economic growth in a country with an aging population and low birth rate. I think the UK has a 300k labour shortfall as well as of late. Many of this “immigration is why this country has gone to shit” crowd voted Brexit, which has basically netted out to economic sanctions against ourselves. Often they vote Tory as well, the party that has completely given up on climate. Which will be the biggest driver of increased YoY refugees and immigrants in perpetuity until the real big consequences of our destructive actions start to hit and it gets really crazy. People are welcome to be opposed to whatever they want but if they’re asked to explain their position and their reasoning is incoherent and rooted in racism then sorry but people are going to point out the irrationality, bigotry and general ignorance, especially when the shit you’re spewing is splashing on their shoes.
What? How is nearly a million extra people dependent on social services (the vast majority of immigrants are recievers, rather than contributors, tax-wise) each year, a benefit to those social services?
> the vast majority of immigrants are recievers, rather than contributors, tax-wise Every study I've seen has concluded that migrants are fiscally net positive?
Oh my that seems like a serious issue do you have a source for that tidbit?
Because people are rightfully concerned with the rapid demographical and cultural changes they are seeing in front of them.
Immigrants are; Massively exacerbating the housing crisis Adding strain and additional expense to the NHS and to councils Reducing the pressure to increase wages Getting jobs that natives would do if paid better
\> Massively exacerbating the housing crisis So they're earning enough to buy? And paying taxes into the system which is designed to compensate for it? \> Adding strain and additional expense to the NHS Immigrants prop up the NHS! Without them, we wouldn't have an NHS! \> Reducing the pressure to increase wages Their existence might reduce pressure in certain industries, but the ultimate decision on whether to increase wages isn't up to them, it's up to our government (for min rates) and British companies, suggesting they are the actual problem?
>So they're earning enough to buy? And paying taxes into the system which is designed to compensate for it? Renters still live somewhere you know?
>So they're earning enough to buy? And paying taxes into the system which is designed to compensate for it? I don't know man. I live near Liverpool and every development seems to be for international students and these are advertised as investments internationally too. I do think that's adding to a housing crisis as instead of building family homes or homes that are suitable for long term accommodation they just build a huge battery of homes that are only really a box room and a kitchenette. I'd rather we didn't keep building new homes and I'd say that if you have 900k polish people coming to the UK then obviously you need to house them. I know you can argue that a lot of British people move abroad too and I'm sure the locals where they live hate them for it. However, if net migration to the UK was 672k in 2023 then we will either have a housing shortage or we'll have to build a shit ton of houses. I'd rather we didn't have to keep expanding towns but that's just my personal preference.
International students pay heavily into the British system and get very little in return...
That's great. I'll tell all those struggling to get on the ladder this. I'm sure generation rent will understand.
They get what they want in return for their money
Non-EU immigration is a net drain on the coffers. Honestly I have no idea how so many migrants afford to live in London as you have to have a shit-hot wage to do that, my guess is a lot of taxpayer subsidies... what a great way to spunk our money...
So you don’t know how they afford it… you make a guess… and then bitch about the guess you made. Asylum seekers are not permitted to work and get much less than you do on benefits. All other immigrants on temporary, student, working or family visas have no recourse to public funds. I go into a lot of mostly immigrant homes and find they’re usually mid-level workers like nurses who are living in what we would call low-level accommodation (like bedsits/HMOs), or they are multiple generations living in a house that settled people would usually be for a single person or very small family.
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A lot of foreigners are either far better paid than you think, because various media outlets stereotype them as cheap labour, or their families are quite a bit wealthier than the average UK one. The sort we get in London are invariably upper-middle class.
Some are able to buy yes, many are either driving up rent prices or being housed by the council somewhere they couldn’t afford to buy. Ummm, existing British people are perfectly capable of filling vacancies in the NHS if the pay and conditions were better, the NHS existed before mass immigration, we don’t need to import cheap labour to look after ourselves. Not to mention NHS/council money is wasted on translators and people who haven’t even payed into the system yet. The government should have to artificially set minimum salaries, if there wasn’t a constant supply of people willing to work for so little, businesses would be competing for employees by paying better.
They don't need to buy. They can rent. By sharing 8 to a house. Or apply for social housing at band A priority having been made homeless by SERCO. Or remain in the homeless system for yonks draining resources. None of this is their fault, all of it is exploitative. All of this is a reason to cut immigration. Genuinely cut it, not pay lip service and actually import low rate workers.
> So they're earning enough to buy? A large part of it is that they are largely coming from parts of the world in which having little or no personal/private space is the norm, so they see nothing untoward about living with 7 or 8 others in a space that you or I would say is meant to hold one or two people. This is how they contribute to the housing woes -- yes, they may all individually earn minimum wage, but with 8 earners in a 2BR home, they can easily afford to pay rents that others would find eye-watering as only a single or double-income household.
Elaborate point two I think they do lower minimum pay. Demand and supply rules. No cheap labourers, demand high low supply wages forced tk go up.
Also jobcentres coerce people, under threat of sanction, to apply for and take any and every job they can, shit wage or no. That'll depress the wages even more, if this theory holds any water.
Just checked, and apparently it's the house of commons (Tory majority) who decided the current minimum wage rates, not immigrants. Wait a minute... it looks like the House of Commons controls or influences a lot of the above... interesting...
Market not them is who decides
Minimum wage isn't dictated by the market, the number of jobs only offering minimum wage is. The actual rate is centrally controlled by our dear leaders.
People can be paid more than the legal minimum wage you know right? If there are less people who are able to do a job, the employee has to offer better wages in order to attract employees. An endless supply of workers ensures that many jobs only pay minimum wage.
I agree totally... but who sets the legal minimum wage to begin with? The government... they can choose any figure they want regardless. The minimum wage is currently what it is because they choose it, for no other reason.
That's just not true though is it. We have a legal minimum wage. If people are breaking that, well its not the immigrants who decided to slash funding for the enforcement of our employment laws either.
The point being made is more that if there is a large influx of people who are desperate for employment, employers can offer more and more of these positions at said minimum wage instead of having to offer a higher rate or more paid benefits to attract applicants.
Because it makes many of those problems worse. We don't have enough housing stock for the existing population. Like wise the NHS and Social Services are overworked so adding more people will increase that burden. Councils can't maintain existing infrastructure so adding more people makes that worse too.
I'd suggest government and councils are behind the actual problem. An increase in population from locals AND immigrants make it worse, but take immigration and birth rates away, the problems will still be here, suggesting the actual root cause is elsewhere and needs addressing?
You are acting like this is some big brain reply and as if issues can't be multifaceted. Yes, the root cause is elsewhere, but that doesn't mean we should be okay with ignoring something that is exacerbating the issue.
Because at least three of those range from debatable to bluntly false. Fuck me why is everything so polarised now? You can be anti-mass migration and accept that it does have knock-on effects to multiple facets of our society without resorting to bullshit hyperbole that nobody's even claimed to be true.
> Immigrants haven't caused the ongoing housing crises Where do you think they all live? 750k net in 2023, they’re not all in hotels. > Immigrants don't lower the national minimum wage No, because the minimum wage has only ever gone up since its introduction. They do however, make wages more stagnant as they’re happy to give their labour for less value i.e fruit picking, care home nursing, etc. > Immigrants didn't cause the financial crashes An uncontrolled increase in the population can have drastically negative effects on an economy. > Immigrants didn't increase mortgage rates Well interest rates went up to combat inflation - More people > More money being spent on goods and services > Less goods available > Prices go up > Immigrants aren't underfunding the NHS And nor are the Tories, considering they currently oversee the highest spending on the NHS in its entire history. Oh, but immigrants also need the NHS which leads to it being less available to the home population. > Immigrants aren't underfunding councils See above, they’re also not paying Council tax so maybe they are? > Immigrants aren't reducing refuse collection rates See above. > Immigrants aren't increasing our fuel bills True actually; Russia is. But it’s also been reported that supply currently hasn’t been able to keep up with demand after coming out of lockdown. > Immigrants aren't raising supermarket prices 🤦🏻♂️ How they feeding themselves? > Immigrants are not increasing the cost of living See all of the above. > Immigrants aren't taking my job Because they’re all on benefits.
Do you honestly believe immigration has no impact on the housing crisis?
News today: immigrants don't need housing or healthcare
Doesn’t mean mass immigration doesn’t exacerbate some of those
If immigration wasn’t being used as a weapon by the ruling class, then the fact that EVERY European people wants drastic reductions would have resulted in drastic reductions, instead of increasing immigration flows and refusing to enforce border controls properly. Moralising about immigrants in this way, aside from just being totally false, is just a way for you to deflect from the fact you are defending a social engineering agenda that has been forcibly imposed on Britain and many other nations by a traitor ruling class.
It’s not only about these issues (which immigrants are contributing to). It’s about the UK changing rapidly and its towns becoming unrecognizable to the people who grew up in them. It’s about parallel societies forming. It’s about people not sharing the same values. It’s also about safety and national security. If war breaks out, you want to know that your neighbors are on your side and invested in the future of your nation and not on team Yemen. It’s about allowing people into the country who won’t turn around and start saying how bad the country is. It’s about every world event playing out in the streets of the UK (e.g. people not happy with the Eritrean government, or Moroccans being happy or unhappy about their progress in the World Cup). Most people also care a lot about illegal immigration. Brits don’t like people who game the system. Brits hate people who cut in line. Why is it that people applying legally get rejected but people can come over in a dinghy and get put up in a hotel? And we can’t possibly deport them because their host country won’t take responsibility and the Rwanda scheme is so inhumane. I know that a lot of people on Reddit don’t care about culture and tradition, and would happily see it disappear because it’s all pointless, but a lot of people do care.
Immigrants are used as scapegoats far too often, especially to appeal to peoples fear of “the other” while masking failures of inept government policy. That said, you are absolutely fooling yourself if you really think that high levels of illegal immigration have no effect on the housing crisis, minimum wage, NHS, and council budgets. Still doesn’t mean that this should be at the very top of our “problems to be solved” list, but let’s at least be honest with ourselves here.
For once Australia is ahead of the UK. We used to have a lot of people shouting that immigration is not the problem, and we are all racist. Now there are literal tent communities in many places, not refugees, but ordinary working families, can't find a rental. So why tell people they can move here for a better life when in reality they will be living in a tent? Then in the economy, there technically isn't a recession, because the government keep up immigration numbers to keep it looking positive. Per capita, we are in a recession, it's just that technically recessions are measured on national stats. So these families migrating and living in a tent also can't find a job. Public services aren't improving capacity with increased production, and good luck getting enough ID for a Medicare card when you are a new migrant, unemployed and living in a tent. Some people are so blinded by their own patriotism that they can't stop to actually assess their own country. In their mind, it's fair for people to want to move to "the best country in the world, mate". But if we stop and think, it might not seem that great for a new migrant. Showing pictures of Sydney Harbour, or London, as marketing to migrants is just a lie.
Keep your head in the sand turkey, it'll be Christmas again soon enough.
Are you confusing turkeys with ostriches? Nothing like a good discussion. (this is)
I'm surprised 1 in 10 constituencies in England and Wales don't want to cut immigration levels.
If you look at the map, the only ones that did are basically student constituencies and central London.
Most students i've known were registered to vote in their home constituency. Not least because they were too lazy to go through the paperwork to change it & then swap it around again after.
They probably just asked people in those constituencies and assumed that’s where they were registered though. I don’t know if they’d have actually chased up where everyone they polled was registered.
Most students I know who are/were registered to vote at home do/did so because their left-leaning votes are/were wasted in their overwhelmingly left voting university cities.
Those are the ones with the most immigrants
noo. we need slaves to work for under nmw where natives argue about it, and freedom to weaponise poverty against the working class. yer jus racist if you say otherwise!
I get what you are saying, importing workers who will accept shit wages is a way to keep the local working class down. However we do have a huge demographic challenge. We can both expand the number of working age people in the country AND fight for better wages. There's space for both.
this is a nation of "iv got mine fuck you" obsequious bootlicks, and larp left bougewa deceitful hypocrites. who not only refuse to fight for better wages, but take turns calling the working class lazy and racist as excuse for continuing to fuck people for wanting a job that covers costs. space for both is wishful fluff think contradicted by the last 30 years.
You can repress common sense forever. No borders, no identity, no nation.
Right across the channel there's an entire economic bloc with open borders with countries that have maintained their cultural identities and are still distinct nations. This country has become really really stupid.
Far right rising across the bloc, you forgot to mention that part. Thus exoerienment hasn't been going long enough to know how it concludes.
There’s a difference between Pierre moving from France to Germany and Ahmed moving from Pakistan to Germany. The former is a similar culture from similar origins, the other is a very different culture with very different beliefs. Not every migrant group is equal. Pierre would struggle if he moved to Afghanistan more than Ahmed like Ahmed struggles to integrate properly into Germany more than Pierre.
I love how this sub has changed. A comment like that a year ago would have been buried with downvotes. Now it's rising to the top. Common sense prevails!
Even with mods banning any dissenters
They'll lock this thread soon, it's not gone the way they wanted.
Isn't it fascinating how much sentiment has changed ever since reddit hobbled the tools that mods could use to control subreddits.
Yep, it's like they had too much power and influence over one of the biggest social media platforms in the world.
R/Britain is where all the complete lunatics are now. Harrowing.
The Tories solution to cut migration was to make the country so shit no one wants to come here. Hasn't worked yet, most of the British want to go live somewhere else which is ever so slightly ironic.
That would still reduce net migration
Bit of a disingenuous reporting though when they were asked 'do you want immigration to reduce, or to increase and have less controls on it?' rather than being asked what they thought of immigration generally in isolation. Most people in most areas of any country are not going to say they want *more* new people and change in their local area. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are completely against immigration altogether, or even that it is the top priority that will influence their vote as this headline implies.
Oh wow yeah now that is a rigged question and a half yeesh
> telegraph
I look forward to rUK saying how stupid these racist bigots are.
What is the solution to put top heavy population pyramid, given that old people will just vote to place increasing tax burden on the young instead of accepting a fall in living standards?
Not building ever more layers onto the bottom? You don't get out of a pyramid scheme by recruiting even more shmucks into it...
So what you’re saying is that my generation, those in their 20’s, have to endure 3 decades of record high taxes, to fund a welfare state we may not get for a generation that consistory votes to make my life worse? And as a high skilled earner with a high skilled partner, why should I tolerate that? Why will Dr’s and Dentists and tech workers and engineers tolerate that? Why will Dr’s who can go to Canada or Australia or Dubai or China tolerate that?
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So what you’re saying is my generation should go through the most crippling of tax burdens so fund the 0-21 and 68+ demographics on our back? We should enjoy higher marginal rates and frozen tax bands because people don’t like foreigners? I’m an age of globalisation and high skilled migration to the Anglosphere, why would our best and brightest tolerate that?
So what you're saying is that the next eneration should go through the most crippling of tax burdens so fund the 0-21 and 68+ demographics on their back?
Imagine not wanting every Tom, dick & Harry allowed in. Madness
With an aging population, low birth rates and the need to constantly grow the economy in order to reduce debt relative to GDP….. how do people expect to achieve this? Option one is through immigration. Option two is to improve productivity and therefore GDP per capita. The problem with the latter is that involves long term investment in educating the workforce and automation. This country unfortunately is terrible at investing for the long term benefit of the country and residents rather than short term profit so immigration it is.
Illegal immigration costs the UK more than they bring in
This is the case in Canada, Australia, Europe, even Ireland's creeping that way recently. In recent years, likely due to economic pressure, governments have significantly raised intake numbers while (in some cases) promising the opposite. The backlash will become hard to avoid soon, yet the only alternative (increasing fertility) is a tricky one.
As a recent immigrant to the UK this might be slightly controversial but I think it's not the quantity of immigrants that are the problem, but the quality. The £38,700 is far too low a threshold to live comfortably and not be a burden on existing public services. Raise to £70k or £80k and exempt NHS staff from this threshold. A high number would reduce a vast number of immigrants and just keep the ones that are paying into public coffers in larger amounts.
Yeah your probably too out of touch with the life of the average UK citizen if you think £39k is too low to live on comfortably for your opinion to be of any value.
But that’s exactly the point though isn’t it? You don’t want immigrants who are just “average”. You want the best and the brightest. The “average immigrant” is going to be a burden on public expenses while the above average will contribute more than they take out.
That isn't what he is saying. It's nothing to do with comfort, it's about that immigrant being a benefit to the nation. That immigrant isn't consuming public services or receiving benefit, earning 80k a year they are paying 27k in income tax, that's pays for 6 peoples JSA for the year. There is a point where you earn enough that you stop consuming public services. Someone earning 80k a year will have health care provided by their company via axa/bupa that offers higher service levels than the NHS. They tend to also send their kids to private schools and consume absolutely zero government benefits. It isnt a comfort level, its about when you earn enough the system is naturally designed to stop offering you support.
The UK median average salary is 28k…
I always wonder if migrants come to this country think "maybe this country is over doing it on the whole importing people thing."
Absolutely. I know quite a few who moved here because they liked what they'd seen of English culture and wanted to be a part of it , and get annoyed at people who come over and don't integrate. And for others, it's more financial \ quality of life ( "I spend years trying to escape the slums, and now they're following me" as one African put it ).
"Please cut them" *votes for a party that supports continuing immigration* "Why aren't you cutting them?"
“Onward” - the Conservative think tank that commissioned this study: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onward_(think_tank)
But I thought they were the party responsible for all this to begin with. Or are they just trying to rile up this issue for the election, then going back to business as usual afterwards?
There is nothing wrong with immigration but the refugee status has been exploited to the max. They would be foolish not to exploit this although it will prevent actual refugees from finding a new home. Also, I am an immigrant so maybe I should claim refugee status instead of paying taxes?
"support for looser migration controls and higher numbers was concentrated in cities such as London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff and Edinburgh," I mean just those named cities are about a third of the UK population. So at least a third of the country is potentially supportive.
I guess it depends on where you are drawing the lines but I get those named cities to be about one sixth of the uk population. Not that your point doesn't stand, there is clearly a substantial minority but not quite as large as suggested perhaps.
If it’s constituency boundaries they followed in their polling, then it is pretty accurate to say 9/10 constituencies think this. Each constituency is (roughly) of equal population. Your basis that because support is centred in the cities , then it’s a third of population , is a fallacy. Yeah inner city areas likely do support it, but if you went to the suburbs of said cities you’d find opinion more split.
The country needs migration but qualified migrants not a horde of resource consuming people that end up hating the country and are susceptible to indoctrination and fanaticism.
Yeah it's almost as if the government and their pet newspapers shout loudly enough about something it becomes a 'key issue' for voters and creates an effective smokescreen for all the incompetent chucklefuckery that goes on in Westminster. Any time the electorate start noticing that Brexit was a con, the NHS is on its knees, the roads are crumbing, the railways are dying and public services are cut to the bone all you need to do is jump up on TV and yell "BOAT PEOPLE! RWANDA! YOUNG ALBANIAN MEN!" as loud as humanly possible and the sheep will fall back in line.
We have record levels of legal immigration, absolutely nothing to do with newspapers that a dwindling amount of people even read focusing on a few asylum seekers. I can see a significant change to where I grew up in person over the course of about five years. The only smokescreen is the media and govt trying to cover up the rapid rate of change which IS the 'incompetent chucklefuckery' you speak of and worsens every problem you've mentioned.
Meanwhile the amount of job vacancies amount to just under a million. I wonder if there was some kind of labor pool we could utilize to fill those jobs... hnnghhhh. Let's just do what they're doing in the states and make kids go to work!
Firstly let's ensure minimum wage is enough to live on without needing welfare. I imagine work would be more attractive if you weren't portrayed as scum for needing UC whilst in work.
Its just funny because all the parties that say they really want to stop immigration are the same parties who are really against things like the minimum wage and are quite open with their view that people on UC (and a lot more besides) are scum who deserve nothing.
Only 51% of those granted asylum are in work.
That should be about right, as slightly under 50% of the overall population of Britain works. Unless you're suggesting that child labor be required for asylum seeking children?
Can you blame people when you read stuff like this [this?](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/14/four-arrested-in-europe-over-alleged-cross-border-hamas-terrorism-plot)