Sometimes it's best to err on the side of caution because there's no going back. People are so blind to where this is heading. Immigration doesn't affect you but does that apply to everyone? Overall immigration has had a positive affect but where does it end? Do you want a completely open border?
Stop comparing the thousands of years of immigration to what's happened recently, not even remotely comparable.
Immigration solves problems not creates them
the impact tends to be focused on poorer areas with less jobs, lower pay and a failure by Govt to invest in local services.
TJ's statement is overly rosy. It is simply denialism to say that immigration doesn't create some problems that need to be solved. That doesnt mean on balance that immigration (and for that matter emigration) can't be a net benefit for the country or economy.
The biggest problem is that generally speaking immigration doesn't happen neatly or tidily spread across the economy or the country as a whole. Those pressures and dilemmas get felt in particular towns (like Crewe or places in Lincolnshire), some of which are pretty fragile to begin with. Immigrants (and especially asylum seekers, and non-EU immigrants) come disproportionately to London, and less to other parts of the country. No-one's heading where the jobs aren't, which puts more pressure on housing, social services etc where everyone already is.
It's made doubly difficult by the fact that the UK builds few new houses and doesn't teach its kids foreign languages or invest in social services.
And not that the Reform Party cares about it, but "stealing" health workers etc trained at the expense of the Nigerian, Filipino, Ghanaian, Zimbabwean etc taxpayer does have an impact on the country of origin too...
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/where-do-migrants-live-in-the-uk/
A general question to anyone of any persuasion on immigration, what is your average interaction with immigrants?
This is mine:
Guys are the corner shop, decent bunch from Sri Lanka. Occasional takeaway delivery from people all over the world. Doctors, nurses, hematologist, ditto, from all over the world. Random accents etc in shops or the high street.
No negative effects I see. What do others see?
Any difficulty getting doctor appointments is due to our surgery taking on patients from a surgery that was closed and being unable to hire enough GP's to compensate. Housing stock shortage due in no small part to council houses being sold off and not replenished. New houses facing massive nimbyism even though the activists live on land that was arable till a couple of generations ago... They are fine with that if course.
Immigration is just one small part of a massively complex puzzle. It's simply daft to blame all the countries woes upon it imo.
That said, as per original question I posed, are people seeing a different side of immigration that I'm not?
@cerrado-tu-ruido
Full Member
Stop comparing the thousands of years of immigration to what’s happened recently, not even remotely comparable.
You're just making emotional arguments, not stating facts.
That said, what are the obviously negative impacts on your life immigration has made. Help us understand? Tell us what they are?
Evidence to the contrary, if you can't see it maybe you need to move somewhere more cultural enriched.
Immigration has had a positive affect on my life but that doesn't mean I want open borders.
cerrado-tu-ruido
Full Member
Immigration has had a positive affect on my life but that doesn’t mean I want open borders.
QED.
A general question to anyone of any persuasion on immigration, what is your average interaction with immigrants?
To be perfectly honest, absolutely zero in my town but it’s in a rural area of Galloway so I admit I am absolutely ignorant of the situation down south/elsewhere in the country apart from what I read online so perhaps I should be more understanding rather than jump to the usual response.
Last time I was south of Carlisle would have been at least 16 years ago, so I’ll sit this thread out.
Any difficulty getting doctor appointments is due to our surgery taking on patients from a surgery that was closed...
Did the old doctors retire or emigrate to Australia/New Zealand/Canada...?
A general question to anyone of any persuasion on immigration, what is your average interaction with immigrants?
I have some Slovak friends here in town, a Norwegian couple. Lots of English too. My Dutch friend (our bridesmaid) left for home and then moved to France a few years ago. Lots of others - mainly Eastern European - workers in bars, restaurants, shops etc.
"Stop comparing the thousands of years of immigration to what’s happened recently, not even remotely comparable."
Tell that to all the people murdered and molested by those pesky Vikings!
Stop comparing the thousands of years of immigration to what’s happened recently, not even remotely comparable.
This is correct and since Brexit it's all government controlled.
https://search.app.goo.gl/5Rb5RA5
what is your average interaction with immigrants?
Based on the fact that 41% of Londoners, including myself, were born outside the UK, quite high.
What have I won?
Did the old doctors retire or emigrate to Australia/New Zealand/Canada…?
The other surgery that closed down was due to GP's retiring.
The GP at my surgery that I've been under since my late teens has only been working one half day a week for years but has finally retired this year.
Proper old school GP, he pushed for tests that lead to life saving neurosurgery for me in my my 20's, Chiari Malformation, decompressive surgery. I'll always owe him for that. Another GP told me to my face I was imagining the symptoms.😑
What have I won?
kudos or a slightly used one man sex pond.
Id take the Kudos to be honest. 😉
I think the issue is “complex” and if immigration is an issue, it is only one of many.
Immigration is indeed a component of lots of other related issues, taking a simple example; healthcare is both subject to additional demands due to immigration and of course benefits from immigrant labour. As with education, social services, etc, etc.
The headline promises (ref the dreaded 'B' word) from the right for the last decade or so have been along the lines of "taking back control" which implies being able to keep out those deemed to be a drain on national resources, and let in those who would contribute... So when can we expect that to start? It sort of feels like in the panic to prevent 'wronguns' coming in we're keeping the 'rightuns' away too.
The thing is the UK had grown quite reliant on immigration, and then we kind of cut that source of labour back in a very short period (plus a pandemic happened TBF), and now we find ourselves in a bit of a pickle. "Controlling" immigration seems to have focussed more on restrictions than on identifying where immigration is a benefit.
Stop comparing the thousands of years of immigration to what’s happened recently, not even remotely comparable.
You sure about that?
Ok we've got our current set of lines on a map and miscellaneous geo-political issues going on, but wasn't it ever thus? Explain to us why this isn't the same issue as it's always been i.e. People in a relatively privileged position who've landed up on the right side of a border, looking to keep everyone else out with harsher rules before anyone else reduces their perceived share of the pie...
"The UK is a nation of immigrants."
It is now, 1 in six of the population was born abroad at the last census, only Germany has a higher level in Europe - but historically we weren't, mass immigration only started after the second world war and the amount that took place in the 50 and 60 was tiny compared to what has taken place in recent years, without anyone really making the case for it in an election - it has just kind of happened. The economic case isn't clear cut - what most of the studies that say it is positive ignore is that the immigrant population skews young so they don't take into account the future costs when they get older. The House of Lords did a good report a few years ago that there was no clear economic positive effect.
And not that the Reform Party cares about it, but “stealing” health workers etc trained at the expense of the Nigerian, Filipino, Ghanaian, Zimbabwean etc taxpayer does have an impact on the country of origin too…
Indeed it does - the healthcare one particularly annoys me. Spain trains too many nurses - their surplus used to come here. Post brexit we are taking nurses from developing nations where there is a shortage. In a previous drive to recruit overseas nurses one of the carribean counties had to lose its ICU because we stole all the staff.
This is part of the tragedy of brexit
The rest of what you say PCA could be controlled and mitigated.
Western Europe is ****ed without immigration. Falling birth rates. Ever increasing numbers of old codgers who need care. Kids of the old codgers not wanting nor willing to do those jobs that mean getting physical or dirty..... Anything from wiping bums to laying bricks is below them.
Mefty - so how far back do you have to have roots here not to be an immigrant? Normans? House of Saxe Coburg Gotha? or once you are born here is that OK even if your parents were immigrants? How about the Italians in the 30s ( I think that was the big period of Italian migration to the UK?) They have left their mark all over scotland "traditional Italian fish and chips" Or the Jews in the 30s?
UK has always been a nation of immigrants. ~sure some periods its less and some more but its a constant theme. When I lived in manchester you could trace the amount of time various immigrant groups had been in the UK from how far they traveled up cheetam hill road
FFS our prime minister is the son of immigrants.
Did the old doctors retire or emigrate to Australia/New Zealand/Canada…?
Was a piece on The Rest is Politics where Campbell was talking about the number of British ex-NHS workers he met out in Oz.
Germany has lots of health care workers coming from Eastern Europe. Many German health care folks end up in Switzerland.
Was a piece on The Rest is Politics where Campbell was talking about the number of British ex-NHS workers he met out in Oz.
I quite often see targeted ads on TV these days looking to lure NHS workers to Australia.
My lad, long term, has said he will consider the move which obviously saddens me but I totally get it. (He's not in the NHS though.)
When I play podcasts, the Spotify app injects ads from the Western Australian Health Ministry (or whatever) trying to hire doctors and nurses from the UK.
UK has always been a nation of immigrants. ~sure some periods its less and some more
It is literally true that there has always some volume of immigration to and emigration from the UK (and its predecessors). But the change in volume is massive and undeniable and important.
Evidence to the contrary, if you can’t see it maybe you need to move somewhere more cultural enriched.
Can you please show us this evidence?
what is your average interaction with immigrants?
I was a healthcare worker. The majority of my colleagues where first generation immigrants. I'm a migrant myself being English born and living in Scotland. I have two good friends who are immigrants and others who are migrants from England
We are also a nation of migrants - I have family all over the world.
To be perfectly honest, absolutely zero in my town but it’s in a rural area of Galloway
Lot of immigration in KBT from England. (Me included - although my Mum is scottish and I was born in scotland - does that count? ). Locals bitch massively about "Incomers" on social media. Think there are a lot of people are struggling for money and housing and its not nice if you fall on the wrong side of the divide so easy to see where the frustration comes from. I do voluntary work in the town and have received anti-English racist messages because of it. As a white, middle aged, financially secure male I was a bit shocked. I cant imaging how horrible that would have been if I was less advantaged.
People need an outlet for their desperation and the media exploit this. Beyond that I dont understand it.
Which is why I made the comment about using a broad definition of immigration 😉
Please explain, thanks
The Norman Conquest, as George Trevelyan said in his History of England:
It is a commonplace to say that the British are a people of mixed
blood… [But] it may be as well to say, at the outset, that the
entrance into our island of the races who people it today was
completed in main at the time of the Norman Conquest. With that
event, which itself made less racial than social and cultural change,
we come to an end of migratory invasions and forced entry behind
the point of the sword. Since Hastings there has been nothing more
catastrophic than a slow, peaceful infiltration of alien craftsmen
and labourers—Flemings, Huguenots, Irish and others—with the
acquiescence of the existing inhabitants of the island.
PCA - why is internal migration between the nations of the Uk different from migration from France or the Netherlands? Edinburgh has a huge english population and its changed it. Hard to see a moral or practical difference? Internal migration from london to less well off parts of the UK like cornwall creates the same pressures on housing and services as from other countries
I’m pretty convinced that the reason is it’s easier for governments and the media they control / that control them to tell people that problems with services are caused by immigration and over population than lack of funding and lack of planning.
There’s examples in this thread of people making exactly the same sort of comments: there’s plenty of land that isn’t actually actively used for farming in this country that could be developed for housing - of course it’s not necessarily in a useful location, but that’s a lack of government planning. Similar issues apply to schools, doctors, etc - it was obvious 20 years ago that these problems would continue but rather than invest in areas that would benefit from it, we tried to block the immigration. It was obvious that asylum applications would take longer to process, but rather than change the rules to allow applicants to earn whilst their application was pending - and thus support themselves and pay tax we leave them in limbo are have to support them.
Most immigrants do not want more immigration.
id be interested to know the evidence for this claim. I’ve worked with a group of immigrants from, let’s say, western countries: Portugal, Spain, Italy, Canada, Germany, Ireland, France for over a decade. None of them have ever suggested immigration should be blocked. Equally I’ve never once heard a suggestion that they weren’t very welcome here or that they were creating a burden on the U.K. - they will all have been paid above the U.K. median wage, and some quite a bit above for their specialist skills. Now notably these are all countries where Brits might want to emigrate to themselves or at least go on holiday to.
Those who say they have no racist overtones to their objection ask yourself to rank the order you would let these people into the country:
- a 25 yr old Ukrainian woman
- a 28 yr old from France who wants to study to become a French teacher in the UK
- a 25 yr old Somalian man
- a 45 yr old from Dublin who wants to marry someone here
- a 75 yr old Spanish woman who wants to live with her son who has been here for two decades
- a 40 yr old American scientist with an offer of a professorship at a U.K. university
- a 30 yr old French premiership footballer
- a 23 yr old Bulgarian looking to work in the hospitality industry for a few years
- a 30 yr old Turkish nurse
- a 75 yr old British woman who emigrated to Spain 20 years ago
- a 23 year old Australian looking to work in the hospitality industry for a few years
- a 40 year old palestinian structural engineer
- a 28 yr old Iranian software engineer who has been living in France for 10 yrs
- a 45 year old from the Phillipines who wants to marry someone here
Belief that the country is the native people's and should be run for their benefit.
Belief that the fruits of family and community efforts and sacrifices over the centuries to make the country what it is today, should not be shared with someone who just turns up here.
Belief that the fruits of family efforts and sacrifices over the centuries to make the country what it is today, should not be shared with anyone who just turns up here.
Empire and commonwealth forces have fought with British soldiers in every conflict worth mentioning. Remarkable, as much of the time we invaded their countries as an enemy.
Stretching the topic a bit to start talking about English “migrants” to Scotland and vice versa.
In your arrogant, patronising world maybe. But when you got the message, I got this morning from some complete random, that was just anti-English abusive racism, maybe not. Its all part of the same problem. People resenting migration because of other issues.
It would be interesting to compare the emigration from the UK with immigration? I know we have a net immigration but its surely significant numbers of folk who leave? It would be interesting to see that graph alongside the one PCA put up earlier
I have family who left the UK in the late 19th century, in the 1960s, and in the 1980s. I have friends who left in the 80s and 90s.
Australia, Canada and perhaps less so the USA were largely? Partly? populated by british emigrants
Empire and commonwealth forces have fought with British soldiers in every conflict worth mentioning. Remarkable, as much of the time we invaded their countries as an enemy.
and the UK became and is still rich on the back of those invasions that created the empire
Empire and commonwealth forces have fought with British soldiers in every conflict worth mentioning. Remarkable, as much of the time we invaded their countries as an enemy.
I'm aware of this, but it doesn't counter the point I made.
A huge amount of effort went into building our advanced country. Some people feel that it can be shared with anyone who wants to benefit from that effort, others feel it's for descendants of those who contributed.
and the UK became and is still rich on the back of those invasions that created the empire
I doubt many people feel bad about that - it's history, that's how the world was in those days, anyone else would have done it to us if they had half a chance, etc.. Less still would care about it if they worked out the effect that putting it right would have on their own standard of living.
Have a look around Europe and see what parties people are voting for.
A huge amount of effort went into building our advanced country.
A lot of it involved asset stripping other countries.
Thank **** for the Royal Navy, eh?
Lot of immigration in KBT from England. (Me included – although my Mum is scottish and I was born in scotland – does that count? ). Locals bitch massively about “Incomers” on social media. Think there are a lot of people are struggling for money and housing and its not nice if you fall on the wrong side of the divide so easy to see where the frustration comes from.
I wasn’t considering immigration such as yourself moving here tbf, I don’t know about the bitching on social media (not on it) but I’m sure it goes on as there’s a number of pretty ignorant folk in this town, I was born here moved away/came back 3 times with my folks and been back here since 1987.
Housing is a real bad issue that’s for sure, my mums street (union st) has 14 holiday let houses out of 25, it’s not sustainable so it’s no wonder that folk are annoyed and priced out of the market, I was one of the lucky ones and got a council 1bed bungalow back in 93 when only 21, it’s now housing association. I think the current waiting list is 12 years + so you as may well say “never”, and the lack of long term rents in the area for the low wages paid around here is practically non-existent.
