Immigration to the UK - do you have concerns?

[mojo pixy]

I keep hearing that there are concerns about immigration. I've heard concerns about immigration used as a justification for some really toxic and even violent language and behaviour over the years, but the last few weeks have seen a kind of paroxysm of pent-up rage in the UK that has got even the left-lib bubble of Urban75 arguing about immigration. Here's a thread for that, if it's needed.

I'll start; immigration is bad because it's used by wealth owners to undercut potential wage / conditions demands by their native workforce. This is more or less where my sympathy with anti-immigrantism ends - and even within this idea, it's still not the immigrants' fault. Attacking them and making them feel less welcome, is misguided and unnecessary and cruel. Full stop.

So what other concerns can we come up with? I've heard about white replacement, cultural cohesion, pride in traditions, defending the realm, exploitation of our social systems (NHS etc), "we're full", the unavailability of social housing, dentists and GPs, the state of our schools, hospitals, town centres, rates of joblessness and social disengagement - all this and more has been raised under the banner of The Problem With Immigration Is...

So where are we? What (if any) concerns about immigration could justify street violence such as we've been seeing recently? And what, if anything, should be done (by the state or by us as individuals and communities) to address these concerns?

 

[tonysingh]

Migration has been a factor of human existence from the get go. To have concerns over it now is quite frankly absurd.

 

[Orang Utan]

Migration has been a factor of human existence from the get go. To have concerns over it now is quite frankly absurd.

Especially considering how in the coming decades, large parts of the world will become virtually uninhabitable. We’re gonna have to learn to muddle along now to prepare us for later, with a much greater number of people coming to live in the more habitable latitudes.

 

[8ball]

Murder has been a factor of human existence from the get go. To have concerns over it now is quite frankly absurd.

Hmm, doesn’t work well with substituted terms…

 

[mojo pixy]

Hmm, doesn’t work well with substituted terms…

Eggs, flour, butter, sugar .. cake!

Eggs, flour, soap, sugar .. I don't know but I wouldn't eat it.

You can't always substitute one item in a formulation for just any other item chosen at random, but you know that.

 

[chilango]

Nope.

I have concerns about migration within the UK though - wealthy 2nd homers and the forced economic pull of work in the SE.

 

[8ball]

Eggs, flour, butter, sugar .. cake!

Eggs, flour, soap, sugar .. I don't know but I wouldn't eat it.

You can't always substitute one item in a formulation for just any other item chosen at random, but you know that.

This is idiotic.

 

[furluxor]

immigration is bad because it's used by wealth owners to undercut potential wage / conditions demands by their native workforce.

I've been thinking about this a lot today! I'm reading Gaia Vince's book and she reckons this idea is a fallacy. She cites some studies where immigration didn't affect local population wages at all (and one study where the wages increased). According to her, there was only one case where the host population experienced a wage downturn - where there was no "real" migration, but workers were allowed to cross the border and work, returning home at the end of the day.

Some studies she cites strike me as outdated - surely the economic consequences of immigration would be different in sparsely populated (what they mean by "unsettled", although I recognise it's a colonialist word) land vs highly developed cities. But if all studies point one way...not that I've gone to sources and checked.

I'm aware "migration doesn't push wages down" is an argument loved by arch-capitalists but would like to know what the factual situation is. Anyone want to weigh in?

 

[danny la rouge]

Migration has been a factor of human existence from the get go. To have concerns over it now is quite frankly absurd.

Especially considering how in the coming decades, large parts of the world will become virtually uninhabitable. We’re gonna have to learn to muddle along now to prepare us for later, with a much greater number of people coming to live in the more habitable latitudes.

This and this.

Migration is a natural response to need. People need safety, security and they need to be able to provide for themselves and their families.

I migrated from the place I was brought up for those reasons. My wife and I lived in a rented static caravan on a trailer park behind a pub when we first got together. We were “trailer trash”. Because there weren’t affordable homes for young people. And I had to have 3 jobs to create a liveable income, one of which was 30 miles away. A 60 mile round trip. So eventually we moved.

It was within the borders of the same nation-state, but what difference does that make? When people first came to these lands they walked across Doggerland. There were no fictional lines on maps. Nowhere to say they had nothing to declare. They were following food and security. Like I did when I moved somewhere there was more infrastructure, more accommodation, more jobs.

There’s too much trying to divide migrants into “deserving” migrants and “undeserving” migrants. As if this were the Promised Land and only perfect people can be permitted in. “Perfect victims”. People who have been bombed out of their house, not people who “just” want economic security. People who have been bombed out of a Ukrainian house. Not people who have been bombed out of a house somewhere the majority has brown skin. And certainly not “fighting age” men.

The right wing tabloid press wants to write the acceptable CV of a migrant. And it wants the bullet points to be ever more restrictive. You had to pay a people smuggler? That’s “criminal”: you’re out. You came in a small boat? Oh, we don’t want those sort of transport methods around here!

There’s also the fallacy that the country is “full”. That’s not how capitalism works. That’s not how job markets work. This isn’t a defence of neoliberalism: it’s an observation of the realities of our mode of production.

This fallacious argument fuelled the Brexit referendum. It didn’t fit then. It doesn’t fit now. When the UK was part of the EU, the internal movement of labour was very much part of the reason that Union existed. It was to facilitate factor mobility and labour arbitrage. But people seemed to think that removing the UK from that capitalist arrangement for the internal movement of people within the EU would also stop people flowing from war zones, areas of degraded environment, rising sea levels, or wild fires. And of course it didn’t. Because it couldn’t.

People had been fed the myths “we’re full”, “you’re disadvantaged because we’re full”, and “Brexit will stop us being full”. These were all, all of them, utter fiction. So people will of course be frustrated.

When climate change kicks up a notch we’ll find out what it’s like to try to feed a planet on ever diminishing resources during environmental collapse, and with more and more regions becoming uninhabitable.

But we’re not there yet. And even when we eventually are, the migrant will still not be our enemy. The people saying they’re our enemy are our enemy. They always were.

 

[bellaozzydog]

Migration isn’t the problem it’s the absolute lack of political and economic literacy in the U.K. population who have been spoon fed anti immigration rhetoric post WW2 onwards in mainstream media and the new threat on the block, social media with its filthy algorithms, monetised clickbait and conspiracies.

We ain’t evolved or educated enough as a society to push back against it.

Throw in the absolute pressure of life that austerity and capitalism naturally generate and you’ve got 75 million angry, emotional idiots needing an easy blame fix

This shit isn’t even complicated, it’s been done before, read some fucking books ffs!

A healthy, wealthy, equitous society can absorb loads of immigration and its net beneficial effects.

We ain’t there and there’s no fix on the horizon.

Move to the scandies……where ironically they still don’t like immigration despite all their winning societal metrics

 

[mojo pixy]

This is idiotic

because...

I mean post what you want obviously, snarky one-liners, explanations, something on topic, whatever.

 

[maomao]

Increases in population create pressure on public services and we need to acknowledge that by demanding more and better public services. I live in a town which is building large amounts of new housing and isn't building a new hospital and a new doctors surgery etc. and people are allowed to be upset about that because it will affect their quality of life, it's already started and it already has. We just need to be clear that the blame should be put on the politicians who aren't investing in services and infrastructure and not on people who are moving out of inner London into relatively affordable housing.

I'm also concerned that business uses immigration to save on investing in training and employee development. It would make more sense to train the immigrants who turn up here as refugees to work as full participants in our society than let them rot in hotels while business imports cheap ready-trained labour. A lack of joined-up thinking and a tendency to let business do whatever the fuck it wants means we end up with the worst of both worlds.

I'm concerned that the higher education sector is bearing the brunt of immigration controls while the private sector gets whatever it wants.

I'm concerned that discussion about immigration is always framed in terms of racism Vs anti racism and controls versus open borders rather than trying to plan for and make the best of what we have.

So yes, I have concerns and my immigrant partner shares them.

 

[maomao]

because...

I mean post what you want obviously, snarky one-liners, explanations, something on topic, whatever.

If the ignore function ever had a purpose...

 

[Brainaddict]

Don't think anyone has mentioned scarcity yet, though bella's post is moving towards it. People dislike incomers under conditions of scarcity because there already isn't enough to go around. But in one of the richest societies in the history of the world, the scarcity is all deliberately engineered. This should be the main argument against anti-immigration arguments imo, not more abstract arguments about history or rights or nation states. I don't think most of those have much mileage when people are taught they have to compete for scarce resources and constantly feel themselves losing.

 

[redsquirrel]

Am I concerned about people migrating to the UK, no.
Am I concerned about the state and capital exploits migration yep.

Just to take my workplace like loads of others that work in the HE sector I've spent the last two days in clearing trying to get people enrolled as potential students - the whole framing of this is the sector has been we need to take as many home students as possible because we are going to get the international students who's higher fees we need.

How is any part of that message or the assumptions it is built on beneficial to workers?
Why are universities exploiting international students to prop up the inflated salaries of senior managers and their gran designs building plans? Using international students as a cash cow is harmful to those students, their own communities, UK students, and can cause issues in communities here in the UK (the sudden influx of cash rich students into areas being exploited by landlords etc).
And as maomao mentioned many of these international students end up be used as cheap labour.


And while the myths of the hard right about immigration are harmful and must be fought against so are the myths of liberalism such as immigration is good for the economy, and deriding millions of people as politically and economically illiterate feeds into growth of the populist right.

 

[mojo pixy]

Increases in population create pressure on public services and we need to acknowledge that by demanding more and better public services. I live in a town which is building large amounts of new housing and isn't building a new hospital and a new doctors surgery etc. and people are allowed to be upset about that because it will affect their quality of life, it's already started and it already has. We just need to be clear that the blame should be put on the politicians who aren't investing in services and infrastructure and not on people who are moving out of inner London into relatively affordable housing.

I'm also concerned that business uses immigration to save on investing in training and employee development. It would make more sense to train the immigrants who turn up here as refugees to work as full participants in our society than let them rot in hotels while business imports cheap ready-trained labour. A lack of joined-up thinking and a tendency to let business do whatever the fuck it wants means we end up with the worst of both worlds.

I'm concerned that the higher education sector is bearing the brunt of immigration controls while the private sector gets whatever it wants.

I'm concerned that discussion about immigration is always framed in terms of racism Vs anti racism and controls versus open borders rather than trying to plan for and make the best of what we have.

So yes, I have concerns and my immigrant partner shares them.

I'm concerned that we're failing to find enough British people to fill the needed vacancies in social care. I think it's a shame we're importing people for that; not only for what it says about us as a nation and our collective attitude towards our elderly and others who get cared for, as well as a widespread snobbery about work we're willing to do / have our kids do; but also because it denudes the care systems of poorer countries.

I think that, just as with a lot of your points, the real problem isn't immigration or immigrants, but the cumulative and continuing political choices of those in power who seem averse to investing in the uk, its infrastructure and its people.

 

[danny la rouge]

We just need to be clear that the blame should be put on the politicians who aren't investing in services and infrastructure

Am I concerned about the state and capital exploits migration yep.

I think that, just as with a lot of your points, the real problem isn't immigration or immigrants, but the cumulative and continuing political choices of those in power who seem averse to investing in the uk, its infrastructure and its people.

Yup. Absolutely. The enemy comes in a limousine.

 

[scifisam]

Social care vacancies, especially today in residential homes, go unfilled because the pay is terrible and the staff are treated like shit. A year ago I saw a job for the manager of a large care home - shift work including overnights, managing and recruiting staff, administering medication, etc - in inner London for £18,500. The lack of applicants had nothing to do with snobbery.

So many middle class people claim that working class Brits "don't want to do" certain jobs. I've seen people claim it about virtually every job, and always with the assumption being that they should want to do them but they're lazy. It's usually the same people who say their lovely Polish builder is so much better than British workers. There's an awful lot of this - people using immigration as an excuse to express their class bigotry.

I'll write a fuller post later.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Am I concerned about people migrating to the UK, no.
Am I concerned about the state and capital exploits migration yep.

Just to take my workplace like loads of others that work in the HE sector I've spent the last two days in clearing trying to get people enrolled as potential students - the whole framing of this is the sector has been we need to take as many home students as possible because we are going to get the international students who's higher fees we need.

How is any part of that message or the assumptions it is built on beneficial to workers?
Why are universities exploiting international students to prop up the inflated salaries of senior managers and their gran designs building plans? Using international students as a cash cow is harmful to those students, their own communities, UK students, and can cause issues in communities here in the UK (the sudden influx of cash rich students into areas being exploited by landlords etc).
And as maomao mentioned many of these international students end up be used as cheap labour.


And while the myths of the hard right about immigration are harmful and must be fought against so are the myths of liberalism such as immigration is good for the economy, and deriding millions of people as politically and economically illiterate feeds into growth of the populist right.

Spot on. immigration under capitalism isn’t a kindness or act of human solidarity, it’s the pursuit of exploited labour. Immigration has been used to undermine collectively bargained pay rates, to prop up profits by allowing corporations to pay poverty pay and to produce economic growth through consumption.

There is a reason why the voices of capital are amongst the loudest in demanding more immigration. There is a reason why - despite campaigning on a pledge to lower immigration rates - the Tories allowed net legal migration of 700,000 per year.

The true legacy of Thatcherism is an economy addicted to cheap migrant labour.

 

[WouldBe]

exploitation of our social systems (NHS etc)

If it wasn't for immigrants we wouldn't have an NHS.

 

[danny la rouge]

Spot on. immigration under capitalism isn’t a kindness or act of human solidarity, it’s the pursuit of exploited labour. Immigration has been used to undermine collectively bargained pay rates, to prop up profits by allowing corporations to pay poverty pay and to produce economic growth through consumption.

There is a reason why the voices of capital are amongst the loudest in demanding more immigration. There is a reason why - despite campaigning on a pledge to lower immigration rates - the Tories allowed net legal migration of 700,000 per year.

The true legacy of Thatcherism is an economy addicted to cheap migrant labour.

That’s all true. But it’s important to say that that’s about capital’s relationship with labour. That’s how capital always relates to labour. And the actions of capital will drive some migration. Including by degradation of economies in the global south (or whatever we’re supposed to say now).

But that’s not the fault of the migrants. (I know you’re not saying that). And people will continue to migrate, for all the reasons already discussed above. And the way to respond is to unite as a class, not divide into indigenous and non indigenous. Not least because we all came from somewhere else. And the far right version of non indigenous includes people who have generations behind them in this country.

This next may sound like exceptionalism, but I really don’t mean it that way. I’ve discussed this before, but while Scotland is not immune to racism, the talking points here are really not the same as in England. The fissure really is along the lines of migration from a century and more ago, when it was Irish Catholic migration. And that’s where our flare-ups still occur.

 

[BigMoaner]

Spot on. immigration under capitalism isn’t a kindness or act of human solidarity, it’s the pursuit of exploited labour. Immigration has been used to undermine collectively bargained pay rates, to prop up profits by allowing corporations to pay poverty pay and to produce economic growth through consumption.

There is a reason why the voices of capital are amongst the loudest in demanding more immigration. There is a reason why - despite campaigning on a pledge to lower immigration rates - the Tories allowed net legal migration of 700,000 per year.

The true legacy of Thatcherism is an economy addicted to cheap migrant labour.

Yes, the infinite growth premise behind neoliberalism. Can’t build a new Pret because there’s not enough labour in the area, then just import it and you have a new Pret, I.e growth. Immigration is great for capitalism because it keeps wages low - he won’t do it at that price, but this new person will - and it keeps businesses expanding. I mean it’s so obvious that anyone on the left should see this. Immigration and support for anti racism can be viewed through our particular prism. Sadly we have a culture and a mindset of always look along or down but never…up. I personally think migration will slow down because of the expense of everything. Sure, when prices were low and inflation was low then it was attractive. But what now 900 quid for a room in London? As had been said divisions along class not race is the way to create a global resistance against capital but that reality is about as far off well a very far off thing. The world would do well to move away from the “infinite growth” at all costs model of capitalism that we live under but like mark fisher said it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is that.

 

[Pickman's model]

Migration isn’t the problem it’s the absolute lack of political and economic literacy in the U.K. population who have been spoon fed anti immigration rhetoric post WW2 onwards in mainstream media and the new threat on the block, social media with its filthy algorithms, monetised clickbait and conspiracies.

We ain’t evolved or educated enough as a society to push back against it.

Throw in the absolute pressure of life that austerity and capitalism naturally generate and you’ve got 75 million angry, emotional idiots needing an easy blame fix

This shit isn’t even complicated, it’s been done before, read some fucking books ffs!

A healthy, wealthy, equitous society can absorb loads of immigration and its net beneficial effects.

We ain’t there and there’s no fix on the horizon.

Move to the scandies……where ironically they still don’t like immigration despite all their winning societal metrics

Since rather before ww2 as those familiar with the aliens act 1905 will aver

 

[Johnny Vodka]

My concern would be more for the countries where immigrants are coming from. A nurse coming from Africa to work in the UK means one less nurse in that African country which probably needs the nurse more than we do.

 

[Pickman's model]

Anyway you'd be mad not to have concerns over immigration, the way it's been handled is bloody awful. I'm surprised anyone wants to live here (whether born here or from abroad) after the abysmal way successive governments have acted. And so much to the detriment of this country.

 

[mojo pixy]

Social care vacancies, especially today in residential homes, go unfilled because the pay is terrible and the staff are treated like shit.

I totally agree, but that's not the only reason. I've been doing that work for years and I've lost count of the people I've talked to who've said some variation on oh I couldn't do that. Obviously nobody has to do care work, but at the same time somebody has to. Likewise fruit/veg picking. It is hard work and pay and terms are often terrible, but when I did that aged 16/17 nearly all the people I worked with were locals. I haven't picked fruit for years but I'm pretty sure now the gangs won't be nearly all locals. Pay and conditions are a big reason why, farmers/ agribusinesses keeping costs down to maximise profits - just as in care, vast profits out of high prices but low wages and poor training, benefits etc.

Of course nobody wants to do it, wants their kids to do it. So we import labour, because it still needs doing. And round we go endlessly.

 

[scifisam]

I totally agree, but that's not the only reason. I've been doing that work for years and I've lost count of the people I've talked to who've said some variation on oh I couldn't do that. Obviously nobody has to do care work, but at the same time somebody has to. Likewise fruit/veg picking. It is hard work and pay and terms are often terrible, but when I did that aged 16/17 nearly all the people I worked with were locals. I haven't picked fruit for years but I'm pretty sure now the gangs won't be nearly all locals. Pay and conditions are a big reason why, farmers/ agribusinesses keeping costs down to maximise profits - just as in care, vast profits out of high prices but low wages and poor training, benefits etc.

Of course nobody wants to do it, wants their kids to do it. So we import labour, because it still needs doing. And round we go endlessly.

Honestly, you said it's not just about pay and conditions, but then don't mention anything other than pay and conditions

 

[mojo pixy]

Honestly, you said it's not just about pay and conditions, but then don't mention anything other than pay and conditions

Because when it comes up in conversation it's not just the pay and conditions that repel people, it's the work itself. I couldn't do that. And whilst there are a lot of misconceptions about what care work entails which need challenging, there are genuine emotional and sensory hurdles to jump too, that not everyone feels they're cut out for. The minimum wage twelve-hour shifts and lack of support could be improved 1000% but IMO those hurdles would still exist.

Anyway I don't want to labour it, I'm just speaking from experience. What we actually need is a way not to rely on immigration for such work (whichever work) because that would be more sustainable in the long term.

 

[pbsmooth]

there was an interesting stat on the TRIP podcast. 16% of the UK's current population was born outside of the UK but in 2022 30% of all live births in England and Wales were to mothers born outside the UK and in London it was 66.5%. that's a rapid change, often most affecting the poorest communities.

 

[Dystopiary]

Yes, the infinite growth premise behind neoliberalism. Can’t build a new Pret because there’s not enough labour in the area, then just import it and you have a new Pret, I.e growth. Immigration is great for capitalism because it keeps wages low - he won’t do it at that price, but this new person will - and it keeps businesses expanding. I mean it’s so obvious that anyone on the left should see this. Immigration and support for anti racism can be viewed through our particular prism. Sadly we have a culture and a mindset of always look along or down but never…up. I personally think migration will slow down because of the expense of everything. Sure, when prices were low and inflation was low then it was attractive. But what now 900 quid for a room in London? As had been said divisions along class not race is the way to create a global resistance against capital but that reality is about as far off well a very far off thing. The world would do well to move away from the “infinite growth” at all costs model of capitalism that we live under but like mark fisher said it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is that.

Agree with all this except the bit in bold - migration to North and Western Europe, including Britain, will grow because of climate change.