Immigration to the UK - do you have concerns?

[Edie]

So what's wrong with the present rules on immigration?

Well as a starter a salary requirement of £38k+ is ridiculous wouldn’t you say?

 

[planetgeli]

What I'm not clear on in these legitimate discussions about immigration is whether its about:

Cultural issues not economic. Immigration promotes rapid change in localities and this should be curbed/ slowed to a pace people are comfortable with.

Or

Immigration lowers wages and therefore should be limited to help the working class.

If it's A) the change is not rapid, anywhere near, compared to a lot of other countries as has been shown statistically upthread.

If it's B) That should be a fight against capitalism - refugees tend to be working class once they get here with no money left. Even the Doctors etc.

But maybe it's C) Spymaster called these race riots. And he's right. They are racist riots. Scapegoat riots. People with not a lot to lose, generally feel shit with themselves because of this, so they look to blame the other. The zeitgeist of the other currently being muslims. It'll change one day. It always does.

Scapegoats aren't right. It's looking the wrong way. An idea influenced (orchestrated?) by the ruling class. The legitimate concerns have no legitimacy as such. Racism, which is what it is, is not the answer.

How you change Ska's b) and c) from his earlier post, the dissenters, not the lost haters, is another thing. We don't control the power structures, the media and like.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Oh, ffs. Is this where we are now? "I'm not standing for election", "stop getting offended". Seriously?

And what a childish last line. As if it's all about you!

The point of this thread was to discuss immigration concerns (it's in the title) and, presumably, how to address them.

All you've said so far is that you should keep doing what you've been doing and has proven utterly useless; tell people with immigration concerns that women in Bangladesh are unfairly treated and should be able to live in the UK; and give immigrants free English lessons and qualifications.

You're being a prick now. I'll leave it.

 

[Spymaster]

You're being a prick now. I'll leave it.

And here we go yet again with the abuse when you're called out. This is so typically you.

You've added nothing to this thread beyond shit chichés.

So yeah. Leave it.

 

[Gramsci]

I agree with a lot of what you say especially about the sneering. But how do you engage with concerns that Covid was a hoax, or that 15 minute cities are a plot to enslave people. IME these types of conversations have changed a lot over the last few years. Conspiratorial beliefs are becoming the dominant ideology amongst those who a few years ago might have read The Sun and moaned about immigration but weren't particularly politically engaged. Now there is a whole online ecosystem to swim in that increasingly subverts any 'left' ideas which might improve working class communties into some kind of devious plot intended to secretly enslave them.

Maybe it's just round here but this stuff seems to be everywhere at the moment. And whilst how deep into it people gets varies ideas like climate change being a hoax sit alongside claims of hundreds of thousands of fighting age men flooding the country as some kind of Islamist plot. I would guess the majority of those voting Reform have bought into this kind of shit to some degree. And trying to talk to a lot of people about it is like trying to talk to a creationist about evolution. It just bounces off. They are ideologically committed to a conspiratorial worldview, have no trust in mainstream media or experts (understandably in some cases) and anything that might counter these beliefs is just further evidence of the plot.

I do meet people who during pandemic got seriously into the conspiracy stuff.

In my limited experience Id say these kind of people have a mixture of right and left views. Actual racism Id say no.

A level of anti semitism -- who are they who run things. I'd say probably.

I grew up in what could be termed the alternative society. And spent a lot of time in it. The kind of people I meet who are into the COVID they want too control us stuff are often pretty alternative. And I can relate to them even if I don't go down that rabbit hole.

I can actually take some of their ideas seriously. I'm not keen on the state/ wish they would just leave us alone/don't have a lot of trust in experts/

One of them I know disappeared. He had been telling me he wanted to go off and live off grid with his partner. I think he must have.

This kind of milieu is for me not alternative but normal. So I can probably relate to people like this more.

Trust me the hippy/ alternative lot are and always have been all over the place politically. But its my background and I've a soft spot for them.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

And here we go yet again with the abuse when you're called out. This is so typically you.

You've added nothing to this thread beyond shit chichés.

So yeah. Leave it.

You could start by acknowledging that I'm not going around shouting racist at everyone and take that back.

I've already said what I say to people irl when these discussions come up. I don't browbeat. I don't even try to win people over particularly. I just try to get them to understand where I'm coming from and perhaps give them some food for thought. It can and does work in influencing people, ime, usually when they are ready to be influenced by it, when they are curious about the world and about what other people think.

 

[scifisam]

Are you sure that was full-time? I thought NMW was around £22k now for a 37 hour week. Disgustingly low for a management job though.

A friend works in a care home in Suffolk. She gets a few pence an hour more than most, because she was a senior healthcare assistant and can do some medical stuff that other staff can't, and she's still only on £12.20 an hour. She works a zero hours contract by choice, as it means she can turn down any shifts she doesn't want to do and they can't make her work over never works Christmas.

The place where she works really struggles to get staff, as do all the others in the area. To keep the staffing up to the minimum required, they use a lot of agency staff from South Asia, and the agency charges the home £16+ an hour. If they were prepared to pay £16 an hour to everyone, they might not need the agency staff.

It's a really challenging job, the residents all have dementia and frequently become violent, and most of them are doubly incontinent. A lot of new staff can't hack it and leave after a few shifts, which isn't surprising when they can earn more in Macdonalds or Aldi without doing night shifts or being bitten and punched fairly regularly.

I wouldn't do it for £50 an hour, frankly.

It was a year ago (when my GF was looking for work, so for once I remember an actual timescale), and if they called it 35 hours a week (even though it would be almost impossible to cover that job in that number of hours), then just over £18k would have met minimum wage requirements for the minimum wage at the time. I remember double-checking that they were at least paying the legal minimum.

It'd be 22k now for 37 hours, but that's still very much not a living wage in inner London. Post-tax and NI, it wouldn't even cover the rent of the average privately rented one-bedroom flat anywhere in London.

Apologies for the slight derail in an ongoing thread!

 

[Spymaster]

You could start by acknowledging that I'm not going around shouting racist at everyone and take that back.

I've already said what I say to people irl when these discussions come up. I don't browbeat. I don't even try to win people over particularly. I just try to get them to understand where I'm coming from and perhaps give them some food for thought. It can and does work in influencing people, ime, usually when they are ready to be influenced by it, when they are curious about the world and about what other people think.

Once again. It's not all about you personally; LBJ of U75.

You are part of a group of people whose idea of challenging racism is to ignore the concerns of those considering right-wing ideology as unworthy of interest. Your solution is to do things that will drive them further right. You're in the same group as SpookyFrank who calls them dogshit, and others who call them racists, whether or not you do that yourself.

You've been trying to give people "food for thought" for decades. It hasn't worked.

 

[Gramsci]

Well as a starter a salary requirement of £38k+ is ridiculous wouldn’t you say?

Are you saying its to high or to low?

That requirement was brought in supposedly to stop what you said about immigration affecting the low paid working class.

Forgive me in your previous post you appeared to be saying that peoples concerns should mean not open borders but immigration controls.

I'm saying in effect we have this and it did not stop racist riots.

I don't see how tweaking the system will help.

The history of immigration rules/ laws since WW2 has not largely been about loosening them. But the opposite.

Response to peoples concerns about immigration led to governments making it more difficult for people to come here from ex colonies/ Commonwealth over the years for example

To set up the argument that its left / or free market right vs yet another round of changes to immigration seems to me to point to yet more restrictions.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Once again. It's not all about you personally; LBJ of U75.

You are part of a group of people whose idea of challenging racism is to ignore the concerns of those considering right-wing ideology as unworthy of interest. Your solution is to do things that will drive them further right. You're in the same group as SpookyFrank who calls them dogshit, and others who call them racists, whether or not you do that yourself.

You've been trying to give people "food for thought" for decades. It hasn't worked.

So you're doubling down. You said I was saying something I wasn't saying and you're not going to acknowledge it. Fuck off.

 

[Spymaster]

So you're doubling down. You said I was saying something I wasn't saying and you're not going to acknowledge it. Fuck off.

For fucks sake.

Me, me, me, me.

 

[Pickman's model]

You could start by acknowledging that I'm not going around shouting racist at everyone and take that back.

I've already said what I say to people irl when these discussions come up. I don't browbeat. I don't even try to win people over particularly. I just try to get them to understand where I'm coming from

It's not all about you

 

[kabbes]

I do meet people who during pandemic got seriously into the conspiracy stuff.

In my limited experience Id say these kind of people have a mixture of right and left views. Actual racism Id say no.

A level of anti semitism -- who are they who run things. I'd say probably.

I grew up in what could be termed the alternative society. And spent a lot of time in it. The kind of people I meet who are into the COVID they want too control us stuff are often pretty alternative. And I can relate to them even if I don't go down that rabbit hole.

I can actually take some of their ideas seriously. I'm not keen on the state/ wish they would just leave us alone/don't have a lot of trust in experts/

One of them I know disappeared. He had been telling me he wanted to go off and live off grid with his partner. I think he must have.

This kind of milieu is for me not alternative but normal. So I can probably relate to people like this more.

Trust me the hippy/ alternative lot are and always have been all over the place politically. But its my background and I've a soft spot for them.

The thing is that the reproduction and exercise of power kind of is a conspiracy. Whole systems of institutional processes exist to perform it. A crucial part of the way power is reproduced is also, genuinely, to get people to internalise these processes as “necessary”, which could loosely be termed “brain-washing”, in conspiracy language. So I don’t blame people who sense the outlines of this from losing all trust in the agents of those power structures. Why should they trust?

But yes, we then have a massive problem. Undirected and self-directed conspiratorialism in the absence of proper structural and social analysis will result in reactionary nonsense that hits the wrong target. And that’s where we are alright.

 

[Gramsci]

If it's A) the change is not rapid, anywhere near, compared to a lot of other countries as has been shown statistically upthread.

If it's B) That should be a fight against capitalism - refugees tend to be working class once they get here with no money left. Even the Doctors etc.

But maybe it's C) Spymaster called these race riots. And he's right. They are racist riots. Scapegoat riots. People with not a lot to lose, generally feel shit with themselves because of this, so they look to blame the other. The zeitgeist of the other currently being muslims. It'll change one day. It always does.

Scapegoats aren't right. It's looking the wrong way. An idea influenced (orchestrated?) by the ruling class. The legitimate concerns have no legitimacy as such. Racism, which is what it is, is not the answer.

How you change Ska's b) and c) from his earlier post, the dissenters, not the lost haters, is another thing. We don't control the power structures, the media and like.

I agree with this.

To add sorry the following is not directed at you. Just thought of it when saw your reply. What you are saying is right.

Underlying what I was posting is that seems to me there is a lot of ( and I see it in posts here) of the I'm personally a liberal minded person and don't have a problem with immigrants but there are these other people who have all these concerns, And We as a country must listen to them

It reminds me of Theresa May and her hostile environment.

When people were deported due to it then people like her avert their eyes and make out the consequences of immigration policy are nothing to do with them. She was responding to peoples concerns.

Because I may be a utopian but if one is going to support immigration controls there aren't any fair ones. And its more utopian to believe that one can than to support open borders.

Successive governments since Blair have made life much harder for those seeking asylum here { for example} .Its was asylum seekers attacked in recent riots.

So my question would be to those grown ups who believe in immigration controls how are you going to make life even more miserable for asylum seekers in this country to placate peoples concerns?

 

[Gramsci]

Reminded of a security guard I used to chat to

One day he said he was changing job. He said he was going into removals

I said helping people move house?

He said no it was putting asylum seekers on planes and deporting them.

I said I wouldn't want to do that.

He said he love it and was glad he got the job and he was bored being a security guard.

These are the people I do have time for. He supports immigration controls and will actually do the dirty work.

 

[BigMoaner]

The thing is that the reproduction and exercise of power kind of is a conspiracy. Whole systems of institutional processes exist to perform it. A crucial part of the way power is reproduced is also, genuinely, to get people to internalise these processes as “necessary”, which could loosely be termed “brain-washing”, in conspiracy language. So I don’t blame people who sense the outlines of this from losing all trust in the agents of those power structures. Why should they trust?

But yes, we then have a massive problem. Undirected and self-directed conspiratorialism in the absence of proper structural and social analysis will result in reactionary nonsense that hits the wrong target. And that’s where we are alright.

"necessary" and, even more insideous, "natural". that capitalism is just the destiny of nature. which it is in a way cos eveything is "natural" but as if it's the one true expression of it. Very sick. Very bad. No wonder there's so much hatred wherever you look. the game is to "survive" at all costs, but it's the system that you have to survive, not anything to do with actual survival. this is why things that exist outside of the market are so important, things that are not shot through wtih the (false) terror of survival and "making it".

 

[Pickman's model]

I largely agree with everything danny la rouge and Smokeandsteam are saying, and with many of the things Spymaster is saying too.

I think it's a bit patronizing to expect people to just be totally fine with the amount of immigration there has been, as if very rapid and visible changes to communities were not something people might feel anxious about. As has been stated by others better, that "concern" does not necessarily mean full-on racism, but some unease about the rapidity of change in the area you live.

The numbers don't seem to have been mentioned once in this thread so far, so I'll do it:

In the 2001 UK Census there were 4.9 million foreigners, or 8.3% of the total population. In 2011 there were 8 million foreigners, or 12.7% of the total population: a 63% increase in the number over 10 years. And between 2011 and 2021, another 4.25 million foreigners arrived to live in the UK, making up what is 42% of the total number. Others have left due to Brexit and Covid, of course, but the current estimate is over 10 million people, or around 16% of the total population. It's a doubling of the foreign-born population in 20 years.

In Italy, by contrast, the number has grown significantly faster, quadrupling in the same 20-year time period from about 1.5 million to about 6 million foreigners (one of them being me) -- but the overall % is still much lower than the UK's, around 10%. It's very clear that this has driven people in massive numbers to the political parties that openly say "this is a problem", and not to the political parties that have largely ignored the question and pretended it had no impact on anything because they were, to all intents and purposes, the voice of Brussels, which loves free movement (among white people) insofar as it benefits capital, so wisely keeps its Frontex operations on the down-low and doesn't brag about it's (racist, and failed) attempt to keep non-EU immigrants out of Fortess Europe.

Pls could you quote your source for 4.25m? Because you're not getting that from the census data, which says 2 5m. See eg Census 2021 demography and international migration statistics - Office for National Statistics before you say aha what about Scotland and the 6 counties, well in 2021 there were c.570,000 people in Scotland not born in the UK (cant immeiately spot the rose by figure) and the rise in the 6 cos 2011-21 was ~40,000. But even assuming more than 500k people migrated to Scotland that's not 4.25m

Tl;dr? I call bullshit

 

[planetgeli]

Hello, I'm from 1939 and I came across this thread. I'd like to discuss legitimate concerns about Jewish immigrants to this country.

I mean, I know they've just been threatened with genocide but that's just a thing Mr Hitler says right? So I think it's right that we should only accept 80,000, not the 800,000 we would if we had any ethics. And especially we were right to select the 'suitable' ones, the ones who wouldn't be an economic burden on our country. I know 10,000 of those 80,000 were down to Kindertransport scheme, and we're rightfully proud of that, but at least we got them to pay for their transportation and upkeep via, well, anything and anyone but us. And we orphaned them.

Economics must trump ethics.

See, an open door policy will only encourage other states. Also, admitting large numbers of Jews will only encourage anti-semitism. You'll have people attacking synagogues. So the solution is to keep the Jews out.

And they'll compete with people like me for jobs. The economic situation has been a depression. We can't afford them.

I hope you understand my legitimate concerns about the Jews.

 

[smokedout]

I do meet people who during pandemic got seriously into the conspiracy stuff.

In my limited experience Id say these kind of people have a mixture of right and left views. Actual racism Id say no.

A level of anti semitism -- who are they who run things. I'd say probably.

I grew up in what could be termed the alternative society. And spent a lot of time in it. The kind of people I meet who are into the COVID they want too control us stuff are often pretty alternative. And I can relate to them even if I don't go down that rabbit hole.

I can actually take some of their ideas seriously. I'm not keen on the state/ wish they would just leave us alone/don't have a lot of trust in experts/

One of them I know disappeared. He had been telling me he wanted to go off and live off grid with his partner. I think he must have.

This kind of milieu is for me not alternative but normal. So I can probably relate to people like this more.

Trust me the hippy/ alternative lot are and always have been all over the place politically. But its my background and I've a soft spot for them.

That's not the type I'm talking about at all. It wasn't the demographic at SYL's recent rally in London which was full of it and on the big central London anti-lockdown demos hippy/new agey types were there but very much the fringe. This stuff is taking hold in a lot of mostly poorer working class communities now and people like Andrew Tate and SYL are using it to draw people into more virulent beliefs.

 

[Gramsci]

The thing is that the reproduction and exercise of power kind of is a conspiracy. Whole systems of institutional processes exist to perform it. A crucial part of the way power is reproduced is also, genuinely, to get people to internalise these processes as “necessary”, which could loosely be termed “brain-washing”, in conspiracy language. So I don’t blame people who sense the outlines of this from losing all trust in the agents of those power structures. Why should they trust?

But yes, we then have a massive problem. Undirected and self-directed conspiratorialism in the absence of proper structural and social analysis will result in reactionary nonsense that hits the wrong target. And that’s where we are alright.

Put it more clearly than I could.

Alternative society was attempt to remove the internalised processes. A subject for another thread. Left a lot of casualties and also a lot of people with quite addled views on issues.

And yes reactionary nonsense floated to the top. I witnessed this. Part of the reason for second wave Feminism was the let it all hang out Hippies didn't see that the patriarchal patterns re emerged in the alternative society.

Something like patriarchy is so embedded that once some internalised processes are removed it rears its ugly head.

I'd say racism is more recent. Modern racism as it exists now started with Transatlantic slave trade and Victorian Empire.

But some of these processes that are internalised go deeper than others? Sexism and Racism? That is why they are difficult to counter. Can be countered for a while but only suppressed. They are a bit like the Id in psychoanalysis.

 

[Gramsci]

planetgeli great post reminded me I read some of the history of Jewish immigration.

Stopping East European Jews fleeing pogroms was major reason for the first modern clamp down on immigrants. And first modern idea of using border controls.

Peoples legitimate concerns were met.

Aliens Act 1905 - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

In 1905, an editorial in the Manchester Evening Chronicle[4] wrote "that the dirty, destitute, diseased, verminous and criminal foreigner who dumps himself on our soil and rates simultaneously, shall be forbidden to land".

the act was also driven by the economic and social unrest in the East End of London where most immigrants settled.

So the argument that curtailing immigration is to help the working class. Nothing changes on that one then.

And here is example of the right wing free market utopian.

Future Prime Minister Winston Churchill opposed the bill. He stated that the bill would "appeal to insular prejudice against foreigners, to racial prejudice against Jews, and to labour prejudice against competition" and expressed himself in favour of "the old tolerant and generous practice of free entry and asylum to which this country has so long adhered and from which it has so greatly gained".[9] On 31 May 1904, he crossed the floor, defecting from the Conservatives to sit as a member of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons.[10]

 

[Gramsci]

Legitimate concerns about immigrants

Jews
Afro Carribbeans / Pakistanis/ Indians
East Europeans.

The sorry history of this country and immigration.

Same reasons trotted since 1900s to oppose it.

 

[Edie]

Are you saying its to high or to low?

That requirement was brought in supposedly to stop what you said about immigration affecting the low paid working class.

Forgive me in your previous post you appeared to be saying that peoples concerns should mean not open borders but immigration controls.

I'm saying in effect we have this and it did not stop racist riots.

I don't see how tweaking the system will help.

The history of immigration rules/ laws since WW2 has not largely been about loosening them. But the opposite.

Response to peoples concerns about immigration led to governments making it more difficult for people to come here from ex colonies/ Commonwealth over the years for example

To set up the argument that its left / or free market right vs yet another round of changes to immigration seems to me to point to yet more restrictions.

Oh I see, is that the purpose of the minimum wage requirement. I don’t think I knew or had thought it through. I think I considered it to be so you paid enough tax to offset your cost to the state in other ways.

 

[belboid]

Oh I see, is that the purpose of the minimum wage requirement. I don’t think I knew or had thought it through. I think I considered it to be so you paid enough tax to offset your cost to the state in other ways.

You pay an NHS surcharge and have 'No Recourse To Public Funds'; stamped on your visa to cover that.

 

[belboid]

Adding to the ways in which our immigration controls simply hands more control to crooks and gangs - the number of official complaints of illegal exploitation by care companies has trebled in the last three years.

Sixfold rise in foreign care workers in UK complaining of exploitation

Exclusive: RCN renews call for investigation into sector as unscrupulous employers target vulnerable workers

www.theguardian.com

 

[Humberto]

Muslim population has increased significantly over the last couple of decades. And that tends to be concentrated in certain towns.

 

[Humberto]

They are demographically younger too.

 

[Edie]

Muslim population has increased significantly over the last couple of decades. And that tends to be concentrated in certain towns.

Not couple of decades. Since the 1960s. It’s been a massive change in our parents (well for me my in laws) lifetimes. Places like Blackburn, Bradford. My MiL still remembers the first Pakistani workers in her mill. But London similarly since the 1950s when my Mum was a kid. There’s no denying it whatever your view on it. Maybe it’s for the best but it’s been one helluva adjustment for the boomers.

 

[Rimbaud]

These figures look very different though if you look at areas worst hit by the riots. There's a handy page on demographic changes by area here. In County Durham the number of people who idenitifed themselves as Muslim in 2021 was 0.6% up from 0.4% in 2011. Across the North East those of Asian descent make up 3.7% of the population compared to 2.9% ten years previously. In Hull the number of people from Asian descent has risen from 2.5% to 2.8%. The increase in the number of people from Eastern Europe has risen slightly higher here but nowehere near the figures you quotes. Polish people have gone from 1.9% to 3.4% of the population and Romanians from 0.1% to 1.3%.

These are not very rapid and visible changes. Most of the increase in population from those not born in the UK has been in London and larger cities, not the areas where the riots took place.

That's an important point here. The places in the North East that saw riots - Hartlepool, Sunderland, Middlesbrough and to a lesser extent Durham - are among the whitest places in the country. Nothing happened in Newcastle despite being the largest population centre and being by far the most mixed part.

This tells me there was something else going on beyond a reaction to rapid changes in demographic makeup.

It seems to me the worst rioting was in the North East as well as Hull, Rotherham and obviously Southport.

Any idea what the ethnic makeup of Hull and Rotherham is like?

 

[Pickman's model]

.