The amount and pace of migration to the UK is unprecedented

[elbows]

And speaking of numbers, the BBC put a bunch of data in their main news programmes yesterday which gave some context to how recent numbers compared to our numbers stretching back over recent decades, and how shit we are at taking refugees compared to other countries. I was hoping to find an online version of this bit of their reporting but I failed to do so.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

And speaking of numbers, the BBC put a bunch of data in their main news programmes yesterday which gave some context to how recent numbers compared to our numbers stretching back over recent decades, and how shit we are at taking refugees compared to other countries. I was hoping to find an online version of this bit of their reporting but I failed to do so.

This point cannot be repeated often enough.

 

[MickiQ]

I see some census-based data for England and Wales came out which will no doubt feed into the debate.

Census: Migration biggest part of England and Wales population rise

The 2021 census counted 10 million people living in England and Wales who were born outside the UK.

www.bbc.co.uk

By foreign born it presumably means people who were simply born outside the UK regardless of what ethnic or citizenship status they originally have. This would include my wife and her elder sister born in Hong Kong and her younger sister born in Gibraltar whilst my FiL was in the Navy busy building up his stock of RN stories with which to bore people witless in later life.
10 million is a lot more than I was expecting but it is going to be averaged out over the average human lifetime. A person coming here 70 years ago is not distinguished from someone who arrived last week. It's not like the whole 10 million of them turned up in the last 12 months.

 

[bimble]

One of the things mendacious cunts like him never say is that it is the government’s rules that cause these problems.

It’s the government’s rules that stipulate asylum seekers are not allowed to work. Which is why they can’t earn enough to pay rent. Which is why some people resent them.

Who's he talking about here? If it's people who need to be set up in hotels or arrival centres, then it is people who are applying for asylum, no? It's people who'd like to be here legally. And the numbers involved in such places are not huge. He's lying about that. He's misrepresenting the situation.

Actual 'illegal immigrants' don't contact the authorities. They make their own arrangements re housing, etc. I don't like the branding of undocumented people as 'illegal' either. Something to be avoided.

The idea that 'pro-immigration' people are responsible for the hateful rhetoric and lies of John Redwood is quite a stretch.

Oh i know!
He's just trying to maximise anti-immigrant sentiment, that's his only goal.

But I can imagine a scenario where let's say the shadow home secretary had a plan, one that was quite easy to explain and often repeated, about how they would at least answer the hotels situation specifically; How they plan to stop the enormous waste of millions that the tories have been giving to private firms to administer the current system, what they would do instead, but if there is one I haven't heard anything about it.
All the responses just tell him that his question is the wrong question, and that he's a hateful liar, which does nothing because the people he's speaking to don't care.

 

[danny la rouge]

Oh i know!
He's just trying to maximise anti-immigrant sentiment, that's his only goal.

But i can just about imagine a scenario where let's say the shadow home secretary had a plan, one that was quite easy to explain and often repeated, about how they would at least answer the hotels situation specifically. How they might stop the enormous waste of millions that the tories have been giving to private firms to administer the current system, but if there is one I haven't heard anything about it.
All the responses just tell him that his question is the wrong question, which does nothing because the people he's speaking to don't care.

The trouble with a bipartisan political system like the UK where there’s one government party and one viable opposition party, is that the opposition party feels it is constrained by what is counted as “sensible, grown-up politics”, and that is determined by the Overton window the press and media buy into (via something like the filters of the propaganda model outlined by Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent), and by what would inspire “confidence” from financial capital.

All of which means Labour is not going to make anything like the argument you suggest if it wants to be seen as a “viable party of government”. Which means it’ll not challenge the paradigm, but will just promise the same as the government but done competently.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The trouble with a bipartisan political system like the UK where there’s one government party and one viable opposition party, is that the opposition party feels it is constrained by what is counted as “sensible, grown-up politics”, and that is determined by the Overton window the press and media buy into (via something like the filters of the propaganda model outlined by Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent), and by what would inspire “confidence” from financial capital.

All of which means Labour is not going to make anything like the argument you suggest if it wants to be seen as a “viable party of government”. Which means it’ll not challenge the paradigm, but will just promise the same as the government but done competently.

There was a brief moment when it felt that this situation could change. It was only brief though.

When asked what he would do if he were made US President, William Burroughs replied 'what those who got me there told me to do'. He then went on to answer a different question regarding being put in charge of the sewers.

 

[planetgeli]

This is quite a good example of what I was thinking yesterday, about the damage caused by pro-immigration people kind of refusing on moral grounds to engage in any granular way with fears about scarcity and there not being enough to go round, leaving them, those worries, to be exploited by the worst people, who can present themselves as the only ones who hear them.

View attachment 349931
He’s ‘just asking questions’ because he knows that nobody not labour and not any tofu muncher on twitter will attempt to answer.

"Any limits government can spend on hotels."

This doesn't bother the government when it comes to emergency accommodation for "UK poor" because that would mean challenging the ideology they agree with. Thatcher's Housing Act changed everything, freeing the market, and one of those was to allow landlords the right to charge what they want and HB will pay. The bill has always been astronomical, but not because of the number of claimants as near as much as the sums charged. Consequently landlordism has been rewarded and there are many HB millionaire slum landlords.

But this can be conveniently forgotten when you decide to use economics as a stick to beat foreigners. Suddenly the foreigners are unaffordable. Just don't mention the landlords and the ideological housing Act which helped create this neat bit of disingenuous cynical piece of shit.

 

[bimble]

And speaking of numbers, the BBC put a bunch of data in their main news programmes yesterday which gave some context to how recent numbers compared to our numbers stretching back over recent decades, and how shit we are at taking refugees compared to other countries. I was hoping to find an online version of this bit of their reporting but I failed to do so.

I think that must be this. Which is very good, that it was on the news. Ignore stupid shouty twitter post, its just the only place i can see the clip.

 

[teuchter]

The version of the story that says that most people actually would be fine with a lot more immigration than we currently have: that most people would see their fears turn out to be unfounded when they saw the reality of what it would actually mean ... In fact maybe they'd be fascinated and delighted to observe the evolution of new creoles and so on. And that mostly the fears they do have are only really there because they have been manufactured by the establishment, those in power and the media they can control.

In that version of things, why exactly is it in the interests of those in power to boil up anti immigration sentiment? They aren't going to live in the types of areas that would see the most change. We know that immigration provides cheap labour, shores up the youthful part of the population, all this positive economic stuff that's in the interests of those running capitalist endeavours.

Why do they encourage rather than supress fears amongst the general population?

I don't really buy it as an explanation. I suspect the truth is that a lot of people do indeed have a fear of change and an instinct to be wary about cultures they aren't familiar with. Whatever their class or indeed whatever their nationality or ethnicity.

I think this matters because it has implications for the best strategy for persuading people that immigration is not something to fear. bimble says above about telling people they are "asking the wrong question" which is a terrible way to win someone round. Similarly, simply telling them that their fears have been whipped up by a manipulative media, with the implication that they are too stupid to see through it.

Also, if you accept that there are things that worry people, and if you can accept that without writing them off as despicable racists, then you can start to talk about mitigations to allay those worries. They might involve some slightly uncomfortable compromises. Just for example, the kinds of rules that are about what language people should be expected to speak in certain situations, or used on shop signs. I know this starts getting towards French style things about headcoverings or whatever, but it can become difficult even to have a conversation about what might work.

 

[bimble]

At this moment, I think stirring up anti-immigrant feeling (and other "culture wars" stuff) is the single strategy the conservative party have in mind to retain power at the next election.
But its true that doesn't really explain this sort of thing in a longer term way.

 

[prunus]

Disclaimer - I am not a Brexiteer, I am generally pro-immigration, my parents themselves arrived as refugees in the 1980s, I live in an area where some 70% of the population is an immigrant or has an immigrant background - not an exaggeration.
--
People seemingly love to point out how the Irish, Huguenots, Eastern European Jews, people of the Commonwealth moved to Britain, therefore we are an immigrant nation. Despite the scale of these migrations being significantly smaller.

In the year ending June 2021, 573,000 people migrated into the UK.
There were 63,089 asylum applications (relating to 75,181 people) in the UK in the year ending June 2022. Probably half of this was attributed to small boat arrivals across the Channel.

Am I the crazy one for thinking this is completely unsustainable?? People are surprised that housing is unaffordable when there is a huge demand for accommodation in London. Mind you, international migrants aren't exactly moving to rural Dorset... they're moving to areas already overpopulated. There are left-leaning opinion makers concerned about increasing automation, meanwhile they're supportive of the working class but simultaneously want to increase migration of low-skilled people to Britain. Do they comprehend how this is diluting the bargaining power of poorer, low-skilled native Brits?

Not to mention people clearly see a rapid change in the cultural character of their local area. Sure cultures change, but this pace of change is unprecedented because it isn't occurring gradually over the course of several decades. If you consider the "cultural cohesion argument" as nonsensical (which is your right), then I presume you will consider "gentrification changing the unique cultural character of an area" to be complete nonsense too?


Are you surprised that people voted in favour of Brexit, or traditional Labour areas voted for Conservatives, or people are increasingly buying into nonsense like "The Great Replacement" conspiracy? I fear that if social democracy does not enforce borders, Fascists will.

Perhaps I am a bit of a biased perspective considering I live somewhere that is the epicenter of immigration.

That's gross inward migration. 334k people left in the same time, so net migration was 239k.

Historical average net inwards migration (quarterly rolling annual figures, as that's how they have them) since Q4 2010 is 251k.

Taking the figures back to 2000 (the earlier ones are just rolling annually Q4), average net inwards migration 252k.

So, unprecedented? Absolutely not. In fact thread title should read "The amount and pace of migration to the UK is low relative to recent historical levels." But I guess that doesn't sound so dramatic.

(I imagine someone's already pointed this out in 10 pages but I don't want to have to read through a whole troll thread, sorry).

 

[danny la rouge]

The version of the story that says that most people actually would be fine with a lot more immigration than we currently have: that most people would see their fears turn out to be unfounded when they saw the reality of what it would actually mean ... In fact maybe they'd be fascinated and delighted to observe the evolution of new creoles and so on. And that mostly the fears they do have are only really there because they have been manufactured by the establishment, those in power and the media they can control.

In that version of things, why exactly is it in the interests of those in power to boil up anti immigration sentiment? They aren't going to live in the types of areas that would see the most change. We know that immigration provides cheap labour, shores up the youthful part of the population, all this positive economic stuff that's in the interests of those running capitalist endeavours.

Why do they encourage rather than supress fears amongst the general population?

I don't really buy it as an explanation. I suspect the truth is that a lot of people do indeed have a fear of change and an instinct to be wary about cultures they aren't familiar with. Whatever their class or indeed whatever their nationality or ethnicity.

I think this matters because it has implications for the best strategy for persuading people that immigration is not something to fear. bimble says above about telling people they are "asking the wrong question" which is a terrible way to win someone round. Similarly, simply telling them that their fears have been whipped up by a manipulative media, with the implication that they are too stupid to see through it.

Also, if you accept that there are things that worry people, and if you can accept that without writing them off as despicable racists, then you can start to talk about mitigations to allay those worries. They might involve some slightly uncomfortable compromises. Just for example, the kinds of rules that are about what language people should be expected to speak in certain situations, or used on shop signs. I know this starts getting towards French style things about headcoverings or whatever, but it can become difficult even to have a conversation about what might work.

You could actually read the arguments that have been put.

 

[Pickman's model]

You could actually read the arguments that have been put.

Why would teuchter break the habit of a lifetime?

 

[elbows]

By foreign born it presumably means people who were simply born outside the UK regardless of what ethnic or citizenship status they originally have. This would include my wife and her elder sister born in Hong Kong and her younger sister born in Gibraltar whilst my FiL was in the Navy busy building up his stock of RN stories with which to bore people witless in later life.
10 million is a lot more than I was expecting but it is going to be averaged out over the average human lifetime. A person coming here 70 years ago is not distinguished from someone who arrived last week. It's not like the whole 10 million of them turned up in the last 12 months.

Some of that is dealt with in the body of the article, eg it looks at some of the countries people have come from, and how much of the numbers come from the last 10 years (when the previous census was done).

Maybe I should have quoted some of that or some other stuff from the full report, I usually do that sort of thing at tedious length, but I'm a bit pushed for time today.

 

[bimble]

It does seem fair to ask how come all of the right wing press have been engaged in this long campaign to make people fear immigration as much as possible. It’s just normal but why.
What is the reason for doing so is it just to sell papers?
If so why does it sell them.
PMQs was all about immigration today apparently, verdict is starmer "won". He also felt it was a good idea (or necessary?) to say "no one on this side of the house wants open borders". Whose agenda is actually served, if everyone agrees stopping immigrants is not good for business.

 

[teuchter]

You could actually read the arguments that have been put.

I haven't really seen those arguments put in this thread. Other than -

Politicians stoke anti-immigration sentiment as a distraction from other problems they are failing to deal with.
Papers do it just because it's an easy way to get people's attention and sell papers.

Well, if the explanation amounts to no more than that - that is, it's just an easily exploited emotional trigger, useful from the point of view of getting people activated about something - rather than some kind of thing where restricting immigration (and its economic or other effects) is substantially beneficial to those in power...

Then that points towards something that exists in people, that can be easily used towards whatever ends, rather than something that doesn't really innately exist in people at all, and is in fact manufactured through constant bombardment of misinformation.

I know it doesn't have to be exclusively one or other of those two things. But I feel there is a kind of denial that it's something that does exist innately, to some extent, in many people, and can therefore be regarded as, basically "normal" and understandable rather than the mark of a terrible person with whom there is no point in engaging.

Because that's pretty significant when you are working out the best way to win people over to the idea that in the bigger picture immigration is on the whole a good thing for all of us.

 

[A380]

Starts much earlier than that, eg evil may day in 1517, the protestant association of George Gordon, the murphy riots, the British brothers of the early c20 to name but four examples off the top of my head

As I mention upthread: Peasant's revolt 1381, as well as all the good stuff we approve of, was targeted against foreign weavers, 150 of whom were killed in London (apparently if they couldn't say 'bread and cheese' in a London accent...)

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It does seem fair to ask how come all of the right wing press have been engaged in this long campaign to make people fear immigration as much as possible. It’s just normal but why.
What is the reason for doing so is it just to sell papers?
If so why does it sell them.
PMQs was all about immigration today apparently, verdict is starmer "won". He also felt it was a good idea (or necessary?) to say "no one on this side of the house wants open borders". Whose agenda is actually served, if everyone agrees stopping immigrants is not good for business.

Not sure you're asking the right people these questions. The Express has been engaged in a vicious anti-immigrant campaign for at least the last 20 years. You really need to ask them why they are doing it. And we're not Starmer's Labour. We also can't answer for them.

 

[belboid]

Why? Simple bloody divide and rule.

Why isn’t Starmer saying something better? Because he’s shit.

 

[teuchter]

Dear Editor of the Express
I'd be ever so grateful if you could explain to me the motivations and reasoning behind your vicious 20 year anti-immigrant campaign.
So sorry to trouble you about this, but it's the only way I'm going to get a reliable answer.

 

[bimble]

I learnt some stuff the other day about why all the Jews were expelled from here in the 1200s, it wasn’t just your normal run of the mill organic antisemitic sentiment there were pretty sound political pragmatic reasons that benefitted the king and the owners of castles. Which feels relevant but probably isn’t really.

 

[danny la rouge]

I haven't really seen those arguments put in this thread. Other than -

Politicians stoke anti-immigration sentiment as a distraction from other problems they are failing to deal with.
Papers do it just because it's an easy way to get people's attention and sell papers.

Well, if the explanation amounts to no more than that - that is, it's just an easily exploited emotional trigger, useful from the point of view of getting people activated about something - rather than some kind of thing where restricting immigration (and its economic or other effects) is substantially beneficial to those in power...

Then that points towards something that exists in people, that can be easily used towards whatever ends, rather than something that doesn't really innately exist in people at all, and is in fact manufactured through constant bombardment of misinformation.

I know it doesn't have to be exclusively one or other of those two things. But I feel there is a kind of denial that it's something that does exist innately, to some extent, in many people, and can therefore be regarded as, basically "normal" and understandable rather than the mark of a terrible person with whom there is no point in engaging.

Because that's pretty significant when you are working out the best way to win people over to the idea that in the bigger picture immigration is on the whole a good thing for all of us.

There's a large number of reasons that the right wing press has a long pedigree of being anti immigrant.

One is that they are simply right wing. It's part of their heritage. They printed coupons to join Mosley's Blackshirts etc. Another is that divide and rule is a long held strategy of the ruling class, and the right wing press is owned by and represents the interests of certain capitalist barons. Another is that it's considered a "better story" and "more newsworthy" if people are depicted as abusing the system. Newspapers want to trigger a reaction in readers, and that's a well-tested way of doing so. Another is that newsrooms are full of people whose life experience is that of comfortable, white, middle class. Certainly those making the decisions about which stories get published. And as a writer you need your story published. Another is that in the 90s, the tabloids got involved in a Eurosceptic arms-race with each other, fighting each other for patriotic points, and immigration was a stick they could beat the EU with. (There were others, and they used them too).

Here's one study. The UK press is towards the end: https://www.reminder-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/with-cover_D11.1.pdf

It's not a simple one-reason answer. It's part of a culture that has been festering in the tabloid press for longer than just 20 years.

 

[danny la rouge]

It's also worth saying that I don't believe People - The General Public - would be welcoming, virtuous and internationalist were it but for those Dastardly Press Barons. I don't hold such a two dimensional view of human nature.

What I do believe is that humanity's capacity for cooperation, hospitality and mutual endeavour can be tapped into if the conditions are right. And setting those conditions in a complex contemporary society in the late capitalist mode of production is work that hasn't been done, would require subtlety nuance and understanding to do, and won't be accomplished by simply standing and shouting "RACIST!" at people.

The left isn't big enough nor has it the established organisational roots in working class communities to do this work or to be trusted by the community.

The Labour Party long ago abandoned the interests of the working class. And in any case is not inclined to do this work for reasons discussed above.

So what we have left is people on Twitter shouting "woke tofu eater" or "racist" at each other across the void.

What needs to be done is proper grass roots community campaigning, like that done by the Wobblies in the US at the beginning of the last century, where they forged human links between immigrant and settled working class populations to create cohesion and trust. For example, organising beds in working class homes for immigrants, so that they learn each other's humanity, build personal solidarity, and don't scab each other in the jobs market.

 

[teuchter]

It's also worth saying that I don't believe People - The General Public - would be welcoming, virtuous and internationalist were it but for those Dastardly Press Barons. I don't hold such a two dimensional view of human nature.

What I do believe is that humanity's capacity for cooperation, hospitality and mutual endeavour can be tapped into if the conditions are right. And setting those conditions in a complex contemporary society in the late capitalist mode of production is work that hasn't been done, would require subtlety nuance and understanding to do, and won't be accomplished by simply standing and shouting "RACIST!" at people.

The left isn't big enough nor has it the established organisational roots in working class communities to do this work or to be trusted by the community.

The Labour Party long ago abandoned the interests of the working class. And in any case is not inclined to do this work for reasons discussed above.

So what we have left is people on Twitter shouting "woke tofu eater" or "racist" at each other across the void.

What needs to be done is proper grass roots community campaigning, like that done by the Wobblies in the US at the beginning of the last century, where they forged human links between immigrant and settled working class populations to create cohesion and trust. For example, organising beds in working class homes for immigrants, so that they learn each other's humanity, build personal solidarity, and don't scab each other in the jobs market.

All fair enough.

"What needs to be done is proper grass roots community campaigning" is an urban75 answer to so many things.

Fine. But what about strategies for engaging in discussions about immigration more generally - online or whatever. At least we are agreed that shouting people down as racists isn't usually helpful.

 

[belboid]

The whole ‘just shouting racist’ thing is another sad canard. The idea that we can’t discuss immigration has never been true, but never less than the last seven years. And just look at all the people who used to make that claim then.

 

[planetgeli]

It does seem fair to ask how come all of the right wing press have been engaged in this long campaign to make people fear immigration as much as possible. It’s just normal but why.
What is the reason for doing so is it just to sell papers?
If so why does it sell them?

Because the most limited, unintelligent answer to people's problems is BLAME THE (others).

Divide and fucking rule.

Belboid said it already.

 

[teqniq]

This is great:

 

[Rob Ray]

Why do they encourage rather than supress fears amongst the general population?

As others have said, divide and rule. Plus profit (established rage-bait is an excellent seller), the prejudices of their own staff, laziness (established tropes are easy and cheap to reproduce), the views of their bosses, and the extremely useful creation of a pool of labour that has no rights. Plus it allows you to introduce a nasty rule on the hated Other first before translating it to members of the general public, eg. ankle bracelets for protesters. The benefits for the ruling class are pretty much endless tbh.

At least we are agreed that shouting people down as racists isn't usually helpful.

As so often, the man demanding nuance who cannot attain it. "Shouting down" racism is a judgement call in any conversation. A conversation on Urban, on which the assumption is already anti-racist and supportive of migrants, gains nothing from allowing every spit-flecked jackboot type to bollock on and drag the thread - it makes more sense to get them out rather than invite the Nazi at the bar. Attempting to reach Telegraph readers in the Facebook comments section, obviously, needs a different approach. And there is a whole spectrum in between.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I don't have good answers about how to reach people. Dispelling myths and misconceptions is something I will do whenever I can. It may not be that well received if it challenges a person's worldview, and that's the hard bit. Sometimes people believe something because they want to believe it. It's encouraging to see the BBC dispelling some myths for once rather than repeating them. The BBC saying something is likely to be more effective than someone like me saying the same thing.

The caricature of 'shouting people down as racists' just doesn't happen irl, does it? Not in everyday interactions.

 

[danny la rouge]

The caricature of 'shouting people down as racists' just doesn't happen irl, does it? Not in everyday interactions.

It depends on the arena and conditions. And, as has been said, it’s sometimes what’s required.

I suspect people discussing this and saying it does or doesn’t happen have different circumstances in mind.