The amount and pace of migration to the UK is unprecedented
- Thread starter FamKa
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danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
In what way? What sort of “destabilisation” are we imagining? I’m not sure I understand what’s being asked.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Isn't it just a version of the question that comes up in "no borders" discussions which no-one can actually answer? That is, what would happen if a relatively wealthy country opened its borders to anyone and everyone who wanted to relocate. No-one knows the answer because it's never been tried.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
Coming back to this point, I think your mistake here is that you're treating "bargaining power" as if it was a static thing, "more demand for workers than there is supply = high wages" type of thing. But the problem there is that workers aren't like other commodities, because they're people, and so even "low-skilled" workers can help to drive wages up for everyone if they're confident and organised, as we can see with, for instance, Latin American cleaners in London or Egyptian and other North African warehouse workers in Italy, or recent stuff with Deliveroo and UberEats couriers, another largely migrant and "low-skilled" workforce. On the other hand, anything that can terrorise workers and break their confidence and organisation drives wages down for them and everyone, which is one of the major functions of migration controls - they work not just, arguably not even primarily, to keep people out, but more importantly to produce people as illegal or precarious migrants.
Similarly, fwiw, it looks like net migration peaked in 2015 (I wonder if anything happened after 2015 that could've affected that?) and was lower in the year to June 2021 than in was in the previous year, which in turn was lower than the year before that. My money's still on troll, by the way.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Looks like a foreigner!
I wasn't suggesting that was something I believed in. I deliberately said it was nonsense.
I was implying it was a conspiracy theory gaining popularity because of increased migration.
mojo pixy
...שלא נמצא בשמאל
Fair enough. But in your OP there are a number of questionable statements which have been questioned, so maybe have a go at clarifying or adjusting, if you feel like it.
If "great replacement" is gaining traction (which I doubt tbh, but I'm not on twitter), that will only increase now we've left the EU because a greater proportion of migrants are going to be from outside Europe. So those who did campaign and vote for Leave out of racist motives are about to get well and truly hoist by their own petard.
(I should put that on the Brexit Benefits thread maybe)
_Russ_
Never not Knowingly Misunderstood
His question was clearly stated in the part his post you decided not to quote, in fact right at the start of his post
No simple answer.
As for destabalisation, how about over - population/crowding, ghetto creation, disimilar factions/creeds/religons with animosity to each other?
Its a personal matter whether you recognise such things as a significant factor or that they even exist, many dont like to even mention such things except in a sideways manner when trying to imply someone approaching the issue is a racist cunt
Aye, i will... what specifically?
tbh i doubt "great replacement" is gaining traction too, but opinion pieces on the internet don't seem to think so. I voted to remain, i considered the benefits of remaining a member of the EU far outweighed costs associated with the free movement policy. At this point, I would like the UK to rejoin even if it meant abandoning the Pound.
As i have pointed out in this thread, I want immigration into Britain. I prefer if the levels of it were similar to the amount more common in the 1980s-90s. I'd strongly prefer if it wasn't so concentrated in London, consisted primarily of people who weren't poor in their country of origin, and from more diverse origins.
For instance, i'm perfectly happy with Hongkongers arriving in Britain. They're generally well-educated, speak at least some English, they have a close cultural proximity to British/Western European culture. ...yes i am well aware of how different HK is I have visited.
Hong Kong only has a population of 7-8 million, not every single Hongkongese will qualify for the BN(O). Therefore, there is ultimately an "upper-limit" to the number of arrivals. Hell, i hope all 700,000 current holders of the BN(O) passport come to Britain.
this would indeed be a concern of mine.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
None of the things you list - population/crowding, ghetto creation, disimilar factions/creeds/religons with animosity to each other - are inherent in population size.
"Population/crowding" - You may think this is self evident, but you've just spliced two words together: population, a term meaning either the people inhabiting a specified area, or the number of those, and crowding, a term meaning gathering together in a limited space. You'd need to expand to make this a concept. Do you mean people are "bunching up" in small areas? If you mean particular areas in cities, then, yes, infrastructure needs to be supplied to meet the needs of the population, whether through birth-rate, intra-state migration, or extra-state migration. I moved to a city from a small town recently because the city has more infrastructure, including jobs. Indeed, even longer ago, I grew up in a village, which I left shortly after attaining adulthood because there were no houses or jobs. Like many young people in the area, my partner and I had been living in a static caravan in a trailer park behind a pub, and had three part-time jobs trying to make that equal an income. I therefore became an economic migrant. But your two spliced words really say nothing about destabilising effects. If the question is, "do city planners need to design infrastructure to adequately provide for a growing population", then the answer is yes, they do.
"ghetto creation" - again, definition required. My partner has London-Irish relatives (London-born of Irish migrant parents) who live in Cricklewood. Does the concentration of people of Irish-descent in Cricklewood "destabilise" anything? Or do you mean like the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw, created by Nazi policy? Or what? Again, you may think you are saying something self-evident, but you are not.
"disimilar factions/creeds/religons with animosity to each other" - again, this is not self-evident. It can occur without migration. It can be mitigated by social policy and indeed human solidarity. Humans can be clannish. It's a sad tendency. But with the right conditions, they can also be open and welcoming.
So, no, neither you nor the post I quoted part of has "clearly stated" anything about destabilisation, nor made clear precisely what the question was in the first place.
mojo pixy
...שלא נמצא בשמאל
Read back and look at some of the responses to your OP. Answer them?
I'm afraid I don't take opinion pieces on the internet very seriously. Nobody I actually know or work with is worried about it, nobody I know or work with is talking about it. That's all I'm going to judge by, living as I do very firmly in Middle England (South Devon, small town)
I don't really know what this means in real numbers, but worth pointing out that's a whole generation ago now.
Even British people want to live and work in London, I doubt it's going to become less attractive any time soon.
You don't want poor immigrants? Well isn't that nice. But ask yourself: why would someone doing well elsewhere, want to come here to do at best, a little better? People emigrate generally speaking to do a lot better, it's a massive disruption that people undertake because they feel they have to.
Me, I would not migrate to here; I only live here because I was born here. There are a dozen countries I'd rather live in if I were inclined to the upheaval migration means. I genuinely don't understand why we're such a popular destination, especially in 2022. Anyway this is beside the point.
IMO this is verging on racist, and I'm going to leave it alone because I haven't the time or inclination for a row today.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Oh, and as a general point, can we please stop this passive-aggressive “the bit you deliberately didn’t quote” stuff, everyone.
The point of the quote function is to quote. By definition a quote is usually a selected passage and not necessarily the whole. The purpose of extracting a quote is to focus on a particular point raised. It is not to try to erase the rest of the post (or article or book) from the record. Indeed, the quote function does link back to the entire original post.
Quotation is a perfectly normal part of discourse. There is nothing inherently nefarious about it as a practice. Indeed it would be very tiresome and difficult to read if every post in reply to anyone had to include the whole of the post being replied to.
The point of the quote function is to quote. By definition a quote is usually a selected passage and not necessarily the whole. The purpose of extracting a quote is to focus on a particular point raised. It is not to try to erase the rest of the post (or article or book) from the record. Indeed, the quote function does link back to the entire original post.
Quotation is a perfectly normal part of discourse. There is nothing inherently nefarious about it as a practice. Indeed it would be very tiresome and difficult to read if every post in reply to anyone had to include the whole of the post being replied to.
story
Changing the facts
Hello FamKa
Stick around. People here shout and wave their arms around but that’s cos we’re a passionate bunch with strong opinions.
You’re clear about why you’d be willing to accept Hongkongese people coming here, and all of the reasons you give seem to be associated with how frictionless their assimilation might be. This implies that those you wouldn’t welcome so readily would cause friction, in your opinion. So I’m curious about what your criteria are for being less welcoming. Which nationality would you feel less inclined to accept as immigrants and why?
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
If you're poor or a refugee, fuck off?
A380
How do I change this 'custom title' thing then?
The population movements we have seen in the late 20th and early 21st century are as nothing compared to what we will see once the effects of climate change bite even harder. And no one knows what they will be. If the Gulf Stream fails, for example, it could be us and the rest of Europe trying to get into temperate Africa…
It was a concern in the 19th century too, right down to the last detail. 'Overcrowded population in inner city areas!, influx of strange people with strange customs!, a foreign religion!, disease!, terrorism!, socialists!, hyper capitalist monsters!, won't eat English food!, breed like rabbits!, slaughter animals differently - and even on our streets!, have their own theatres and newspapers!, more suited to peasant life under the czar than a British city! - why don't they go back there? We are full! No good can come of this! Innocent local girls are being corrupted by sleaze!'
It was all said then, and the laws were changed to vastly reduce the numbers allowed to remain in the UK. The only result was that more of that population continued to be killed in pogroms, more were still in situ to eventually die under the Nazis, and more thereafter went to Argentina, Australia, Canada, and France - where, quite predictably really, they've largely done little since but prosper in peace and generally fade into the mass of everyone else, in degrees of assimilation ranging from total to not much. There is nothing new in what you purport to be concerned by.
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teuchter
je suis teuchter
I think you are saying that these problems could exist in certain conditions (including at least to some extent the reality of currently existing conditions) but would not need to exist if those conditions were changed.
Fair enough, but it relies on those conditions being changed, which ultimately would require a different kind of government to be elected into power, something that is not easy to achieve. Until that is achieved, then it doesn't seem unreasonable to talk about these problems, because they are in fact real.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
What I am saying is that an intelligible question has not been posed. If someone can define what the question is, then we can proceed.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
The question was whether there's an upper limit to immigration beyond which we could agree there would be "destabilising effects".
Then _Russ_ provided some examples of "destabilising effects" which I recognise as the kinds of effects that are very commonly mentioned as worries.
I don't think it's an unintelligible question. The worries that many people have about large scale immigration are pretty well known to anyone who's thought about the issue.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Politicians and other parts of society have tended to avoid having proper, deep discussions about labour markets, demographic timebombs etc. This failure gets in the way of proper analysis, and unpleasant rhetoric is used as cover to mask over the gap between words and actions, and some of the vivid contradictions that exist. The baby boomers retiring, brexit, and covid have intensified the tightness in labour markets, but so far our media etc still doesnt get far beyond basic acknowledgement of these things, they still dont delve fully into the implications. Some of the contradictions and pressures will surface via tory party internal conflicts and rhetoric of the variety that rears its ugly head on threads like this one.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Yes, _Russ_ posted some phrases, to which I responded.
To the question of “whether there's an upper limit to immigration beyond which we could agree there would be ‘destabilising effects’”, the answer is probably not, no, because of the decades of insinuation about immigration.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
This is a depressing conversation. The ideas that a country has some kind of carrying capacity or that there is some kind of maximum level of immigration that could be handled are just wrong-headed. It's down to the atmosphere into which the immigrants are entering.
Sometimes, for instance due to war, huge numbers of immigrants turn up in a country in a short period of time. When the UK and its allies decided to bomb Afghanistan, millions of people fled to Iran. This year, huge numbers of Ukrainians have fled to Poland. Germany accepted hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in a short space of time. All kinds of things are possible if the will is there. All kinds of bad things can happen if it isn't.
Sometimes, for instance due to war, huge numbers of immigrants turn up in a country in a short period of time. When the UK and its allies decided to bomb Afghanistan, millions of people fled to Iran. This year, huge numbers of Ukrainians have fled to Poland. Germany accepted hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in a short space of time. All kinds of things are possible if the will is there. All kinds of bad things can happen if it isn't.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Exactly.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
There is a difference. But what is the reason for your observation?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
As for scare stories about what could happen if the UK opened its border, somehow we managed up to 1962 with free movement across the commonwealth and we managed for the decades when there was free movement across the EU. The UK's border has been open to certain chunks of the world and somehow it didn't cause catastrophe.
In both of the instances above, racists stepped in to stir up resentment through false claims of immigrants taking jobs/homes/welfare. In reality, the vast majority of immigrants were coming here to build better lives for themselves and contribute to their new society.
In both of the instances above, racists stepped in to stir up resentment through false claims of immigrants taking jobs/homes/welfare. In reality, the vast majority of immigrants were coming here to build better lives for themselves and contribute to their new society.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Yep, let's be straight here about what a "ghetto" is. It ISN'T an area settled by members of a particular ethnicity &/or religion through choice or economic forces. It's an area where people are concentrated because a state wills it. Manston is a "ghetto". Cricklewood (or Brixton, Southhall, Manningham, Govanhill) aren't. Racists like to think otherwise - that any area with a concentration of "non-white" &/or "non-British" people, is a "ghetto". Fuck them. Fuck the horse they rode in on, & fuck the cunt who sold them the horse.
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