The amount and pace of migration to the UK is unprecedented

[Tanya1982]

But in your view, there is no number that would be "massive" for a country of 70 million - is that right?

What is the point in that level of hypothetical detail? It may as well be asked 'in your view, when is the UK population likely to surpass 100 million if all border controls ceased today?' Next week? Next year? Next decade? Next century? - it's a nonsense question. It's not happening. It's just getting wound up over tabloid nonsense.

 

[Tanya1982]

People don't seem to talk much about what the consequences are for the places that people are leaving behind in order to come here (and take our jobs etc).

For instance there's a long list of countries on the 'red list' for NHS recruitment
But this red list just means the NHS is not supposed to "actively recruit" in those countries.
(because the WHO says they desperately need their own medical professionals, in order to reduce things like maternal and infant mortality rates).
But NHS can still happily employ their qualified people and invite them to come work here looking after us instead, and are taking as many as possible.

Is that a good thing that 'we' are doing that?
Migration is really complicated, it's no good pretending it isn't, it's not the more the merrier or else you're a racist.

Yes, that's a very fair post.

 

[Pickman's model]

What is the point in that level of hypothetical detail? It may as well be asked 'in your view, when is the UK population likely to surpass 100 million if all border controls ceased today?' Next week? Next year? Next decade? Next century? - it's a nonsense question. It's not happening. It's just getting wound up over tabloid nonsense.

as you follow teuchter's posts you will notice that this was for him a low level of hypothetical detail.

 

[Tanya1982]

Has any state in the world that we know about ever even for a brief period had truly open borders, as in with no rules no quotas ?

That would be interesting to discuss. More fruitful than the 'how many more is too many more?' loop that's been going on for centuries.

 

[bimble]

Re Albania, its true that applications from Albanians are second only to Iranians recently, according to this (pretty interesting set of home office stats).

And the overall rate of people from Albania being granted the right to stay here in the year ending this summer was 53%, it says.
That's a lot higher than I would have guessed.
"but for Albanian adult men the grant rate was 14% and for Albanian women and children it was 90%."
Which seems odd. Maybe the women and children already have family here idk.

 

[teuchter]

Order of magnitude can be a very misleading measure to use if the initial number is very small. From the point at which the two were roughly equal, immigration roughly doubled while emigration went up by perhaps a third. You could argue what point you should use to start that from. Perhaps you could argue that immigration tripled while emigration doubled.

You chose the word 'massive'. That was not a neutral choice. It is part of a particular narrative. A narrative of anti-immigration has formed around the idea that tens of thousands net immigration is ok, while 200,000 is not. Why is that? Do you think this is right? Or is it taking the situation as it is and manipulating it to foment anti-immigrant sentiment?

There was a reason I chose to use the word "massive", and it was because I used it to refer to an increase in the rate of immigration to the UK over the past few decades. I was not using it to talk about absolute numbers.

I think it's important to acknowledge that something has changed, by quite a large degree, in relative terms. The fact is, that the numbers of people migrating to the UK now are quite a lot greater than they were just 30 years ago. Acknowledging this can quite happily sit alongside arguing that the absolute numbers are not that large, or that it doesn't matter how large they are.

When I chose to use the word massive, it was to emphasise a point on internet discussion board urban75, not a recruitment leaflet for the National Front.

 

[TopCat]

Re Albania, its true that applications from Albanians are second only to Iranians recently, according to this (pretty interesting set of home office stats).

And the overall rate of people from Albania being granted the right to stay here in the year ending this summer was 53%, it says.
That's a lot higher than I would have guessed.
"but for Albanian adult men the grant rate was 14% and for Albanian women and children it was 90%."
Which seems odd. Maybe the women and children already have family here idk.

Is it not just sexism?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Re Albania, its true that applications from Albanians are second only to Iranians recently, according to this (pretty interesting set of home office stats).

And the overall rate of people from Albania being granted the right to stay here in the year ending this summer was 53%, it says.
That's a lot higher than I would have guessed.
"but for Albanian adult men the grant rate was 14% and for Albanian women and children it was 90%."
Which seems odd. Maybe the women and children already have family here idk.

At a guess, the women and children will have come as part of families, while most of the men refused the right to stay came on their own.

 

[bellaozzydog]

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.

Paul Embery after 5mg diazepam and a nice glass of red?

 

[teuchter]

What is the point in that level of hypothetical detail? It may as well be asked 'in your view, when is the UK population likely to surpass 100 million if all border controls ceased today?' Next week? Next year? Next decade? Next century? - it's a nonsense question. It's not happening. It's just getting wound up over tabloid nonsense.

What's not happening - open borders?

 

[Tanya1982]

The world now is not the same as the world in 1962. And in the decades when there was free movement across the EU, the rates of immigration and net immigration went up massively. You can say "we managed" but actually we ended up with Brexit. Whatever you or I think, lots of people do not think we "managed".

I don't think it's fair to dismiss it all as "scare stories" on that basis. The truth is, no-one really knows what woudl happen if the UK totally opened its borders now, in the world as it is in 2022.

Nobody other than people, like you, using it as a cheap rhetorical device to shoot down something nobody else ever suggested was going to happen, has said anything about totally opening borders to simply see what happens.

 

[TopCat]

Nobody other than people, like you, using it as a cheap rhetorical device to shoot down something nobody else ever suggested was going to happen, has said anything about totally opening borders to simply see what happens.

There are people calling for no borders.

 

[Tanya1982]

What's not happening - open borders?

Well, certainly, that is not happening. I'm a British citizen, who goes through periods of travelling quite extensively. I, complete with UK passport, have had to prove myself at the border every single time. There are great big blue signs all over Heathrow, at every single stage of your way to the point of final clearance, saying 'UK Border' in giant letters. I've never seen an open UK border in my life.

 

[bimble]

Nobody other than people, like you, using it as a cheap rhetorical device to shoot down something nobody else ever suggested was going to happen, has said anything about totally opening borders to simply see what happens.

This guy does. Its a pretty interesting article / book review.

The Case for Open Borders | The New Yorker

archived 20 Feb 2020 20:18:14 UTC

archive.ph

 

[TopCat]

noborders.org.uk

www.noborders.org.uk

 

[Tanya1982]

Re Albania, its true that applications from Albanians are second only to Iranians recently, according to this (pretty interesting set of home office stats).

And the overall rate of people from Albania being granted the right to stay here in the year ending this summer was 53%, it says.
That's a lot higher than I would have guessed.
"but for Albanian adult men the grant rate was 14% and for Albanian women and children it was 90%."
Which seems odd. Maybe the women and children already have family here idk.

I wonder how many are 'Albanian men', as opposed to people who have been resident in Albania for a number of years, as very many people have been. Albania was one of the more generous places in the Balkans when Hungary slammed it's door shut. A lot of people who never intended to do anything other than transit the region got stuck.

 

[TopCat]

No Border network - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Tanya1982]

This guy does. Its a pretty interesting article / book review.

The Case for Open Borders | The New Yorker

archived 20 Feb 2020 20:18:14 UTC

archive.ph

Right, but that's a thought experiment. And it's not about the UK unilaterally opening borders, but the entire world doing so. In that thought experiment, for every Albanian guy heading to Luton, there would be ten Brits arriving in Australia, twenty more trying their luck in LA, a hundred or so relishing their freedom of movement back across the continent they are part of and chilling out in France or doing the budget version in Bulgaria. And quite a few more who'd be dead before they got much further than the end of their road, because they haven't got to grips yet with the whole 'look both ways before crossing' thing.

It's lalaland stuff, not the serious policy of anyone. Other than, arguably, Norway. Is it Svalbard? One of the islands, has a totally open border with the entire world. If you want to move there, you can. You'll struggle to make friends, because despite the open border, not many people live there.

 

[bimble]

Right, but that's a thought experiment. And it's not about the UK unilaterally opening borders, but the entire world doing so. In that thought experiment, for every Albanian guy heading to Luton, there would be ten Brits arriving in Australia, twenty more trying their luck in LA, a hundred or so relishing their freedom of movement back across the continent they are part of and chilling out in France or doing the budget version in Bulgaria.

Yep. I like thought experiments. He does say that half the world (the poor places) would lose most of its population but in his view that wouldn’t matter.

 

[danny la rouge]

But in your view, there is no number that would be "massive" for a country of 70 million - is that right?

This is - correct me if I’m wrong - the third time in this thread you have tried to rephrase my words to mean something I didn’t say. You could just make up an opinion and argue with that and leave me out of it if you wanted, you know.

Are you asking me “is no number that would be ‘massive’ for a country of 70 million?”? If so, then that is a question without context.

If you are asking me to write an essay on “there is no number that would be ‘massive’ for a country of 70 million. Discuss”, then that’s a different proposition and one that might take some time.

However, much of it has been touched on. As you will know, most migration takes place in the “developing world”. What usually happens is people flee from a disaster or war stricken country to a neighbouring country, and no further. That’s by far the most common form of migration. This happens quickly and on a far greater scale than the UK faces now or has ever faced. In these circumstances, of course local infrastructures can be - and are - overwhelmed. That is not happening in the UK, nor is it under threat of happening. It didn’t even happen when France (a neighbouring country to the UK) was invaded during WWII.

Is there a point a which the UK, if it was trying to produce enough food on its own to feed its population without imports, could no longer do so? Possibly, but it’s not been tried, and it’s not what happens now. I think these islands should think harder about food production and food security. But it doesn’t.

The thing is, there is certainly not the political will to welcome actual large scale immigration to the UK. So clearly there’d be no effort to make it work if it happened.

Scotland is different in that the Scottish government has decided that immigration is the answer to a declining birth rate. This could be seen as virtuous, but it really isn’t, it’s just pragmatic. Within their own neoliberal framework, it’s a short term fix to the aging population. Bring in more taxpayers to increase the tax take to pay for the services used by today’s older people (because their tax was used to pay for the services for pensioners in their day; it wasn’t saved for by government fir use for that cohort’s retirement). The ScotGov policy of encouraging immigration in itself does nothing to address what happens once the current taxpayers (including today’s immigrants) become old, if they do not produce the required number of taxable children. So successive governments just kick cans down the road rather than actually working towards a better society.

Is there a population density in terms of heads per meter that can’t be exceeded? So far, if the infrastructure is in place, that has not occurred. But it does raise the question of food production again. Cities do need to be serviced by agricultural land.

It could be that in the not so distant future that global environmental catastrophe might mean vast chunks of the planet can no longer support human habitation. In which case we’ll have to redistribute the available resources - including land. There is obviously theoretically a point beyond which that would no longer work, and intolerable suffering and our possible extinction as a species might occur. But that again is another question.

 

[Tanya1982]

Yep. I like thought experiments. He does say that half the world (the poor places) would lose most of its population but in his view that wouldn’t matter.

Well, would they? Or would they be 'swamped' as desirable beauty spots or 'rediscovered' as places of half forgotten but fabulous heritage? On a totally borderless utopian globe, I don't think we could draw firm conclusions about whether Manchester or Madagascar would have the greater draw. Anything masquerading as a serious conclusion about how and where people would go, and why, in a world so fundamentally changed from reality needs a sea full of salt.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Yep. I like thought experiments. He does say that half the world (the poor places) would lose most of its population but in his view that wouldn’t matter.

What is his basis for saying this? Is there evidence from the historical record that this would be likely.

 

[A380]

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.

And, of course the magnificent peasants’ revolt many of us on the left are so proud of as our ‘founding myth’ was at least 25% a protest and series of attacks against immigrants from the Low Countries and France into London…

 

[bimble]

What is his basis for saying this? Is there evidence from the historical record that this would be likely.

He (the economist) says this :
"The flip side is that origin countries will swiftly depopulate. Over a generation or two, poor countries could easily lose half their people—and more than half of their most skilled and ambitious workers. But this is no more tragic than poor villagers exiting the backwaters of China and India. Development is ultimately about people, not places."

I doubt it's based on any hard evidence from historical record because we haven't had open borders ever?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

He (the economist) says this :
"The flip side is that origin countries will swiftly depopulate. Over a generation or two, poor countries could easily lose half their people—and more than half of their most skilled and ambitious workers. But this is no more tragic than poor villagers exiting the backwaters of China and India. Development is ultimately about people, not places."

I doubt it's based on any hard evidence from historical record because we haven't had open borders ever?

Ok. He's basing it to internal migration patterns of the past.

 

[Tanya1982]

Well, seeing as this latest bout of xenophobia was actually all kicked off by a corrupt and incompetent Home Secretary trying to throw buckets of shit over everyone else to detract from herself, it might be no loss to give into complete hypothesis.

Where would you go? At midnight, every border that ever existed is signed out of existence, forever. Would you pack your car and join the great global pile in to Milton Keynes?

I think I'd probably head to Indonesia, to look after baby orangutans until I became too old. I'd make it my business to have a reliable lover in some Polynesian paradise island - somewhere I could go on holiday. I'd be happy enough to pass through a handful of European cities and Manhattan, for shopping, socializing, beauty treatments etc. Then, I might retire to a riad in Chefchaouen - roof terrace and courtyard plunge pool both essential.

 

[danny la rouge]

Where would you go? At midnight, every border that ever existed is signed out of existence.

I like Italy. It’s warm, there’s coffee, there’s sambucca. Money being no object, I’d go there.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Well, let's be positive. At least they didn't end up over here, living next door to you or I.

One of them did. My grandmother.

 

[TopCat]

Well, seeing as this latest bout of xenophobia was actually all kicked off by a corrupt and incompetent Home Secretary trying to throw buckets of shit over everyone else to detract from herself, it might be no loss to give into complete hypothesis.

Where would you go? At midnight, every border that ever existed is signed out of existence, forever. Would you pack your car and join the great global pile in to Milton Keynes?

I think I'd probably head to Indonesia, to look after baby orangutans until I became too old. I'd make it my business to have a reliable lover in some Polynesian paradise island - somewhere I could go on holiday. I'd be happy enough to pass through a handful of European cities and Manhattan, for shopping, socializing, beauty treatments etc. Then, I might retire to a riad in Chefchaouen - roof terrace and courtyard plunge pool both essential.

I would stay here, listening to the rich laughing as my pay goes down year after year.

 

[ViolentPanda]

as you follow teuchter's posts you will notice that this was for him a low level of hypothetical detail.

Except regarding bolts (or not) on toilet doors!