Which sounds all quite dramatic until you consider other countries manage it rather well given there are many benefits to migration if you plan for it with the right infrastructure rather than intentionally not doing so as the government have for a decade.
It is dramatic. Net migration into the uk is at record levels. That right? Do you think levels should be higher??
Some context is needed to decide that. How many will be born/die? How many will enter/leave the workforce? Are the immigrants skilled or not and are they filling jobs we need them for? I’m not saying you’re necessarily wrong but a bit more evaluation is needed IMO. I blame the media for over-simplifying everything to short snappy headlines.
You have swerved it. We have context now. Do you think numbers should be doubled? Or at the same levels? less? Do you think we should have no controls on immigration? Open borders?
I’m not swerving anything. I’m saying it’s a more complicated question than you can probably process. If I’m to add no nuance at all, I’d say we need more migrants. It’s an ageing population with a high dependency ratio and we’re losing many bright, skilled people as a result of poor wages and a low standard of living relative to where they can live.
It obviously a more difficult question than YOU can process. YOU didn't pick up on migrant v immigration. How does bringing in more people into working class areas benefit those communities? Pressures on housing? schools? wages down? Living standards down?? and you want to increase the population of the community i live in???
Another nuance is where they go. There are over-populated parts of the country and under-populated parts. Areas with over-subscribed schools and areas with few pupils etc. I don’t care either way if an immigrant moves into your street or not.
Ok - and there is also a falling birth rate and people have started to die younger (previous to last year the longevity trend was still creeping up) It's of no doubt that the overall population figure is increasing, but probably not exactly by the figure of net migration, so the figure is probably (totally guessing) more around half that (250K). It's still a lot and needs careful managing. I'd be curious to see the figures for other European nations too, to see how ours compare to theirs, just out of interest.
We need controlled migration for the reasons previously pointed out , so we can manage who, what and where. The problem is because we don’t have safe proper routes, and the backlog is massive, it’s impossible to deal with the uncontrolled numbers arriving on boats, with criminals using the mayhem to send illegal boats across the channel.
NET Migration. The boats have hardly any impact to do with these numbers - 45K. Literally a drop in the ocean of the 504,000 and forecast 750,000 this coming year. Suits the government to prattle on about the 'boats' hiding they're total ineptitude to govern this country. And of course Starmer has the answer - he's concreting the Green Belt.
We’ve had a LibCon pact before and it wasn’t great. I can’t see a LibLab pact being any better (mind you it’s hard to see how it can be worse than the current shower) I doubt if any ‘deal’ will be done with Brussels that suits me RP. My wishes are for me to be able to live my retirement out in Spain without the 90-day police kicking me out of my own home, or buying an expensive visa with restrictions around the other way. Why would the EU or the UK be interested in making that happen? It won’t benefit either country. Fking Brexit.
Why not answer the poster questions? Where they go .. There is a point there about social cohesion and impact. You may be agreeing with the poster that immigration should be controlled.
I don’t see why Spain (or the EU) would be against it but maybe I’m being naive. People being less able to retire out there can’t have done much for those areas’ property prices and local economies whereas we’re now not losing people who aren’t economically active generally and are more of a burden than younger people on the state. Maybe I’m oversimplifying it. If I was being really cynical I’d suggest it’s not in the Tories’ interests for their voters to emigrate but I believe you can keep voting for 15 years here.
I do. Uncontrolled immigration/open borders isn’t a good thing in theory but then we had more open borders with the EU (with some caveats in our favour that got no real air time pre-Brexit) and there was overwhelming evidence that EU migrants had a net benefit for us. I guess it depends what you value in society. Some people are massively anti-immigration whereas I obviously am not. I get their arguments but they don’t really stack up IMO and their gripes should be with our government. Obviously the guy knows more about Bristol than I do and maybe it is overpopulated, has low unemployment etc. and wouldn’t benefit. Plenty of places would. Again just my opinion.
2021 if you’re interested. I assume it includes students without having bothered to read the detail. https://www.statista.com/statistics/686124/net-migration-selected-european-countries/
