Net migration - highest ever it's been
Discussion
mike9009 said:
For legal migration, why don't we charge more to enter the country? £10k each personally... Gives £10bn tax revenues. Leave after 3 years get £5k back - so incentivise people to leave too.....
If we desperately need the skills and a company is willing to help, fair enough. Or perhaps a sliding scale based on the skills need.
Money talks.....
Well, the UK already benefits by the best part of £100k for each overseas student, after you've factored in the immigration fees, NHS surcharge, university fees at the higher rate, and the money they're required to bring in to cover living costs, more if they bring dependents, so it's not exactly a novel idea. It already costs a fIf we desperately need the skills and a company is willing to help, fair enough. Or perhaps a sliding scale based on the skills need.
Money talks.....
kload of money to be an immigrant in the UK, £10k is chicken feed in comparison to what most pay, never mind any other contribution they make to the economy. Brexit comes up again and again, it doesnt matter if you agree with it or not, the fact is it was never implemented properly due to our spineless politicians, Untill we sort our own house out we cant complain. They all seem to be more worried about sorting their future earnings than looking out for us.
richhead said:
Brexit comes up again and again, it doesnt matter if you agree with it or not, the fact is it was never implemented properly due to our spineless politicians, Untill we sort our own house out we cant complain. They all seem to be more worried about sorting their future earnings than looking out for us.
What are you on about? It was implemented as well as it could have been, in immigration terms it's caused a net outflow of EU citizens over the last few years. The problem with that is if you want to replace those workers and students so as not to fk the economy you have to bring in around twice as many non-EU nationals because they're older and they have bigger families. E63eeeeee... said:
richhead said:
Brexit comes up again and again, it doesnt matter if you agree with it or not, the fact is it was never implemented properly due to our spineless politicians, Untill we sort our own house out we cant complain. They all seem to be more worried about sorting their future earnings than looking out for us.
What are you on about? It was implemented as well as it could have been, in immigration terms it's caused a net outflow of EU citizens over the last few years. The problem with that is if you want to replace those workers and students so as not to fk the economy you have to bring in around twice as many non-EU nationals because they're older and they have bigger families. s1962a said:
BBC said:
Net migration – the difference between people arriving and leaving – is now estimated to have been 906,000 in the year to June 2023, the highest ever.
In the year to June last year, the ONS now says 82,000 more people came to live in the UK than they previously thought and 84,000 fewer people left the country.
The ONS says it had previously missed 43,000 people arriving from Ukraine in the year to June last year.
Almost a million people net migration for June 2023! The figure for June 2024 is 728,000.In the year to June last year, the ONS now says 82,000 more people came to live in the UK than they previously thought and 84,000 fewer people left the country.
The ONS says it had previously missed 43,000 people arriving from Ukraine in the year to June last year.
If we really need that many people coming over, why can't our governments be more honest with us? Why sell us a lie that we can cap numbers when we allow so much legal migration, and then divert our attention to the illegal boat people, which is a small fraction of the official numbers.
Also virtually no infrastructure improvements leads to the s
t show that we have now.TX.
richhead said:
E63eeeeee... said:
richhead said:
Brexit comes up again and again, it doesnt matter if you agree with it or not, the fact is it was never implemented properly due to our spineless politicians, Untill we sort our own house out we cant complain. They all seem to be more worried about sorting their future earnings than looking out for us.
What are you on about? It was implemented as well as it could have been, in immigration terms it's caused a net outflow of EU citizens over the last few years. The problem with that is if you want to replace those workers and students so as not to fk the economy you have to bring in around twice as many non-EU nationals because they're older and they have bigger families. E63eeeeee... said:
richhead said:
E63eeeeee... said:
richhead said:
Brexit comes up again and again, it doesnt matter if you agree with it or not, the fact is it was never implemented properly due to our spineless politicians, Untill we sort our own house out we cant complain. They all seem to be more worried about sorting their future earnings than looking out for us.
What are you on about? It was implemented as well as it could have been, in immigration terms it's caused a net outflow of EU citizens over the last few years. The problem with that is if you want to replace those workers and students so as not to fk the economy you have to bring in around twice as many non-EU nationals because they're older and they have bigger families. 
TX.
This was Canada in 2023:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-6504743...
+2.7% population in a year to boost the economy. by filling "skills shortages". They were pretty overt about this IIRC, basically saying they were going to increase immigration for the evonomic bump.
At the same time as this we had the Conservatives banging the anti immigration drum, loudly fighting legal battles to deport a handful of illegals, denying masters students family visa's etc, and whipping up anti-migrant hysteria...
... while also letting in a record number ofi migrants?
I'm not usually given to conspiracy theories but it can't be coincidence that two diametrically opposed ideologies have arrived at similar outcomes.
A big benefit (and source of disagreement) of the European free market for labour was the mobility of people from poor parts of Europe to wealthier areas and the suppression/competition for salaries.
We then leave and immigration skyrockets under an anti-immigration government?
Then Labour actually increase NMW for legal employees and agree public sector pay deals and the press acts like the sky is falling in.
I can only assume that western economies are hooked on cheap labour and all other concerns are secondary.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-6504743...
+2.7% population in a year to boost the economy. by filling "skills shortages". They were pretty overt about this IIRC, basically saying they were going to increase immigration for the evonomic bump.
At the same time as this we had the Conservatives banging the anti immigration drum, loudly fighting legal battles to deport a handful of illegals, denying masters students family visa's etc, and whipping up anti-migrant hysteria...
... while also letting in a record number ofi migrants?
I'm not usually given to conspiracy theories but it can't be coincidence that two diametrically opposed ideologies have arrived at similar outcomes.
A big benefit (and source of disagreement) of the European free market for labour was the mobility of people from poor parts of Europe to wealthier areas and the suppression/competition for salaries.
We then leave and immigration skyrockets under an anti-immigration government?
Then Labour actually increase NMW for legal employees and agree public sector pay deals and the press acts like the sky is falling in.
I can only assume that western economies are hooked on cheap labour and all other concerns are secondary.
Edited by glazbagun on Friday 29th November 06:02
E63eeeeee... said:
Not really relevant, Brexit changed the profile of migration so that you now need more immigrants for each worker or student. Hence a big chunk of the post-Brexit increase in numbers.
It was a choice not a necessity. For example the students for the one year courses who were able to bring their families with them. Most with any knowledge of the situation thought it was a scam but the Tories let it go ahead regardless.
It had nothing to do with workers but just a permitted loophole in the immigration system to bring in people in the hundreds of thousands.
JagLover said:
E63eeeeee... said:
Not really relevant, Brexit changed the profile of migration so that you now need more immigrants for each worker or student. Hence a big chunk of the post-Brexit increase in numbers.
It was a choice not a necessity. For example the students for the one year courses who were able to bring their families with them. Most with any knowledge of the situation thought it was a scam but the Tories let it go ahead regardless.
It had nothing to do with workers but just a permitted loophole in the immigration system to bring in people in the hundreds of thousands.
No ifs, buts or maybes.
popeyewhite said:
Condi said:
No doubt it's all Labour's fault despite..
It is. Blair.What is unforgivable for the Tories is that they kept promising to reduce the numbers and didn’t.
The problem with these threads is that there is a lot of hot air and embittered comments but not many facts. What we really need is a clear understanding of:
- who the migrants and emigrants are
- what are the factors that are driving people to come/leave
- what policies have contributed to the influx
- what policies have been proved to work to reduce net immigration
- what would be the financial and social impact of reducing immigration
Without a good understanding of the above I am not sure one could make an informed decision on whether we should stop immigration and also how best to go about it.
On a personal note we are part of the numbers as we moved back to the UK. Brexit was a key factor in our decision (hard for us to settle in the EU if you don’t have a guaranteed right to be there).
Edited by Skeptisk on Friday 29th November 13:15
Condi said:
No doubt it's all Labour's fault despite not being in power for 1 second of the time period it relates to. 
The Daily Mail are rather quiet about that bit....
There was a great program on the BBC about Immigration, which you can find on the iPlayer. Explains the issues and basically while the Conservatives were talking tough they had very relaxed policies.
They were very happy for the massive expansion in all those 'educational' facilities and the revenue from all The uni places sold to overseas students. The Daily Mail are rather quiet about that bit.... There was a great program on the BBC about Immigration, which you can find on the iPlayer. Explains the issues and basically while the Conservatives were talking tough they had very relaxed policies.
And of course under certain conditions as with migrating workers their families could join.
Is it not the case that the law was recently changed on family visa off the back of having purchased a university place?
Is this not why suddenly some of the less 'quality' universities are suddenly struggling to sell places on their pointless courses because the overseas demand to buy that family access has been ended?
Hadn't quite a chunk of this migration boom been down to that wheeze?
Also, hadn't they thrown the doors open to the sub continent to try and replace the massive loss of EU labour? So labour that had previously been just one family member as 'home' was close enough to leave the family and the plan was to return with funds was swapped for permanent migration, with family and statistically quite large families?
It's all been a total mess. We have to import more and more labour due to the massive structural change in the working demographic as the Boomer generation completely retires from the work force but has the problem not been that we've moved massively away from predominantly single work units to units with large families in tow and at no point stopped to consider who's going to pay for all the family when the plan was just to bring in one tax generating work unit that will live in a box where no indigenous person would be living?
Anyway, isn't new news re this numerical revision not the number of migrations last year but that these are legitimate and tracked migrations but the department responsible is working from home so unable to add the numbers up correctly?
I would have thought the actual story here is the incompetence and negligence of people who have been paid taxpayer's money but not come close to meeting their side of that bargain?
Or, seeing as new governments always fudge figures in the first year to make the previous government look worse and them better, should we not ponder that this is just an accounting trick and a lot of noise is being made of a clutch of data that would normally be booked to one period getting pushed back so that the next data release on migration can look lower?
Terminator X said:
E63eeeeee... said:
richhead said:
E63eeeeee... said:
richhead said:
Brexit comes up again and again, it doesnt matter if you agree with it or not, the fact is it was never implemented properly due to our spineless politicians, Untill we sort our own house out we cant complain. They all seem to be more worried about sorting their future earnings than looking out for us.
What are you on about? It was implemented as well as it could have been, in immigration terms it's caused a net outflow of EU citizens over the last few years. The problem with that is if you want to replace those workers and students so as not to fk the economy you have to bring in around twice as many non-EU nationals because they're older and they have bigger families. TX.
Wilmslowboy said:
It was a fking stupid thing to promise, particularly the "net" part, given that govt only had control of some of the levers to control immigration and none of the levers that control emigration. Just another example of Cameron being a fool and a lightweight. reddiesel said:
You are talking utter rubbish my friend . Brexit voters of which I am one were happy with European workers being employed in the UK . What we hoped for was control of number and type . As regards these almost million a year from Asia/Africa , they are little to do with being part of a workforce but instead part of an Islamic invasion akin to 1066 . Worse still , it appears both Conservative and Labour Governments have little interest in enforcing our Borders which is pretty miraculous when you consider we are an Island nation . How hard is it ?
My bold I'd suggest Muslims make up less than 1/4 (perhaps less than a 1/5) of total migration.
Illegal boats arrivals are an issue but I believe they made up circa 4% of total migration last year.
E63eeeeee... said:
A chunk of that spike is HK and Ukraine, which obviously couldn't have been predicted but as for the rest, I remember explaining it to people at the time, so yes it was predicted. Of course the other problem is that the economic harm caused by Brexit has made it even more difficult for a government to accept further economic harm by deliberately reducing its workforce or cutting off a funding stream for its creaking university sector.
It didn't require predicting. We already had the data to show the difference between a worker migration from the EU versus from outside of the EU. And of course, we knew that in blocking EU migration we would increase non EU migration. And we also knew that the U.K. working population wasn't going to suddenly reverse its general dislike for caring for the retired population so there were overtly key areas such as the NHS where hiring from overseas was going to remain exactly what it was and that all that would change would be where they came from and how many immediate family members there were.
Combine that with decades of local governments taking the cash instead of the social housing asset so failing every year for decades to meet their obligations and you just have this perfect storm or a load of imbedded crap all floating to the surface the moment the cost of borrowing increases.
When people's obligations to their money lenders trips a set point then the pogroms start. Such is humanity and the way we work.
The reality is that when we embarked in 1997 to fundamentally change the structure of the U.K. with migration to solve the Boomer Retirement problem and lending to inflate values and let workers start borrowing from next year's wages to fund their own pay rises then we set in motion the classic and inevitable social cycle that ends with debt burdens being too high and foreigners being burned. It's sad, very sad but it is simply what humans do. It's an endless cycle of stupidity through time.
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