What are you brits doing with all these people????

Discussion in 'Off Topic Area' started by Kwajman, Apr 20, 2011.

  1. Kwajman

    Kwajman Penguin in paradise....

    I came across a reprint of an article from The Telegraph, I don't now how reliable a paper that is so tell me if its rubbish or not. But it says (I've edited the article for brevity) that 1 in 8 Brits are foreign born. Sheesh, where are you stashing all of them??

    Almost one in eight people living in UK are born abroad


    The figures, which were compiled by the Office for National Statistics, were disclosed amid a renewed debate on immigration. It meant that just under seven million people living in Britain were immigrants – enough to fill a city the size of London.

    The rise was largely down to Labour's "open door" immigration policy, under which three million foreigners were added to the population during the party's 13 years in power.


    David Cameron warned yesterday that uncontrolled immigration had undermined some British communities and led to "discomfort and disjointedness" in neighbourhoods.

    The population stood at 61.14 million as of last June, the most recent estimate. Of that, 6.97 million were people who were born overseas – 11.4 per cent, the highest proportion on record. About a third of those had been given British citizenship since arriving.

    Some 762,000 of those now in Britain came from those eastern European nations admitted to the European Union in 2004, which gave them access to the jobs market. The majority, 4.7 million, were people born outside Europe.

    "This is the whole point of the problem and why it has got to be dealt with," he said. "Immigration under the last government became completely out of control and it led, down the years, to what the Prime Minister has referred to as an imbalance."

    The Labour government claimed that immigrants brought economic benefits and had the net effect of boosting gross domestic product by £6 billion a year.

    Evidence by Home Office officials to the inquiry estimated that the annual benefit of migration to the native population, which was known as gross domestic product per capita, was £30 a year or 58p a week in 2006.

    David Coleman, an Oxford University academic, estimated in 2007 that immigrants cost the taxpayer £8.8 billion a year, when social costs such as pressure on public services, running the asylum system and teaching English were accounted for.
     
  2. John Titchen

    John Titchen Still Learning Supporter

    As someone who falls into that category despite being British since birth I can't say that I was overly distressed by the statistic. It includes immigrants, temporary workers (non permanent residents) and those of us who had British parents but were born abroad.
     
  3. Rhea

    Rhea Laser tag = NOT MA... Supporter

    They're doing the work that some born-British people are too lazy to do...
     
  4. Pitfighter

    Pitfighter Valued Member

    6.97 Million 1 out of
    61.12 Million = 8.77 people or roughly 1 out of 9.

    You round up when the number's over .5

    Not to be anal about math but when stats are given out I feel obligated to check the math. If the number are off they may give the wrong impression.
    I mean 1 out of 8 makes it sound like an invasion. 1 out of 9 sounds just sounds like an infestation.
     
  5. Kwajman

    Kwajman Penguin in paradise....

    LOL, I figured the author rounded up. Some of what I deleted was very inflammatory and wouldn't add anything substantial to the argument. It just sounded like a VERY high number to me. Are the immigration laws in the UK considered strict, loose or in the middle somewhere by US standards? I have no idea what our ratio of what the non-born population is here.
     
  6. Gripfighter

    Gripfighter Sub Seeker

    not even a fraction of what tax dodging major corporations, banks with no one to check there out of control greed, or an ideologically motivated assault intended to fundamentally change the power structure and economic direction of our society perpetrated through the weapon of budget cuts by a tory government are and will continue to cost the working people of the British isles.

    all you have really posted is another example of how the media uses immigration as a fear mongering tactic to distract the masses from the far more pressing threats to there status of living. nothing new really is it ? its been the same story for almost a hundred years now.

    when people harp on about immigration or destitute spongers being the cause of all economic woes (ironic really because the reason there is a multi generational culture of benfit scrounging and lack of will to work is largely down to economic problems to begin with, you could argue the same is true of out of control immigration) it just reminds me of people in the 1800s blaming there poverty on to many people getting married or to much new fangled machinery taking all the jobs, and either not seeing or choosing to ignore the everyday problems of exploitive labour and exploitive land lords that they faced everyday. it seems silly in hindsight but then just as now this status quo of opinion was perpetrated by media, government and church. its a shame the majority of us have not evolved to a high enough level of self consciousness that we can see through such naive opinions and find out for ourselves. this is by no means to say immigration is fine and dandy but too often it overshadows other major economic problems and is used deliberately to do so by those who benefit from them.

    you need to check your sources on the first statement, to take anything a right wing paper (or as we call them in Britain the only ones that actually get printed on paper to be sold in shops) or David Cameron has said about labours ten years in power at face value would be a mistake, both have relentlessly perused a very persistent campaign of historical distortion on the subject since the last election, which is hypocritical at best and outright revisionist at worst. and sadlly many have come to take it as truth, I guess if you bombared people with lies often enough it just kind of becomes truth in there memory, well in the south of england anyway no one else forgot the 80s when it came to voting. I have many problems with labour, immigration not the least but the bringing in of cheap foreign workforces to this country goes away back to the 60s and is a policy that has crossed party divisions whenever it suited whoever was in power.
     
  7. Late for dinner

    Late for dinner Valued Member

    immigrants

    The number of people living here from outside the UK is partly related to Britain being part of Europe. Not unlike the US there is an open border between member states and thus people can live and work in any of the countries in the Union for the most part.. really many are migrant workers and not really immigrants.

    On the other hand, as a foreigner (with British grandparents which allows me to live here even if I hadn't been married to another Brit) I employ people and pay taxes like any other small business person. It's funny that the Poles and the Hungarians living next door to me all pay their way and , although they live in a more crowded condition than I would like, take little from the state. The young British couple that was living here until recently was very quick to show up with the young dads baby (who does not live with him) demanding that they get a council flat... there are some immigrants that take advantage of things but there are also some natives who do so as well.

    Truly immigration here is a bit mad and its hard to figure out who gets in and why but immigrants from other shores actually often put something back into the country...

    Article was just a load of 'cod swallow' :'S

    powchoy
     
    Last edited: Apr 21, 2011
  8. KAMAU

    KAMAU innocent bystander

  9. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    Being in the EU means we have to have an open door policy regarding EU members. We're already pushing our luck with the EU by limiting the benefits that are paid to citizens of recent EU member states.

    Cameron is trying to limit non EU immigration to highly skilled workers. I don't think this is a bad thing, so long as it doesn't mean we're going to start turning down genuine asylum claims in order to meet Tory targets.
     
  10. Atre

    Atre Valued Member

    Hmmm... What kind of cost are we talking about? 'Cos I rather suspect that "cost" doesn't include the taxes that they pay & other economic benefits etc
     
  11. Master Betty

    Master Betty Banned Banned

    To be honest, the migrants themselves are not a problem. Labour were all for letting migrants in... then did very little to actually integrate them. Their answer to integration was a whole load of "politically correct" bull crap which, if anything, usually rubs native born people up the wrong way.

    Some of the minor issues were dealing with a high influx of completely unskilled workers coupled with labours' ridiculous benefits system meaning that it was easy for someone from anywhere else in the EU to move to britain and immediately start claiming benefits like a whole load of native born laze abouts.

    Another issue which did arise later in labours' reign was when the recession hit. Having migrant workers to do the jobs that you simply can't get native born people to do (another issue entirely, which labour SHOULD have tried to solve first before simply opening the country to all and sundry) was a good thing in the bubble economy. When the recession hit and jobs were becoming harder and harder to come by, that migrant workforce suddenly becomes a problem to the average ill-educated moron with a dubious attitude towards foreigners - and tensions rise.

    In a way, France has the right idea at the moment. They don't give a toss where you're from, what language you speak, what your beliefs are etc.... if you wanna stay in france, you better learn french and not try to impose your own culture on them. Kind of elitist but they don't have anywhere near the same issues with immigration (that said, with britain so close to the north they did have an annoying habit of papping any asylum seekers over to us). The whole row with the head scarf at the moment is just another symptom of that. Could a woman go to one of the arab states and dress there like she does in central europe? Hell no!
     
  12. Martial novice

    Martial novice Valued Member

    Kwajman,

    The Telegraph is probably the most right-wing of the Broadsheet, serious newspapers. Its journalists and readership are generally conservative and an article expressing outrage at immigration is likely to be popular.
    The Conservatives (Big C), are to be seen as the liberators from the left wing menace - be it political correctness gone mad, or the policies of the Labour Party. So hopefully that puts the article in some sort of perspective.

    Interestingly you could find a more left wing paper such as the Guardian, criticising the current Conservative policy to cap non-EU migration. It would have just as many figures but tell a very different story.

    At the much more extreme end, parties such as UKIP (UK Independence Party) want a referendum on Britain even being a member of the EU, with the freedom of movement seen as one of the worst elements of Britain's membership.


    On the actual figures, as has been touched upon already, born abroad covers a wide range of situations. Post WW2 Britain strongly encouraged immigration, so people from former colonies moved in large numbers. Many of those are the ones now granted British citizenship and they remain here.
    The EU has caused quite a bit, but it also reflects that it is so much easier now to move to another country. Plus, English is so prevalent that UK is seen as a viable place to move.
    Economic factors pull people here - certainly the temptation for Eastern Europeans to move here short term and take money back home used to be very strong, though less so now. But London was at the height of global finance. Traders from France and Dubai filled the City.

    So, the numbers themselves are not scary. It might have been good to show how many people born in the UK now live overseas, for example.
    The negatives come from failure to integrate and from pressure on local services.
    At the end of the last government, a Points Based system was just being ironed out and improve - similar to Australia's. However, the new system will suspersede it.

    As for how strict our immigration laws are - well as long as we remain in the EU - and personally I believe the benefits far outweigh the costs - we have an open border. But a lot of our immigration is linked to the old Empire, now Commonwealth. We are a popular destination because we are regarded highly around much of the world, not as a soft touch. (people thinking that after they get here is another matter). I would rather Britain be highly regarded and hear complaints about the number of people trying to come here than the opposite situation.

    MN
     
  13. Van Zandt

    Van Zandt Mr. High Kick

    Meh. I call this a bit of universal justice considering Britain colonised most of the known world.
     
  14. Rhea

    Rhea Laser tag = NOT MA... Supporter

    It's the case in my area.

    As an aside, that thread was locked because it got out of hand and was no longer filled with useful discussion. If this goes the same way, this will be locked just the same.
     
  15. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    Whilst I don't think the PC culture that sprung up helped, I don't think it did much more than give people a reason to complain. It is easier (and more politically correct) to complain about political correctness that to complain about the brown folks who moved in next door.
    They did try to deal with this though for the A2 and A8 nations. The perception of migrant benefit abuse is far greater than the abuse itself.
    Part of the problem is that we can't turn EU citizens away. So even if things get really bad here, they can still come and we can do nothing whilst remaining in the EU (another discussion). You also have to remember that a lot of Poles left during the recession as work became scarcer. In fact, there was concerns that it would leave us with a labour shortage in certain industrial sectors.
    I think you are underestimating France's problems. France has a comparable number of immigrants to the UK in terms of percentage (~9% in Fr to ~11% in UK), but you have to remember that France has had high unemployment for decades and France has one of the highest fertility rates in Europe, which dampens the effect of immigration on those stats (notably there have been estimates suggesting that ~28.5% of new borns in France have at least one immigrant parent).
    Irrelevant. Those kind of arguments make me angry because they're just so stoopid. 'We shouldn't let them build a mosque here because we can't build a Cathedral in Mecca', blah blah blah. We'll all just close our eyes and ignore the fact that the people who will be affected by these decisions have, in most cases, never stepped foot in the countries that are used as justification for prejudice and discrimination in this country.
     
  16. KAMAU

    KAMAU innocent bystander

    that would be justifiable:cool:

    So to expand on my statements! It's not very often I share my political views/personel experiences in public but in this case im going to.

    From leaving school in the 70s I'V worked in a variety of jobs includeing coal minning,engineering and for the last 25 years in the construction industry. As i was a contractor I recieved no redundancy when the firm I contracted to closed its doors because it could not compete with the low tenders offered by eastern european firms.....theres a small percentage of the work offered to uk citizens but nowhere near the same as a UK company doing the job. As my financial situation became dire i looked for cheaper accommidation...theres no such thing as private landlords can ask more rent from immigrants working or not and my local council supports the meassure.........after the tv highlighted that born and bred uk residents wouldnt do the work of miniul tasks like fruit picking in anglia i immediatley contacted 4 jobcentres in the area who said 'what jobs' and 'dont beleave everything you see on T.V or read in the tabloids. With a suitcase full of qualifications and an A1 work/attendance record im now classed as one of the benefit scroungers the media picks on outside jobs centres to prove where all bone and the immigrants are the best thing since sliced bread, you ever notice anybody interviewed who hasnt got a chav baseball cap slung front to back with shoe laces dragging across the floor?

    Everytime a compliants made (like this thread and the locked one, although that did get personel with some ppl) the race cards shown at some point and the 'rivers of blood speech' is offered up out of context I may add. I dont see what meassures are being taken to make much impact, vital services like the NHS are buckling under the pressure, child benefit and tax credits are being payed for familys who are no longer resident which seems a pretty popular scam in my local.........anyways im off in search of employment, see if i cant grab a TV crew while im at it and voice my opinion as a 37 year tax & NI payer.

    regards Kamau
     
  17. Southpaw535

    Southpaw535 Well-Known Member Moderator Supporter

    Slightly OT but is this arguement that immigration is single handedly destroying the NHS founded on any decent evidence? I hear it a lot in immigration debates but no one ever offers any evidence
     
  18. Master Betty

    Master Betty Banned Banned

    Not as far as I'm aware. because as soon as a migrant worker starts working he starts paying National Insurance contributions which are what pay for the NHS as well as a State Pension amongst other things.
     
    Last edited: Apr 21, 2011
  19. Polar Bear

    Polar Bear Moved on

    Hate to break it to you mate but none of your problems are brought on by immigration. They are from globalisation. Guess who benefits from a globalised marketplace? Big Business, usually rich white guys who fund political parties. Ironically the Conservative party has more than it's share of these types. So don't blame the poor immigrants who are just trying to survive like you are. Blame the people who are really responsible for turning our world into a nightmare.

    The Bear.
     
  20. Master Betty

    Master Betty Banned Banned

    It's also a result of consumerism. germany doesn't have the same issues despite having a large problem with turkish immigrants at the moment.
     

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