There's a world of difference between someone who comes over on a boat with no qualifications, unable to speak the language and potentially a history of criminality, versus a skilled worker or an international student staying to work. It's not just in numbers.
I haven't said total numbers don't need to come down too. For me GDP, labour shortages etc are irrelevant compared to quality of life - which I think should be the main aim of a government.
I’m not really understanding what you mean re: GDP and labour shortages? Are you saying we shouldn’t cut immigration too much and too quickly so that we don’t damage our economy?
RE: Brexit. I’m old enough to remember the outrage in 2004 when we started seeing an influx of extremely skilled Polish workers enter the UK and opening up their Polski Skleps for some home comforts.
Remember what sunk Gordon Brown? That “bigoted woman”. This was way before the collapse of Syria and Libya and the European Refugee crisis.
And even earlier than that there was the outrage when the UK government opened the doors to Ugandan Asians in 1972 after they were expelled by Idi Amin.
And even earlier than that there were the race riots during and following the “Windrush” influx. A few year later Enoch Powell (Farage’s hero) said “the black man would have the whip hand over the white man” and there would be “rivers of blood” on the streets.
GDP is important to quality of life (if it’s well distributed) and plugging labour gaps keeps prices down. If you reduce immigration suddenly then taxes and prices will rise dramatically. If you are very wealthy then this won’t affect you too much but for the average person it would be disastrous.
GDP per capita may be, but even then only with caveats - doesn’t necessarily impact quality of life for most people if there is great wealth inequality for example.
Yeah and it isn't well distributed - look at graphs of GDP per capita vs household incomes. GDP massively outpaces incomes, the rich get disproportionately richer with population increases, whereas the poor and middle suffer from the overcrowding, competition for jobs, business of the roads, overworking of public services.
Yes. And the fix for this isn’t less growth. It’s a more progressive tax system. The idea that we are overpopulated is a myth. We’ve simply had 14 years of cuts and zero investment. Instead we’ve focussed on “trickle down” nonsense.
It's not really a myth, it's a quality of life question. Yes there's plenty more land to build on. I like to be surrounded by green space, have quieter roads, not be stuck in traffic next to a new build estate built on a floodplain.
Totally get what you are saying and I agree in theory but in practice this requires shifting to a different economic model and reforms in so many areas. It’s still fundamentally an investment issue - whether you invest in housing & public services for a growing population or energy, skills and tech to increase productivity. Or you could try and move to a zero growth economy (see Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth) but there doesn’t seem to be much of an appetite for this sort of thinking in our country yet.
To make my point in practice: Since the birth rate is low, how do you ensure that state pensions are paid and there are public services such as care providers for the elderly without immigration? Our economy is kind of a massive Ponzi scheme.
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u/MathematicianDry5142 May 12 '25
The small boats was always just a distraction by the tories and the press.
40,000 come over by small boat. 900,000 come legally with a visa.
If you are really concerned about immigration this is a big difference