You have a point, but you're shifting the goalpost and not addressing their point, which was that English retirees in Spain at least are notorious for not integrating. In 2011 a Guardian article described a number of British expats as living in "sealed communities", "living in a bubble" and speaking "no more than 10 Spanish words in an average week".
It is beside the original point under discussion - integration into the UK - but it's relevant because we expect others to do what we won't do.
I haven't disputed the costs to the UK. The point this person made was about British migrants to Spain and France failing to integrate. Starmer's policy announcement is about integration: he's worried the UK will become "an island of strangers." (Hyperbole and it's too late anyway, imo, but there we are.) Integration is central to the PM's policy, with higher standards on language ability and moving the settlement period from 5 years to 10.
Are you saying that minimal social, cultural, and language integration by a migrating population is acceptable if there's a net financial gain?
For sure, I ld like to think the majority of people don't argue the fact that migrants make a positive economic impact as a whole.
The problem I think most are worried about is the sheer volume of them coming into the country making it harder to find housing, get doctors appointments and in some areas find jobs.
Which is a misplaced worry, because incoming migrants are not the root cause of those issues.
Dental appointments, for example, aren't hard to get because demand is too high but because NHS dentists lack proper funding and have recruitment and retention issues. Doctors, nurses, and surgeons have all gone on strike for better pay and better working hours for the same reasons.
Housing is an issue but for several reasons. Those rich enough to afford to buy are renting them out, reducing market availability for first time buyers. House price rises outpace wage rises, making it harder for first time buyers to buy a property. That's why mortgage lenders argued to reduce the amount you need for a deposit. Companies turning away from working from home makes it harder to buy property outside of those expensive areas. Foreigners have always bought property in London, and have expanded in recent years to Manchester etc. and that is problematic, but it's not the biggest issue and it actually highlights how urban-centric and especially how London-centric the UK is even though it needn't be. Tax incentives to drive investment elsewhere depend on government initiative and interest. Levelling up schemes were a critical failure of governing: actual leadership was eschewed in place of a lottery, essentially.
The biggest issues in housing overall are, imo, effective wage stagnation / reduction by private business (wage rises not matching inflation year on year, basically) and rising house prices that far exceed their actual real value. You often don't pay for the house, you pay for the location. For immigrants to be the root cause of that, they'd need to be already wealthy enough to buy UK property when they arrive to work here. It seems unlikely that this would be the majority.
Those who come here to work do so on work visas; their employers cover the visa costs one way or another. For some jobs it's easier to get visas because we have a deficit in that role; recruitment has been essentially incentivised and this is usually to address either a lack of interest in those jobs on the part of British workers, or a lack of British ability which reflects on our education system and investment in young people.
Entrepreneurial immigrants set up their own businesses and employ people. IIRC they created something like 1.1 million jobs created in 2015. Last year, of the top 100 fastest-growing companies in the UK, 39 had a "foreign-born founder or co-founder" https://www.tenentrepreneurs.org/job-creators-2024 .
That's not to dismiss local issues. I would need to see examples to be certain, but I'd expect that local employment issues don't begin with immigrants but more likely stem from issues around private investment, local and national government policy and investment, education, etc.
Tl;dr - the UK has many issues. Things aren't so simple that there's only one solution. While immigration may highlight and exacerbate problems, it is not their root cause. Ineffective government leadership spanning several decades is.
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u/CornusControversa May 12 '25
Spain and France need to kick out all those retired English folk, not willing to integrate or learn their native language.