Re: Unstoppable migration?
 

If we are short of construction workers it's likely a good percentage of the shortage are UK citizens who have left the building trade because of constant undercutting from firms with high levels of migrant workers. In my own family two have swapped their building careers for other trades as they got fed up of having to compete against the foreign workers. More foreign workers isn't the answer in the construction industry and will only serve to create a larger issue when they all leave in the future. Apart from the usual knuckle dragger groups i haven't heard a single person talking about shutting our borders and not allowing anyone in that's absolutely stupid we of course need skilled people coming in to fill shortages granted I'd prefer it to run alongside proper effective training schemes to train our own citizens to do the jobs but you can't have everything in life.

We have allowed ridiculous levels of immigration into the UK in the last 20 years numbers we won't be able to adequately support for decades and we have to get the figures back to a semblence of reality ideally without another labour government to run another social experiment and i think they got off light over that whole incident.

Re: Unstoppable migration?
 

UK population rise of 538,000 is biggest for 70 years
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40372533

60% due to net migration.

Of course they're all NHS nurses, fruit pickers, hotels workers etc so that's fine.

Re: Unstoppable migration?
 

and there'll be no extra burden on services or anything else.

Re: Unstoppable migration?
 

We're short of fruit-pickers so that assertion is wrong as I fear all your others are too. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business

Re: Unstoppable migration?
 

So all of them are filling constructive roles in our society then any proof for that assumption as it's generally accepted that we have a high level of illegals. We are a small island that isn't constructing housing much less the supporting infrastructure to accomadate what we have let alone more. Past governments were stupid in relation to immigration and the financial and social costs haven't even started to come due yet but when they do this country will look back on this time as "the good old days".

Re: Unstoppable migration?
 

It is quite bizarre how some people just cannot accept any downside with these levels of immigration. It's like they've been brainwashed into believing that any criticism of it is tantamount to blind racism and xenophobia and has no foundation in reality. These same people tend to whine on about lack of services, housing etc. without for a moment acknowledging how difficult it is for those services and our infrastructure to cope with such huge and rabid population growth, let alone make progress. Despite having 1.5m unemployed of our own, their argument seems to be that we need more migrants to do the jobs which need to be done (most being low skilled) and make up for our increasingly aged population. It's not temporary migration tough is it. Our population has been growing (largely as a result of migration) by around or the last 1,000,000 every 3 years for well over a decade so what does that tell us about the future? The proponents of uncontrolled migration have nothing to say about how we're going to cope with the increasing demands placed on our services when the migrants themselves grow old. Maybe they think we can just keep importing more people ad infinitum or maybe their stance is a political one and for reasons best known to themselves they'll only be happy when the UK has 100m people, 150m, 200m... It'd be nice to think that even they will have some sort of upper limit in mind but what are their plans going to be to suddenly stop any further immigration when that point is reached and just what is our environment going to be like at that point? Have they really given any thought to this at all I wonder? Population growth on this scale is unsustainable for all sorts of reasons but it's not easily reversible. That isn't racism it's something called FACT. Once the damage is done it's done and the lack of foresight evident amongst those who support uncontrolled migration is as astounding as it is worrying.

Re: Unstoppable migration?
 

Thank you for acknowledging my point.

Which was that they are all not, blindingly obviously, here to work the land or work in our NHS as some would have you believe.

Re: Unstoppable migration?
 

Excellent post Osem :tu:

Re: Unstoppable migration?
 

That is a huge number although not all of it is immigration.

It shows how much investment we need in public infrastructure to sustain this population growth.

Social housing
NHS
Education
Policing
Roads
Social Security (welfare)

Whilst it may seem the solution is to stop immigration, that alone would create a bigger staffing problem for services such as the NHS and also would not address the remaining circa 250k annual growth in the population.

I read a big barrier to new housing asides from the private companies deliberately building slow (to maintain supply and demand balance) is the difficulty acquiring land to build properties on. This country probably needs to do two major shifts in policy.

Mass social house building.
Compulsory purchases of land from private landowners.

Re: Unstoppable migration?
 

We have had net immigration of around 350,000 for well over a decade and yet we're still being told the jobs these people were supposedly coming to the UK to do are vacant. How is that? I reckon it's because most of the people coming here aren't doing the jobs we really need them to do they're doing the jobs they want to do. We are being told they're keeping the NHS afloat when there's a total of about 10% (IIRC) of migrants in the NHS and yet we're still seeing well over 350,000 extra migrants every year. They're clearly not all going into the NHS are they.

No the figure isn't all immigration but the bulk of it is and the you can add on top the higher birthrates prevalent amongst migrants which also add to our huge population growth.

You can build as many homes as you like but at what point are we going to say enough is enough? Homes need roads, services etc. where are they going to come from. We cannot build our way out of the housing problem unless we can control population growth at a manageable level. We're talking about having to build the equivalent of 2 cities the size of Oxford every year just to keep pace with net migration. Where do you suggest all these houses are built and how are they going to be serviced?

Re: Unstoppable migration?
 

It has been announced that "settled" migrants will be able to bring in their families after brexit. The thin end of the wedge before real negotiations get rolling.

Re: Unstoppable migration?
 

Whatever way you want to look at it we cannot pretend there is a solution without investment. Even with no immigration we will have net population growth.

I suggest a combination of managing population growth and investment.

Management can be achieved by applying quotas to immigration, as well as limiting the amount of social security payments to large families to discourage constant breeding.

However we need some form of growth, and growth is natural anyway, so we have to also invest more in infrastructure so yes that means.

Housing
Roads
Schools
Hospitals
Police
Social Security
Other forms of public servers etc.

This is funded by growing GDP, and not irresponsibly cutting taxes just to keep a wealthy few happy, we probably should be increasing taxes right now not decreasing.

The barrier to this is the amount of people in the UK (probably a majority) who think society is not important and everyone should just look after themselves. As a result people dont like paying taxes.

The stuff I listed, was happening routinely throughout the 50s,60s and 70s before we had a shift of thinking from the 80s onwards.

The only way we could consider what we doing now as reasonable is to start killing people to avoid the growth.

Also 10% of NHS staff is not some insignificant number, thats a lot of people, also I expect they congregated in certain parts of the country e.g. I think well over 10% of NHS staffing in Leicester is manned by immigrants or immigrant parent families. Nearly every pharmacist is owned by asians in Leicester as well, may well be british born asians but at some point in their family tree probably migrated to here from India or Pakistan.

Nearly all my delivery drivers from tesco are not white british, pretty much every taxi driver is not white british, my postman is a muslim, these people arent just benefit unemployed scroungers, many do contribute to the country. So alot of the blame is from governments not investing in infrastructure to handle the growth.

Been blunt I would say infrastructure is far more important than government debt, even if we went bankrupt I would say it has to be done. The current thinking is very short termist.

Also there is money been spent but very badly.

Think how many homes the HS2 costs would pay for.

To this day ignition is probably the only high earner I have seen admit on a forum he would accept paying more taxes. Just about everyone else who has the means see's it as theft.

Re: Unstoppable migration?
 

Totally agree. The 80's was the turning point: Governments in the Uk and the US started telling people that greed is good. they also said that if you can get money, you should keep as much as you can. Me first, followed by Me second, and Me third and possibly forth.

If there is any left then maybe I will think about giving some to "charity".

We are in a Me first society and not a We first society. We should take some lessons from the Nordic Model although there are some things that do not seem appropriate.

Maybe we should start the cull with the immigrants?

Re: Unstoppable migration?
 

Whatever the investments we make, a rapidly increasing population at the level we're experiencing doesn't solve the problems we're facing with an ageing population, it just delays and compounds them. HS2 would but lots of homes but those homes in themselves require services and infrastructure which cost yet more money. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy just like the M25 - build more lanes and more cars just fill them up...

---------- Post added at 21:27 ---------- Previous post was at 21:25 ----------

And over in Eurolalaland:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40437917

Maybe the Italians should just build loads of new homes eh?... :rolleyes:

Re: Unstoppable migration?
 

There is no level of realistic investment that can keep pace with the level of immigration we have had for too long now it just isn't possible without bankrupting the country. We have a limited level of social resources and we have to not just cut the numbers coming in but deporting the large number that are here that shouldn't be. It isn't going to be pleasant and it isn't going to be easy but it's got to be done the situation in some areas is already creating issue's and it's spreading to more areas.

We have had a period of austerity we have crumbling public services and communities that have had their entire balance interfered with creating unnecessary social tension. All because one group of cretinous politicians wanted to play a big social experiment thank you new labour and gutless politicians afterwards thank you conservatives that did nothing beyond rhetoric to correct it.