Expatrick

Yes.

Scamp

Well put, me too. Someone once said or wrote; "I don't subscribe to any religion". I thought it was spot on.

Red Eric

Yes, Shard.

It's not "If", it's "When"

Cape Blue

You realise that India is the second largest Muslim country?

One of my tenants is an off-the-boat Indian Muslim, he asked me to put a door between the lounge and kitchen so when his friends came to visit they wouldn't be able to see his wife in the kitchen.

Cape Blue

The reality is that the UK needs a net-zero immigration policy for at least the next five years in order to allow housing supply & demand to come into balance and to incentivise companies to invest in automation and not cheap labour, enabling wages for the lower orders to strengthen.

During this five year period immigration should primarily be aimed at high and at-need skills (and I don't mean curry chefs), followed by some well-interrogated family reunification (i.e. no arranged marriages) and then a smaller mix of student and refugee/asylum. Skills and family should have a sensible income requirement, likely north of £30Kpa.

At typical current rates of emigration this would permit some 250,000 immigrants per year of skilled, family, student and asylum.

Cape Blue

As it should be - the sole reason he was permitted the luxury of being able to live and work in the US was because of the job required by that company. I was on an H1B visa for several years and had the same experience, doubtless Scamp has a similar situation in Dubai (typically a month to find another employer who will sponsor the H1B if you leave the first sponsor). He knew that when he applied and decided it was acceptable to him.

amideislas

That all sounds very convincing, blueboy. Until you look at the basic premise that there is some kind of immigration "crisis" of some exceptional magnitude, of which there is not (statistically anyway). Your opinion may be that there is a "crisis", but that's subjective.

But you also fail to consider the true source of the "problem"; Post-war England was in dire need of foreign labour, both skilled and unskilled to rebuild its severely damaged infrastructure and economy, and as it did in the war, leveraged what remained of the "Empire" to import that labour from it. And that changed the demographics substantially. It wasn't the EU, nor FOM, although as an EU member, England enjoyed the gift of free access to not only a far larger labour pool as the empire dismantled, but also free unfettered access to a market 7 times its size. And that's precisely how it managed to punch well above the weight of a modest island nation, following the collapse of the empire.
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So, as much as you might want to believe that leaving the EU will somehow "solve" this rather imaginary crisis, what you also fail to consider is the consequences of the remedy. And ironically, if England was so fearful of immigrants, it's had plenty of tools available to it, which it never chose to employ.

Yes, Brexit is very likely to happen, but it won't "solve" anything really. Just decades of continued politico-economic chaos while England attempts to figure out who it really is.

Bipat

'Foreign' students pay full fees. Universities (and some private schools) would have financial difficulty without them.

Cape Blue

Indeed, although constant run-rate would give us net zero - i.e. those arriving this year negated by those leaving.

GeniB

Spot on... The immigration issue was a complete red herring ,used to persuade certain people to vote for rather unpleasant characters . It was inflamed by TV coverage of the poor people trapped at Calais.Those refugees fleeing for their lives during the ( American) bombing of their homes. All grist to that handy political mill. EU,immigrants became mixed up with them ,again handily for the Brexiteers. The government really doesn't want to have to discuss immigration .They know it was a fat lie in the first place .Like the ludicrous idea that the ' UK is full'.Its not full, its stagnant. a museum that lives in the past ,and refuses to move forward.Why is that do we think?

Thairetired2016

Post Brexit you pick high skill Eastern Europeans.

Scamp

Indeed. It's not the nicest feeling on earth to know you've got a month to pack up your life and **** off but golly it's worth the cash.

What have Labour said about fees for normal UK folk? Will they continue to pay or are they being scrapped? They might need foreign students even more.

moneypenny20

According to some here in the aforementioned Australia, the Chinese are busy buying up every last acre and building in order to take us over. Be careful what you wish for

Thairetired2016

We had a Pakistani colleague who often invited my husband for dinner. The couple were British, grown up in Kenya, both had a university degree.. Dinner was for men only, the wife had to stay in the kitchen. She sat on the floor to eat. Old habits die hard.

Cape Blue

The UK's population has surged by several million over the past 20 years, it's countries like Germany that have "stagnated".

The UK is much more multicultural than most EU countries, it is also more welcoming than most.

People in Calais often aren't refugees coming from Syria etc, they are economic migrants (predominantly young men) from Africa.

It is true that the elites - both political and economic - don't want to reduce persistent high net immigration - they benefit from it and it flatters GDP (but not most other measures).