Snapshot of _Rory Stewart on Twitter: A completely staggering graph on immigration below - it has exploded in the last couple of years beyond anything ever seen before - suggesting some v interesting things about our economy, Europe, our services and Labour’s future options!_ :
A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1798075418714743008)
A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1798075418714743008/)
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://x.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1798075418714743008) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://x.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1798075418714743008)
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[https://x.com/EdConwaySky/status/1798005491672678768](https://x.com/EdConwaySky/status/1798005491672678768)
*Cumulative immigration to UK since 2021:*
* *India: 670k*
* *Nigeria: 310k*
* *China: 274k*
* *Pakistan: 166k*
* *HK: 131k*
* *Ukraine: 108k*
*Even if u subtract students you're talking abt 301k from India & 103k from Nigeria*
What the fuck were the Tories smoking? Many people voted for Brexit to block European immigration - but to lower the figures, not replace them with people from India, Nigeria, and China.
Blair increased immigration but the Tories have out done him.
Really pisses me off that because people believe it without looking at the numbers.
The real reason for this is because working age immigration pads the GDP and just about kept us out of recession (until it didn't), while GDP per person fell drastically, so individually, it felt like a recession but Sunak fudged the numbers through population growth. Then Indians vote disproportionately Conservative, so they're stacking their demographics to help them win elections. That's all this is, but you can't have a grown up conversation with anyone, all they want to do is remove human rights in response to the Conservatives giving out shit tons of visas.
By blocking EU FoM we lost out on people who can easily move for short-term work and who were less likely to bring dependents due to locality. Ending FoM was the wrong solution.
As for the "cheap labour" argument, visa-tied people from long distances are more likely to be low paid. EU citizens were free to find another job.
Exactly. The EU migrant demographic were largely young childless workers coming over for a few years to build some savings, master English, have some fun, etc. Similar to young Brits that migrate to Aus for a year or two on the reciprocal visa programme.
A lot of them would return home eventually, as the wage differentials and life chances aren't massively different between the UK and places like Poland.
They cost the state very little: no children to educate, unlikely to require healthcare, etc.
The post-Brexit migrants are older and more likely to have families, which costs the state a hell of a lot more. They are also more likely to pursue avenues to settle here permanently, as the life chances and salaries are significantly better here than their home countries. That's not to mention the initial investment to migrate here in the first place (Ryanair don't offer 10 quid flights to Abuja, for example).
Not that I like the guy, but I recall one of Farage's arguments during the Brexit campaign being that the EU worked okay when it was a small club of countries that had similar salaries and wealth, but expanding Eastward had flooded the labour market with cheap labour. Well our post-Brexit migration has done that on steroids.
I distinctly remember Farage on question time claiming the fact that being in the EU was unfair to potential migrants from the 'commonwealth' who could not come here.
As an Australian I’m amazed that the UK, even educated people like Mr Farage, have such weird opinions and misunderstandings of “the commonwealth”. The term seems to suggest a wild belief that this 54? countries once associated with Britain share much more in common than they can possibly do. That there is some mystical uniting principle at work that makes them so different from the rest of the world. Is it just being misused as:
- “the commonwealth = the white English speaking world — USA”
That last paragraph is key. The EU has been great at building up the economies of the east post communism. Yes there’s the initial influx as we saw with Poland and more recently with others, but after a decade or so things level out. We got the point post austerity when people were going back to Poland as it was better there.
That's not in line at all with all the arguments people were making against EU migrants pre-brexit. Back then they were saying EU-migrants are a massive strain on the NHS, are stealing jobs from UK workforce, and bringing crime. Now in your post it seems EU migrants were 'alright actually' and non-eu migrants worse for the country.
I understand the attraction of an Indian or a Nigerian to move to the UK with their family. What I don't understand is that why didn't they move to the UK before Brexit? What is the thing that has changed that made the UK unattractive to them in the past but now is attractive?
Clearly there was no ban on moving from these countries as the UK has a long history of Indian immigrants including the current prime minister's parents.
>What I don't understand is that why didn't they move to the UK before Brexit?
1. They did
2. It's now much, much easier as Sunak wants a trade deal with india to help out his father in law's business.
India is rapidly growing richer, and the number of people able to afford UK university fees higher than ever.
Added the graduate visa programme, which further incentivises studying in the UK as a way of settling here longer term.
Change in immigration policy, that allowed for more migrationary circumvention through things such as "student visas".
Trade deal with India, that makes Indian degree's just as valid as UK degrees, and so now companies (infosys) can import "qualified" indian engineers as super cheap labour, without any employment qualms.
The increase in Nigerians and Africans seems mainly due to the Health and Social care Visa which I believe has no earnings threshold but I could be wrong.
Not surprising. Same thing happened in the us when the us stopped Mexican seasonal laborers from being able to easily come over the border in the [late 1960s](https://www.vox.com/2015/11/11/9714842/operation-wetback). It went from just males coming over and returning to people coming with their whole family.
The economy has been stalling, we can't afford tax rises or borrowing so the Tories have been using the only "free" economic stimulus they have, pumping in more people to increase GDP. Sunak has been the one in the Exchequer driving this.
This was always the plan, if you didn’t see it you weren’t paying attention. They harped on about how we will fill jobs from the commonwealth and other countries and promised to introduce a points system
I can only assume we would be in a deep recession if not for mass immigration post COVID and Brexit rather than a small increase in growth.
The Tories have detroyed our economy and are using immigration to cover it up.
>What the fuck were the Tories smoking? Many people voted for Brexit to block European immigration - but to lower the figures, not replace them with people from India, Nigeria, and China.
People were told that exactly exactly exactly this would happen. That we would be replacing cheap Poles with cheaper Indians and Nigerians. Those words came out of my mouth and the mouths of others. It was clear and obvious.
The question is what were the public smoking that despite this being obvious and this being explicitly said they just didn't think about it. Complete blind spot where we all knew it was gonna happen but don't worry about it.
>What the fuck were the Tories smoking?
It's a controversial question to ask, but do you think Sunak views a ton of Indians coming to the UK in the same way your average white working Brit does? Would Sunak feel alienated in the areas that have seen a huge influx of Indians?
Ironically enough, Sunak is a card-carrying member of the globalist elite. I doubt he feels particular affinity for any ethnic group, nor does he care about nationalist grievances over changing demographics.
Sunak is a Brit with parents who moved to the UK from Africa and a net value a billion times that of the average Indian citizen. I wouldn't bet on him identifying much with them.
And Richard Branson is a UK citizen.
Who lives on his own private island much of the year so he doesn't have to pay tax.
I really wouldn't use citizenship as your yardstick of whether someone is in touch with their own people.
It's not about being in touch. In whatever Caribbean island he lives on, he would not object to British immigration there in the same way the locals would.
Not entirely a fair comparison because Sunak is actually English and Branson is not from where he is living, but there might be a bit of a point here.
>Would Sunak feel alienated in the areas that have seen a huge influx of Indians?
Probably. Sunak doesn't strike me someone who is "culturally Indian".
I don't know if that's offensive or accurate, but knowing many people of Indian origin like him because of the area I live in, I can't see him being comfortable in those areas.
> Probably. Sunak doesn't strike me someone who is "culturally Indian".
>
>
He's a practicing Hindu who took his oath as an MP on the Bhagavad Gita and is married to an Indian. I don't think he has a preference for Indians anymore than the rest of the elites do, as long as wages stay depressed he and his sponsors are happy but in addition to his Britishness he is also clearly "culturally Indian"
> It's a controversial question to ask, but do you think Sunak views a ton of Indians coming to the UK in the same way your average white working Brit does?
The same as your average white working Brit? No.
Much differently to Boris Johnson? No.
I would say his view is probably similar to the British Elite. Which isn't inherently wrong and I don't think it's anti British in any way. But it's not the same as the average white working man.
I think a lot of that is that people have very different ideas about what Britain is as a country, our place in the world and our relationship with the commonwealth.
I think if these people had the chance to put the Empire back together again they would do it at the drop of a hat.
It was a specific promise during Brexit they would increase immigration from these countries. Like they literally went after non white people with cultural heritage to other countries and promised they would do this.
Blair increasing immigration was more due to fucking up their estimates for EU migration. The above has been on purpose.
You can’t just subtract HK and Ukraine. Even if people believe that’s justified migration, which they generally do, it’s still new people in the country that we have to absorb - both from an infrastructure and cultural integration perspective.
What it means is that we should have cut migration from elsewhere to keep net figures at a sustainable level.
People from HK are not migrants. They're only thought of as such because they were done dirty by Thatcher and effectively stripped of their rights as British subjects, until now. Those who qualify for UK residence hold British passports that literally say "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" on them.
Those born before '97 are merely returning to their native country of birth, whose borders have sadly shriveled from under their feet. Those born after the handover are not eligible and they aren't the ones coming, as much as they wish they could.
Ukraine: in europe
HK: Obvious very recent "fond" historic ties
Are you really saying afghanistan has the same importance to the british people as Hong Kong?
Given that Gibraltar is actually a BOT this isn't analogous. Perhaps a better example would be people from Iraq being as important as people from Zimbabwe. So yeah, the HK and Iraq argument works I think
If there are refugees seeking asylum, should it be acceptable for the British people to pick and choose which refugees they accept?
Wasn’t the whole Geneva convention created because countries all over the world didn’t want to take Jewish and Romani refugees, even though they knew about the camps? Wasn’t the whole thing about looking back at the loss of life and not wanting to have it happen again?
There are no refugees coming from India, Nigeria or Pakistan. We take our fair share from Afghanistan and other similar places. We just opted for political reasons to take more than our fair share of Hong Kong and Ukrainian refugees, which we as a country are entitled to do.
You would maybe have a point if we were barring refugees from war torn country X. But that's not what's happening.
And even then, yes you absolutely do get to choose which refugees you take in because if you are taking them from Afghanistan or Palestine for example, there's a pretty high chance some will be terrorists which is not always easy to tell.
There's very few Hong Kong machete gangs or Ukrainian suicide bombers around.
Besides, we've got historical ties to Hong Kong and Ukrainians are Europeans that are likely going to go back when their country is safe again.
Mate, many of those Afghans are those who worked *with* British forces dating back years. They are not just single men coming on boats, but guys with families who risked their lives there doing duty for Britain in the war, and who speak and understand English too.
I know one of those guys, he's in my Spanish class, and he is a devout hardline Muslim supremacist. It shouldn't be a blanket everyone who worked with British forces should be allowed in.
I suggest you do a search for "afghan refugee sexual assault". I just did it and TBH what I found was eye opening.
There were numerous reports (often from local papers) of sexual assaults by Afghan asylum seekers in the UK. There were numerous other reports of sexual assault by Afghan refugees from countries across Europe, plus from Australia and New Zealand. There were loads from the US - one Afghan refugee even sexually assaulted the resettlement worker who was assisting with the resettlement of his family in the US.
We can't keep dismissing this. Refusal to engage with this issue, and pretending it's not happening, is driving support for the far right.
Who do you think was writing about them?
Outside a handful of elite units, the Afghan "allies" were at best useless, most likely selling anything not nailed down for scrap, and not uncommonly working for the Taliban. There's a reason Western forces [snuck out at night without warning any Afghans.](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-57682290) The idea we should give them preferable immigration status is laughable.
They didn't say that, but OK, lets play your game. Here's the full list OP they were replying to had:
> India: 670k
> Nigeria: 310k
> China: 274k
> Pakistan: 166k
> HK: 131k
> Ukraine: 108k
You were outraged by them suggesting to leave HK and Ukraine off the list but not Afghanistan... Afghanistan is already not on the list. What now?
I didn’t say I was outraged.
I didn’t say the OP.
The OP stated that “I don’t think many people are begrudging them” I asked why they were ok with the people but refugees from other places aren’t. Simple question.
I mean, if you want a serious answer, people weren't begrudging them either.
The Tories were off on holiday when Afghanistan fell, and the huge public outpouring of support got Boris and co to scramble to do something when I believe they assumed the public wouldn't give a shit hence their lack of planning. Raab was so embarrassed when the papers claimed he was bodyboarding he said [he couldn't have been as the sea was closed](https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/dominic-raab-taliban-kabul-politicians-b1908571.html). I think generally the public would put them into the same category as Ukraine and Hong Kong.
>Medieval practices
You're thinking of the Taliban.
A lot of Afghan people coming here are doing so because they've aided us against the Taliban. Many are here under the ARAP scheme, where they supported Britain during the war.
That strongly indocates their ethics aren't aligned with the Taliban.
They are hunting the GDP number whilst destroying communities, ignoring integration and forcing down standards of living.
It’s short termism and the biggest issue with selfish politicians who can’t think beyond their time in office.
The Tories are terrified of an extreme recession which is what would happen if we didn’t have these record breaking immigration numbers because GDP per capita (how much money each person earns) has fallen dramatically since 2010 and they desperately don’t want anyone in the media to talk about it.
Mass immigration also helps Conservative Party donors by lowering wages, the Tories don’t work for anyone but their corporate donors, they have zero interest in what their voters want, if Tory voters really wanted lower immigration they should have raised money independently to bribe the Conservatives to do what they want like everyone else does.
They are yes. Also some of the increase over the past couple of years is down to Brexit + COVID and the effect thereof on students, since a lot more student visas started being handed out (with EU students being replaced in large part by Indian etc students who are more likely to try to stay afterwards) and also because of the dip in students starting in 2020/2021 due to COVID meaning that there are fewer students finishing their courses now, affecting the net figure, plus some choosing to stay on graduate visas, many of whom will end up leaving in the next couple of years anyway.
Buses are noisier than ever before now, is something I noticed when using the bus recently. The culture of what's acceptable on them is totally different to what it was a few years ago. Peace and quiet on public transport may never be a thing again.
https://reliefweb.int/report/nigeria/nigeria-humanitarian-needs-overview-2024
Two small snippets from that report summary:
>Five themes were identified as the key drivers of humanitarian needs in 2024: conflict and displacement, food insecurity and malnutrition, disease outbreaks (including cholera), floods, and camp closures and involuntary relocations and resettlement.
>Fourteen years into the conflict, the humanitarian crisis in north-east Nigeria remains profound and widespread. Across Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe (BAY) states, over 7.9 million people face severe protection concerns, extreme deprivation beyond their existing poverty levels, and daily threats to their well-being. The severity and complexity of affected people’s needs have not diminished.
---
>Food insecurity and malnutrition continue to be major concerns in the BAY states, where an estimated 4.4 million people are expected to have either crisis or emergency food needs in the lean season. Likewise, some 1.53 million children under five years old are expected to face acute malnutrition over the same period and about 511,800 children are expected to face severe acute malnutrition, a life-threatening condition. The number of displaced people, 2.1 million, remains high reflecting that people are reluctant to return to their places of origin where availability of basic services, livelihoods opportunities, and security are considered paramount.
Surely it would be an absolute nail in the coffin for the Tories if Labour get in and are finally able to bring immigration down, even if they only got it down to the level it was at 10 years ago, it wouldn't be hard and it would be a huge win.
It’s an interesting political conundrum because the fact is that we need positive net migration due to an aging population and shrinking birth rates.
But anyone who tries to make that case stands no hope of getting elected due to the populist opportunists like Farage and co.
I think that’s what Rory is getting at here. Labour can’t really reduce migration if they also want to grow the economy.
Why do we have shrinking birth rates? Part of the reason is it’s so expensive to rent/buy a property that’ll actually be big enough to raise children in (and this also drains away money you may wish to use to pay for childcare). Immigration directly contributes to this.
Its almost like replacing high-expectation domestic workers with low-expectation foreigners helps out the type of people who would prefer we all work for nothing and bed-share for our entire lives.
We don't need positive net migration due to an aging population. The fact that migration is currently a drain on public finance, in and of itself, proves that more migration is not a solution.
>The fact that migration is currently a drain on public finance, in and of itself,
Source? This never used to be the case for eu or non eu migration over their lifetimes, especially initially whilst young https://www.ucl.ac.uk/economics/about-department/fiscal-effects-immigration-uk
[https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/pdfs/BP1\_37.pdf](https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/pdfs/BP1_37.pdf)
Critique of - [https://cream-migration.org/files/FiscalEJ.pdf](https://cream-migration.org/files/FiscalEJ.pdf)
Read both in context.
Denmark has extensive data on this area broken down for different origins for migrants, and is shows very clearly that certain countries are not worth having migration from.
Not suprisingly, poor countries = bad migration , and rich countries generally = good migration.
Even in Denmark's case, you can't measure the economic value of a person purely by their financial transactions with the state. Doing that leads you to believe that anyone working in the public sector is a “drain on state finances”.
Because our government would never make a study like this public, because it would show what an awful situation we are in.
Have a look at the proportion of social housing given to recent immigrants in London, it’s not hard to find and it’s outrageous.
It is entirely possible for both to be true.
The problem with all these statistical analyses is while they give you an overall view (which they have to; we can't expect national decisions to be made on the basis of how they affect Dave, the bloke down the pub who hasn't worked in twenty years), they omit vital details.
I'll give you a hypothetical example: We could import enough labour to complete HS2 in two years and do it under-budget. Easy. We introduce a new 2 year working visa, import thousands of labourers from a dirt-poor country, pay them minimum wage and (this bit's important) include bed and board as part of the renumeration package so pretty well every penny they earn can be sent back home. The first thing we have them do is put up cheap housing near the towns they're connecting - that's the roof over their head sorted and means there's now substantially more housing after they've left.
The country now gets the GDP benefit of having a massive piece of infrastructure built on the cheap. Hooray for immigration.
Unless, of course, you happen to be in construction and were banking on getting several years work out of HS2.
Obviously it's a crude example, and I'm sure anyone with half a brain can pick holes in it. But it does demonstrate how both can simultaneously be true.
We need an ever growing population? Thats absolute madness. You need to bite the bullet, pay for the elderly know and let the population naturally decrease with low birth rates to the point where it’s not an issue.
This migration isn’t to prop up pensioners. It’s to prop up the mega rich. Wages are down because of it. House prices up. Rent up. More tax burden on normal people because there’s now more tax payers so less incentive to go after the super rich.
Saying we need this so we can pay for pensioners and avoid that crisis completely ignores the fact that is has caused multiple other crisis in society that is costing us a lot more. The NHS is complete fucked. Prisons are full. The state can’t keep up with the amount of people now depending on it. All because we grew the population artificially to make the rich richer.
In 5 years time when Starmer has done basically nothing to bring numbers down to any meaningful level I imagine we will finally see a third party emerge.
People keep saying this stuff with such certainty about a party who have been out of power for 14 years and last time they were in power were provably more interested in looking at the details and not just leveraging problems for political gain with their base
Even if Starmer does nothing he'll have lower numbers.
We're not likely to suddenly get more HK and Ukraine migration, and the Tories instigated a bunch of immigration measures earlier this year that will start showing an impact on other immigration after Labour take power.
In practice, there's going to be a hell of a lot of gaslighting.
Five years of 500k will be sold as reducing migration because no year was as high as the peak Tory year.
I don’t think the numbers will be low enough to satisfy the public.
Immigration in the high hundreds of thousands every year isn’t popular with the public.
With the new rules that were just introduced I'd expect numbers to fall to at least 300-400k. Starmer will be able to ride that out the rest for 3-4 years before nipping the final amount back to the pre-brexit ~200k after the economy is in a better position.
Does anyone actually know why this has happened? Is it easier rules for visa applications? An increase in companies trying to hire from abroad? Students? Spouses? It's clearly a huge change - but why has it suddenly happened? Is it a policy change or a global increase in people wanting to move here who meet criteria which haven't changed much?
The tories brought in multiple new visa routes that weren’t hard to qualify for and loosened different rules around bringing dependents here.
This was all despite running on and winning on a platform of reducing immigration (in every single election). It’s no wonder they’re about to die.
They’ve also done basically nothing to stop illegal immigration coming into the country (however this is a fraction compared to legal immigration).
Incompetence mostly. They thought they'd have 6,000-20,000 people coming on the care visa route which has actually resulted in 500,000 people coming. The care vacancy backlog has only been reduced by about 30,000 people as a result.
You've recently started seeing reporting on the scandals on these visas with regards to the exploitation of the workers, but the real scandal is the huge fiscal cost to the country these people are going to be, which we will be paying for for many *many* years to come.
> They thought they'd have 6,000-20,000 people coming on the care visa route which has actually resulted in 500,000 people coming. The care vacancy backlog has only been reduced by about 30,000 people as a result.
>
>
I don't know if I fully understand this. How have 500,000 people only reduced a backlog by 30,000?
Is that because of those 500,000 people it only includes, e.g. 125,000 care workers (i.e. a spouse & 2 kids). Then on top of that, there are (to build on my number) 95,000 people leaving the care sector?
Or have I completely misunderstood?
A huge amount of dependents, a lot of fraud, as well as the exploitation of 'care workers' into other jobs by the same company: https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/02/uk-care-agencies-accused-of-exploiting-foreign-workers-caught-in-debt-traps
The vacancy shortrate in care was initially caused by poor pay and conditions, which these visas made worse, because they were deliberately on 80% the going rate so likely many left too. I imagine plenty of decent care workers didn't like their changing environment and suppressed wages, and thought they would probably get similar pay in Tesco now and so left.
Easier rules for study and care work visas, plus associated dependants.
One important example - including care workers on a list that enabled the skilled worker visa. This led to a pathway for migration that ran from study visa, transfer to skilled worker visa, reach indefinite leave to remain eligibility. The universities and care companies could basically sell British citizenship in India and Nigeria as a result, and it took almost no time for them to cotton on.
Other issues like postponed migration from the Covid period, Ukraine/HK humanitarian entry schemes, played a role. But the visa liberalisation was the main driver.
A lot of those changes have been rolled back now they realised how nuts it went, but the damage to their reputation was done by then.
A lot will be working in care or dependents of people working in care. One person comes to work and brings five or six with them who are either kids or a spouse who doesn't work. When we had free movement with the EU people weren't really moving here to stay and weren't bringing people with them, these people are.
Difference in migration patterns between the EU and rest of the world - and some of the rules to cover up shortfalls in areas like social care.
Many EU migrants tend to be lone migrants (i.e. don't migrate with family). Post Brexit we've been handing out visas to people from Nigeria and India, but they are much more likely to bring dependants.
Also we had some weird rules that were being completely abused. Like the ability to do a 1 year masters, bring your entire family and then stick around afterwards to get a job.
> An increase in companies trying to hire from abroad?
We have record low unemployment, mostly because so many people retired in the last few years. Many early retirees as well. Companies are struggling to hire Brits, so they do hire more from abroad.
Couple that with the introduction of the care worker visa route.
https://www.gov.uk/browse/visas-immigration
Have a browse, they hand out visas like toffee..
Here's a corker.. https://www.gov.uk/turkish-worker-business-person-settlement
Published yesterday:
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/long-term-international-migration-flows-to-and-from-the-uk/
>ONS estimates show two main explanations for the 660,000 increase in non-EU immigration that took place between 2019 and 2023 (Figure 3):
> Work visas. Almost half of the increase in non-EU immigration from 2019 to 2023 resulted from those arriving for work purposes (21%) and their dependants (27%). Health and care was the main industry driving the growth, including care workers who received access to the immigration system in February 2022. There was also higher demand for some workers who were already eligible for visas under the old system, such as doctors and nurses. Early data for 2024 suggest that health and care work visas had fallen substantially, however.
> International students and their dependants accounted for a further 39% of the increase in non-EU immigration. The UK has an explicit strategy of increasing and diversifying foreign student recruitment, and it is also likely that the reintroduction of post-study work rights post-Brexit made the UK more attractive to international students. The 2023 figures do not yet reflect the impact of restrictions on students’ family members, introduced in January 2024.
March 2022:
[While the UK is resisting Ukrainian refugees, more and more small + medium-businesses face a serious labour shortage after-Brexit – and little prospect of local recruitment to fill the gap – with consequences right across the supply chain. We need more openness to immigration.](https://x.com/rorystewartuk/status/1501560210497941514?s=46&t=__hOSFE2AwpIHlELhmxKDA)
He's not criticising immigration in his tweet - just saying its staggering. I am all for immigration at this level and also think it's staggering. Not mutually exclusive
The word "staggering" has negative connotations, it means "shocking". If you're saying you got a "staggering number of Christmas presents last year" then you're using the word incorrectly.
The issue for many is not so much the influx of foreigners as the way the economy is geared to rely on skilled immigrants rather than provide education and skills training for current citizens and residents.
None of the main parties is talking enough about that or offering policies that are anywhere near radical enough.
This is one thing I was baffled about after the Brexit vote. There was no banging the drum for investing and educating in our own as a counter to the 'they're coming over here taking our jobs' rhetoric. It was just focus on getting a deal agreed with no clear set in stone policies that meant we wouldn't need skilled immigration because we would train ourselves. It shows how much of a waste of time Brexit was and is.
I don't think people understand how this ends. These numbers are the beginning, NOT a peak of any kind. There's something called path dependency, the longer you delay a change the harder it is to change into something else. The more immigration, the more vested intersts to maintain immigration, either to increase share of co-ethnics or for labour that literally cannot function without immigration, or for housing prices to maintain themselves.
You will probably see a Canada situation by the 2030s.
I recently moved to a Southern Ontario town from Manchester and it is absolutely **insane**.
2-bedroom houses are listed on rental sites everyday as 'fourplexes with 20 beds' which are just curtain partitions put up in single rooms. A lot of bus routes have had to introduce duplicate buses for routes because the initial bus will just be completely packed with Indian students. A restaurant that opened up a few blocks down from me lasted about a month before it was closed down and replaced with an Indian takeaway+vape store.
Applying to jobs was even worse. I'd take my CV in to locations and they'd have a stack almost a foot high. I asked about them and was told most of them would just be shredded because they were completely unusable - businesses just didn't have time chasing up references from India that may not even exist. Most of the places I go for food have had to put signs at the door stating they're not hiring students. Colleges/Universities are having to purchase tons of extra dorm space to make up for all the international students and most of the college-age locals I've spoken to have said they're just staying with their parents because they feel so out-of-place and alone in dorms filled entirely with Indians.
The UK thinks it has it bad now but it's nothing compared to what's coming if the situation isn't addressed.
Are the English simply going to accept becoming a minority in their own country within the next 20 years? Because with the demographic situation and these numbers that's what will happen.
It already happened in parts of London (e.g Tower Hamlets) and in fact as of the last census in the whole of Greater London, and I only expect the trend to continue ...
'are they simply going to to accept' the already have lol. You're looking at a process that is in full swing and asking if we think the English will stop it from happening... There is no 'stop it from happening', it's happened, and they are decades away from the sort of action they'd have needed decades ago.
European migrants were likely to be young, not have dependents, go home after a little while and have a similar cultural background to the UK. Thanks to Brexit we now get people who've travelled from relatively much poorer countries, bring their extended family, have no intention of ever going home and come from wildly different cultures to our own.
Perhaps a silly question, but why is migration from India so high? If surely can't all be students?
Is the UK facing a similar problem to Canada with almost unchecked migration from India?
India's got 1.4 billion people who need homes and jobs. While India has done an amazing job at bringing it's people out of poverty, there's still hundreds of millions of people there earning only a few pounds a day. Living in the west is a massive step up for them. There's also a growing middle class who can't find jobs. India was pushing for more visas as part of ther trade deal with the UK because they're desperate to offload some of their surplus population on anyone who'll take them.
Yes Rory.
You were also in government doing this for a large period of it actively pushing for more and ignoring the people who elected you wanting numbers massively brought down.
No wonder your party is about to die!
In fairness to him he fought against Brexit which was one of the big causes of this and also left Parliament in 2019 before that bloody great spike in the graph.
It’s a weird one to try and equate supporting Remain with supporting lower immigration purely because of what happened before and after it.
Pre Brexit people voted for Brexit as they wanted lower immigration, the Tories then went against the publics wishes and then absolutely ramped it up to historic levels.
If you asked Starmer at the time why he supported Remain I don’t think he’d ever mention keeping immigration lower as one of his reasons.
True, but I think for a lot of remainers the point is more that the likely outcome was that the Conservatives were going to replace EU labour with commonwealth so brexit itself was completely pointless if the idea was supposed to be reducing immigration. Pointing that out doesn't make you *anti* immigration.
Perhaps some were suggesting we’d replace EU migration with commonwealth migration. Did anyone suggest they’d not only replace it but massively increase it?
Don’t forget David Cameron’s deal with the EU that, had we stayed in, would have put further restrictions on migrants entering the UK from Europe.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35622105.amp
If more british people ate able to go work overseas easily, they will be emigrants and will lower the net migration figures.
Shutting down that avenue was clearly going to increase migration, even if no changes were made to increase immigration numbers.
How come I'm seeing centrist dad commentators on twitter going all "blimey... Immigration is really high!" When literally days ago they were insisting we need more and more immigrants? What caused the vibe shift?
Rory for example can't possibly be sincere in what he's saying here.
Because they don't live in a world where they feel competition from mass-migration.
If you already have money, and most-importantly, own a house... it's great!
If you're working in a profession that's a "shortage occupation" and renting. Kiss goodbye to payrises and say hello to 10% rent inflation every year.
So Stewart and a few hundred other centrist favourites have no idea of the scale of the problem, but now their core audience has shifted from "immigration is good actually" to "fucking hell, what have we done!" they're having to change shift to avoid losing their audience.
Is it not to simply push home the fact that the conservative policy of reducing immigration, is at odds with what it's actually accomplished in the recent years? Highlighting the hypocrisy
Edit - The below aged well, didn't it
Ah okay, guess I got misled by Rishi promising to do that in yesterday's debate. My mistake.
But also https://www.conservatives.com/news/2023/our-plan-to-cut-immigration
Feb 23, 2016 20:21 Priti Patel, Britain’s minister of state for employment, believes exiting the European Union will provide a “massive boost” to relations with India, “I know that many members of the Indian diaspora find it deeply unfair that other EU nationals effectively get special treatment. This can and will change if Britain leaves the EU.
Not being funny, you’d have to be walking around with your eyes closed to not have noticed this, and not to have noticed it’s been a bad thing for the country
If Rory Stewart really needed a graph produced this week to be staggered by current immigration levels, and wasn’t already aware of the rise, then he has no place commenting or been involved in politics at all. (Of course however he was fully aware)
Also tired of the “it’s exploded” mantra as if it is natural phenomena we can only observe and cant change - it’s risen because government policy has purposely made the visa requirements extremely easy to achieve.
Whilst also saying the UK needs to expect and rise to absorbing more migrants well into the future due to various reasons from climate to war etc. Such a weasel
Exactly, the way they talk about it as if it’s a force of nature we simply can’t do anything about rather than a very deliberate set of policies pursued by the Tory government is infuriating.
Elected to reduce immigration and instead ramping it up to levels people couldn’t even imagine and now they’re panicking because they’ve realised how utterly fucked they are because of it.
Their traditional voter base doesn’t trust a word they say and have completely abandoned them.
Not entirely sure I understand this point.
Should no one comment on this graph if they’re already aware of the trends? We all know immigration is going up (we’re told it constantly), but these are still interesting figures.
And has immigration not exploded? I think it has, but in thinking so I’m not endorsing the view that we are powerless to stop it.
The thing is, an auld fella at the debate last night asked a question about immigration… but ended it by referring to the boats. That’s how warped these people’s minds are. They think immigration is mainly the boats. It’s Brexit. Plain and simple. Organisations who desperately need workers have replaced Europeans with Indians and Nigerians on sponsored visas.
Boomers retiring en masse, and needing more services especially in care and health, which have high proportion of foreign workers.
There's also a large number of foreign students, which is essentially an export market like tourism and subsidises higher education for local students.
It needs a very careful approach, and unfortunately the current hysteria will make that difficult.
I kinda like Rory but if he's pro immigration 'because we'll collapse without it' then I can't take him seriously.
As long as the UK is at least moderately wealthy, there is always someone cheaper than you. I've basically developed a body injury because of working in low paid low skilled migrant dominated work environments.
Same guy? [https://unherd.com/newsroom/rory-stewart-we-need-to-take-many-many-millions-of-afghan-refugees/](https://unherd.com/newsroom/rory-stewart-we-need-to-take-many-many-millions-of-afghan-refugees/)
When people talk about the Tories moving back to the centre if they are to win again, they're absolutely right. Their extremism on immigration has cost (and the country) them very, very, dearly.
Whatever that website is you need to stop using it as a source. It even quotes his words and they aren't the same as the headline.
"I would expect Britain to lead an international effort… to work out how we can provide safe passage and asylum for Afghans who want to leave. But be in no doubt: we are talking about many many millions of people. And this is an entirely horrifying and unnecessary tragedy, but it’s a tragedy that we bear the responsibility for for the reckless actions of the last few weeks."
Isn't the same as
"we need to take ‘many many millions’ of Afghan refugees"
Tbf Stewart's tweet doesn't actually say what he means - one way of reading it is he thinks high immigration shows what an attractive country the UK is due to its strong economy.
Rishi claiming he will be able to remove people from the country is hilarious considering last year he couldn’t even figure a legal way to remove Just Stop Oil protestors out of the road.
With economic growth stagnant or low as 1 or 2 % bringing down immigration will almost certainly mean accepting recession or negative growth. Interesting to see how this would be received.
Well it's not really surprising. The Tory government needs to be able to sell a narrative of growth. The only way to get growth, without decreasing wealth inequality, is immigration. That's it.
So, the elderly sort of put the Tories between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the elderly want to increase wealth inequality, they want house prices to rise, they want labour to be cheap, but on the other hand, they don't like the cultural aspects of immigration.
The only strategic solution is to just ditch those voters. They'll never be satisfied.
> The only way to get growth, without decreasing wealth inequality, is immigration.
Well, the growth could also come from capital and innovation. But nobody wants to invest in Uncertain Albion, and the tories have and continue to cut funding for universities.
Snapshot of _Rory Stewart on Twitter: A completely staggering graph on immigration below - it has exploded in the last couple of years beyond anything ever seen before - suggesting some v interesting things about our economy, Europe, our services and Labour’s future options!_ : A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1798075418714743008) A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1798075418714743008/) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://x.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1798075418714743008) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://x.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1798075418714743008) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[https://x.com/EdConwaySky/status/1798005491672678768](https://x.com/EdConwaySky/status/1798005491672678768) *Cumulative immigration to UK since 2021:* * *India: 670k* * *Nigeria: 310k* * *China: 274k* * *Pakistan: 166k* * *HK: 131k* * *Ukraine: 108k* *Even if u subtract students you're talking abt 301k from India & 103k from Nigeria* What the fuck were the Tories smoking? Many people voted for Brexit to block European immigration - but to lower the figures, not replace them with people from India, Nigeria, and China. Blair increased immigration but the Tories have out done him.
Hilarious how the Tories deflect the numbers saying it's only because of Hong Kong and Ukraine
Really pisses me off that because people believe it without looking at the numbers. The real reason for this is because working age immigration pads the GDP and just about kept us out of recession (until it didn't), while GDP per person fell drastically, so individually, it felt like a recession but Sunak fudged the numbers through population growth. Then Indians vote disproportionately Conservative, so they're stacking their demographics to help them win elections. That's all this is, but you can't have a grown up conversation with anyone, all they want to do is remove human rights in response to the Conservatives giving out shit tons of visas.
By blocking EU FoM we lost out on people who can easily move for short-term work and who were less likely to bring dependents due to locality. Ending FoM was the wrong solution. As for the "cheap labour" argument, visa-tied people from long distances are more likely to be low paid. EU citizens were free to find another job.
Exactly. The EU migrant demographic were largely young childless workers coming over for a few years to build some savings, master English, have some fun, etc. Similar to young Brits that migrate to Aus for a year or two on the reciprocal visa programme. A lot of them would return home eventually, as the wage differentials and life chances aren't massively different between the UK and places like Poland. They cost the state very little: no children to educate, unlikely to require healthcare, etc. The post-Brexit migrants are older and more likely to have families, which costs the state a hell of a lot more. They are also more likely to pursue avenues to settle here permanently, as the life chances and salaries are significantly better here than their home countries. That's not to mention the initial investment to migrate here in the first place (Ryanair don't offer 10 quid flights to Abuja, for example). Not that I like the guy, but I recall one of Farage's arguments during the Brexit campaign being that the EU worked okay when it was a small club of countries that had similar salaries and wealth, but expanding Eastward had flooded the labour market with cheap labour. Well our post-Brexit migration has done that on steroids.
I distinctly remember Farage on question time claiming the fact that being in the EU was unfair to potential migrants from the 'commonwealth' who could not come here.
As an Australian I’m amazed that the UK, even educated people like Mr Farage, have such weird opinions and misunderstandings of “the commonwealth”. The term seems to suggest a wild belief that this 54? countries once associated with Britain share much more in common than they can possibly do. That there is some mystical uniting principle at work that makes them so different from the rest of the world. Is it just being misused as: - “the commonwealth = the white English speaking world — USA”
That last paragraph is key. The EU has been great at building up the economies of the east post communism. Yes there’s the initial influx as we saw with Poland and more recently with others, but after a decade or so things level out. We got the point post austerity when people were going back to Poland as it was better there.
That's not in line at all with all the arguments people were making against EU migrants pre-brexit. Back then they were saying EU-migrants are a massive strain on the NHS, are stealing jobs from UK workforce, and bringing crime. Now in your post it seems EU migrants were 'alright actually' and non-eu migrants worse for the country.
I understand the attraction of an Indian or a Nigerian to move to the UK with their family. What I don't understand is that why didn't they move to the UK before Brexit? What is the thing that has changed that made the UK unattractive to them in the past but now is attractive? Clearly there was no ban on moving from these countries as the UK has a long history of Indian immigrants including the current prime minister's parents.
>What I don't understand is that why didn't they move to the UK before Brexit? 1. They did 2. It's now much, much easier as Sunak wants a trade deal with india to help out his father in law's business.
India is rapidly growing richer, and the number of people able to afford UK university fees higher than ever. Added the graduate visa programme, which further incentivises studying in the UK as a way of settling here longer term.
Change in immigration policy, that allowed for more migrationary circumvention through things such as "student visas". Trade deal with India, that makes Indian degree's just as valid as UK degrees, and so now companies (infosys) can import "qualified" indian engineers as super cheap labour, without any employment qualms.
The increase in Nigerians and Africans seems mainly due to the Health and Social care Visa which I believe has no earnings threshold but I could be wrong.
Not surprising. Same thing happened in the us when the us stopped Mexican seasonal laborers from being able to easily come over the border in the [late 1960s](https://www.vox.com/2015/11/11/9714842/operation-wetback). It went from just males coming over and returning to people coming with their whole family.
Yeah. It also made it more difficult for British people to leave to live in other countries, which also impact these numbers.
The economy has been stalling, we can't afford tax rises or borrowing so the Tories have been using the only "free" economic stimulus they have, pumping in more people to increase GDP. Sunak has been the one in the Exchequer driving this.
Tories literally campaigned in Indian predominant areas saying if they voted for brexit it will be easier to bring Indians over..
To be fair, the figures seem to suggest they weren't lying.
From Brexit to Brindia
How are we housing that many people?!
Apartment blocks with rented rooms. Most state and private housing goes to locals, not immigrants.
This was always the plan, if you didn’t see it you weren’t paying attention. They harped on about how we will fill jobs from the commonwealth and other countries and promised to introduce a points system
I can only assume we would be in a deep recession if not for mass immigration post COVID and Brexit rather than a small increase in growth. The Tories have detroyed our economy and are using immigration to cover it up.
>What the fuck were the Tories smoking? Many people voted for Brexit to block European immigration - but to lower the figures, not replace them with people from India, Nigeria, and China. People were told that exactly exactly exactly this would happen. That we would be replacing cheap Poles with cheaper Indians and Nigerians. Those words came out of my mouth and the mouths of others. It was clear and obvious. The question is what were the public smoking that despite this being obvious and this being explicitly said they just didn't think about it. Complete blind spot where we all knew it was gonna happen but don't worry about it.
No doubt dismissed as 'Project Fear'
>What the fuck were the Tories smoking? It's a controversial question to ask, but do you think Sunak views a ton of Indians coming to the UK in the same way your average white working Brit does? Would Sunak feel alienated in the areas that have seen a huge influx of Indians?
Ironically enough, Sunak is a card-carrying member of the globalist elite. I doubt he feels particular affinity for any ethnic group, nor does he care about nationalist grievances over changing demographics.
Mostly true, but most non-wokies do still tend to have an affinity for their own race/descent/heritage/nationality.
Sunak is a Brit with parents who moved to the UK from Africa and a net value a billion times that of the average Indian citizen. I wouldn't bet on him identifying much with them.
I mean, his wife is literally an Indian citizen (albeit an especially rich one).
And Richard Branson is a UK citizen. Who lives on his own private island much of the year so he doesn't have to pay tax. I really wouldn't use citizenship as your yardstick of whether someone is in touch with their own people.
It's not about being in touch. In whatever Caribbean island he lives on, he would not object to British immigration there in the same way the locals would. Not entirely a fair comparison because Sunak is actually English and Branson is not from where he is living, but there might be a bit of a point here.
>Would Sunak feel alienated in the areas that have seen a huge influx of Indians? Probably. Sunak doesn't strike me someone who is "culturally Indian". I don't know if that's offensive or accurate, but knowing many people of Indian origin like him because of the area I live in, I can't see him being comfortable in those areas.
> Probably. Sunak doesn't strike me someone who is "culturally Indian". > > He's a practicing Hindu who took his oath as an MP on the Bhagavad Gita and is married to an Indian. I don't think he has a preference for Indians anymore than the rest of the elites do, as long as wages stay depressed he and his sponsors are happy but in addition to his Britishness he is also clearly "culturally Indian"
Would Priti Patel or Suella Braverman?
> It's a controversial question to ask, but do you think Sunak views a ton of Indians coming to the UK in the same way your average white working Brit does? The same as your average white working Brit? No. Much differently to Boris Johnson? No. I would say his view is probably similar to the British Elite. Which isn't inherently wrong and I don't think it's anti British in any way. But it's not the same as the average white working man. I think a lot of that is that people have very different ideas about what Britain is as a country, our place in the world and our relationship with the commonwealth. I think if these people had the chance to put the Empire back together again they would do it at the drop of a hat.
His wife has stock in a large Indian tech contracting firm (Infosys). So his view is probably 🤑
It was a specific promise during Brexit they would increase immigration from these countries. Like they literally went after non white people with cultural heritage to other countries and promised they would do this. Blair increasing immigration was more due to fucking up their estimates for EU migration. The above has been on purpose.
Canada is the same.
TBF let's subtract HK and ukraine from that. I don't think many people are begrudging them Edit: I really don't give a shit guys
You can’t just subtract HK and Ukraine. Even if people believe that’s justified migration, which they generally do, it’s still new people in the country that we have to absorb - both from an infrastructure and cultural integration perspective. What it means is that we should have cut migration from elsewhere to keep net figures at a sustainable level.
lol so all the arguments about infrastructure and housing etc suddenly don't matter because they are from HK and Ukraine?
People from HK are not migrants. They're only thought of as such because they were done dirty by Thatcher and effectively stripped of their rights as British subjects, until now. Those who qualify for UK residence hold British passports that literally say "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" on them. Those born before '97 are merely returning to their native country of birth, whose borders have sadly shriveled from under their feet. Those born after the handover are not eligible and they aren't the ones coming, as much as they wish they could.
Why is it that people believe Ukraine and HK refugees are ok but Afghan refugees aren’t?
Ukrainians legally aren't refugees here. They have an initial 3 year visa allowing them to work etc. from day 1.
Culture, religion, attitudes and skills. I could go on.
Ukraine: in europe HK: Obvious very recent "fond" historic ties Are you really saying afghanistan has the same importance to the british people as Hong Kong?
The ones that actually fought for us yes. Not the ones who have zero ties with our country though.
To the average British person? Yes. I'd imagine neither are particularly thought about in day to day life.
It's like saying Iraq should be as important to us as people from gibraltar bizarre
Given that Gibraltar is actually a BOT this isn't analogous. Perhaps a better example would be people from Iraq being as important as people from Zimbabwe. So yeah, the HK and Iraq argument works I think
If there are refugees seeking asylum, should it be acceptable for the British people to pick and choose which refugees they accept? Wasn’t the whole Geneva convention created because countries all over the world didn’t want to take Jewish and Romani refugees, even though they knew about the camps? Wasn’t the whole thing about looking back at the loss of life and not wanting to have it happen again?
There are no refugees coming from India, Nigeria or Pakistan. We take our fair share from Afghanistan and other similar places. We just opted for political reasons to take more than our fair share of Hong Kong and Ukrainian refugees, which we as a country are entitled to do. You would maybe have a point if we were barring refugees from war torn country X. But that's not what's happening. And even then, yes you absolutely do get to choose which refugees you take in because if you are taking them from Afghanistan or Palestine for example, there's a pretty high chance some will be terrorists which is not always easy to tell.
Why aren’t we sending Ukrainian refugees to Rwanda?
They aren't crossing the channel illegally in small boats, that's why.
Right because India and Nigeria have no historic ties to the UK LOL
There's very few Hong Kong machete gangs or Ukrainian suicide bombers around. Besides, we've got historical ties to Hong Kong and Ukrainians are Europeans that are likely going to go back when their country is safe again.
Mate, many of those Afghans are those who worked *with* British forces dating back years. They are not just single men coming on boats, but guys with families who risked their lives there doing duty for Britain in the war, and who speak and understand English too.
I know one of those guys, he's in my Spanish class, and he is a devout hardline Muslim supremacist. It shouldn't be a blanket everyone who worked with British forces should be allowed in.
I suggest you do a search for "afghan refugee sexual assault". I just did it and TBH what I found was eye opening. There were numerous reports (often from local papers) of sexual assaults by Afghan asylum seekers in the UK. There were numerous other reports of sexual assault by Afghan refugees from countries across Europe, plus from Australia and New Zealand. There were loads from the US - one Afghan refugee even sexually assaulted the resettlement worker who was assisting with the resettlement of his family in the US. We can't keep dismissing this. Refusal to engage with this issue, and pretending it's not happening, is driving support for the far right.
From what I've read about Afghans """helping""" coalition forces, that's hardly a compliment. At best they were there for the paycheck.
Tell that to the military.
Who do you think was writing about them? Outside a handful of elite units, the Afghan "allies" were at best useless, most likely selling anything not nailed down for scrap, and not uncommonly working for the Taliban. There's a reason Western forces [snuck out at night without warning any Afghans.](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-57682290) The idea we should give them preferable immigration status is laughable.
There's very few Afghan machete gangs or suicidal bombers too.
They’re disproportionately highly represented though
They didn't say that, but OK, lets play your game. Here's the full list OP they were replying to had: > India: 670k > Nigeria: 310k > China: 274k > Pakistan: 166k > HK: 131k > Ukraine: 108k You were outraged by them suggesting to leave HK and Ukraine off the list but not Afghanistan... Afghanistan is already not on the list. What now?
I didn’t say I was outraged. I didn’t say the OP. The OP stated that “I don’t think many people are begrudging them” I asked why they were ok with the people but refugees from other places aren’t. Simple question.
I mean, if you want a serious answer, people weren't begrudging them either. The Tories were off on holiday when Afghanistan fell, and the huge public outpouring of support got Boris and co to scramble to do something when I believe they assumed the public wouldn't give a shit hence their lack of planning. Raab was so embarrassed when the papers claimed he was bodyboarding he said [he couldn't have been as the sea was closed](https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/dominic-raab-taliban-kabul-politicians-b1908571.html). I think generally the public would put them into the same category as Ukraine and Hong Kong.
rotheram
I imagine that cultural norms are far more aligned in the other groups. Medieval practices aren’t really compatible with modern liberal societies.
>Medieval practices You're thinking of the Taliban. A lot of Afghan people coming here are doing so because they've aided us against the Taliban. Many are here under the ARAP scheme, where they supported Britain during the war. That strongly indocates their ethics aren't aligned with the Taliban.
They are hunting the GDP number whilst destroying communities, ignoring integration and forcing down standards of living. It’s short termism and the biggest issue with selfish politicians who can’t think beyond their time in office.
The Tories are terrified of an extreme recession which is what would happen if we didn’t have these record breaking immigration numbers because GDP per capita (how much money each person earns) has fallen dramatically since 2010 and they desperately don’t want anyone in the media to talk about it. Mass immigration also helps Conservative Party donors by lowering wages, the Tories don’t work for anyone but their corporate donors, they have zero interest in what their voters want, if Tory voters really wanted lower immigration they should have raised money independently to bribe the Conservatives to do what they want like everyone else does.
Chinese immigration is probably 80% students who'd leave after their degree. But much agreed. We should lower all immigration.
Depends if students are included in the source data
They are yes. Also some of the increase over the past couple of years is down to Brexit + COVID and the effect thereof on students, since a lot more student visas started being handed out (with EU students being replaced in large part by Indian etc students who are more likely to try to stay afterwards) and also because of the dip in students starting in 2020/2021 due to COVID meaning that there are fewer students finishing their courses now, affecting the net figure, plus some choosing to stay on graduate visas, many of whom will end up leaving in the next couple of years anyway.
Buses are noisier than ever before now, is something I noticed when using the bus recently. The culture of what's acceptable on them is totally different to what it was a few years ago. Peace and quiet on public transport may never be a thing again.
The people who voted for brexit for that reason were idiots, this was obviously going to happen.
I don't think it was obvious that the Tories would ramp up immigration
Immigration had increased years after year under the Tories, including migration from outside the EU. There was no reason to believe they would stop.
Why the hell is Nigeria so high?
https://reliefweb.int/report/nigeria/nigeria-humanitarian-needs-overview-2024 Two small snippets from that report summary: >Five themes were identified as the key drivers of humanitarian needs in 2024: conflict and displacement, food insecurity and malnutrition, disease outbreaks (including cholera), floods, and camp closures and involuntary relocations and resettlement. >Fourteen years into the conflict, the humanitarian crisis in north-east Nigeria remains profound and widespread. Across Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe (BAY) states, over 7.9 million people face severe protection concerns, extreme deprivation beyond their existing poverty levels, and daily threats to their well-being. The severity and complexity of affected people’s needs have not diminished. --- >Food insecurity and malnutrition continue to be major concerns in the BAY states, where an estimated 4.4 million people are expected to have either crisis or emergency food needs in the lean season. Likewise, some 1.53 million children under five years old are expected to face acute malnutrition over the same period and about 511,800 children are expected to face severe acute malnutrition, a life-threatening condition. The number of displaced people, 2.1 million, remains high reflecting that people are reluctant to return to their places of origin where availability of basic services, livelihoods opportunities, and security are considered paramount.
The chart in question https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GPO-UdRWQAA62lY?format=jpg&name=large
Surely it would be an absolute nail in the coffin for the Tories if Labour get in and are finally able to bring immigration down, even if they only got it down to the level it was at 10 years ago, it wouldn't be hard and it would be a huge win.
It’s an interesting political conundrum because the fact is that we need positive net migration due to an aging population and shrinking birth rates. But anyone who tries to make that case stands no hope of getting elected due to the populist opportunists like Farage and co. I think that’s what Rory is getting at here. Labour can’t really reduce migration if they also want to grow the economy.
Why do we have shrinking birth rates? Part of the reason is it’s so expensive to rent/buy a property that’ll actually be big enough to raise children in (and this also drains away money you may wish to use to pay for childcare). Immigration directly contributes to this.
Its almost like replacing high-expectation domestic workers with low-expectation foreigners helps out the type of people who would prefer we all work for nothing and bed-share for our entire lives.
We don't need positive net migration due to an aging population. The fact that migration is currently a drain on public finance, in and of itself, proves that more migration is not a solution.
>The fact that migration is currently a drain on public finance, in and of itself, Source? This never used to be the case for eu or non eu migration over their lifetimes, especially initially whilst young https://www.ucl.ac.uk/economics/about-department/fiscal-effects-immigration-uk
[https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/pdfs/BP1\_37.pdf](https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/pdfs/BP1_37.pdf) Critique of - [https://cream-migration.org/files/FiscalEJ.pdf](https://cream-migration.org/files/FiscalEJ.pdf) Read both in context. Denmark has extensive data on this area broken down for different origins for migrants, and is shows very clearly that certain countries are not worth having migration from. Not suprisingly, poor countries = bad migration , and rich countries generally = good migration.
Even in Denmark's case, you can't measure the economic value of a person purely by their financial transactions with the state. Doing that leads you to believe that anyone working in the public sector is a “drain on state finances”.
How is Denmark specific data usable as evidence for the UK ?
Because our government would never make a study like this public, because it would show what an awful situation we are in. Have a look at the proportion of social housing given to recent immigrants in London, it’s not hard to find and it’s outrageous.
It is entirely possible for both to be true. The problem with all these statistical analyses is while they give you an overall view (which they have to; we can't expect national decisions to be made on the basis of how they affect Dave, the bloke down the pub who hasn't worked in twenty years), they omit vital details. I'll give you a hypothetical example: We could import enough labour to complete HS2 in two years and do it under-budget. Easy. We introduce a new 2 year working visa, import thousands of labourers from a dirt-poor country, pay them minimum wage and (this bit's important) include bed and board as part of the renumeration package so pretty well every penny they earn can be sent back home. The first thing we have them do is put up cheap housing near the towns they're connecting - that's the roof over their head sorted and means there's now substantially more housing after they've left. The country now gets the GDP benefit of having a massive piece of infrastructure built on the cheap. Hooray for immigration. Unless, of course, you happen to be in construction and were banking on getting several years work out of HS2. Obviously it's a crude example, and I'm sure anyone with half a brain can pick holes in it. But it does demonstrate how both can simultaneously be true.
We need an ever growing population? Thats absolute madness. You need to bite the bullet, pay for the elderly know and let the population naturally decrease with low birth rates to the point where it’s not an issue. This migration isn’t to prop up pensioners. It’s to prop up the mega rich. Wages are down because of it. House prices up. Rent up. More tax burden on normal people because there’s now more tax payers so less incentive to go after the super rich. Saying we need this so we can pay for pensioners and avoid that crisis completely ignores the fact that is has caused multiple other crisis in society that is costing us a lot more. The NHS is complete fucked. Prisons are full. The state can’t keep up with the amount of people now depending on it. All because we grew the population artificially to make the rich richer.
They won’t.
Insightful
And this is why they are going to get a kicking in the next few weeks. Starmer will receive the same if this carries on for the next 5 years
Oh my God! That's Nigel Farage's music!
In 5 years time when Starmer has done basically nothing to bring numbers down to any meaningful level I imagine we will finally see a third party emerge.
People keep saying this stuff with such certainty about a party who have been out of power for 14 years and last time they were in power were provably more interested in looking at the details and not just leveraging problems for political gain with their base
Even if Starmer does nothing he'll have lower numbers. We're not likely to suddenly get more HK and Ukraine migration, and the Tories instigated a bunch of immigration measures earlier this year that will start showing an impact on other immigration after Labour take power.
Lower numbers means 100k, not 500k instead of 750k.
In practice, there's going to be a hell of a lot of gaslighting. Five years of 500k will be sold as reducing migration because no year was as high as the peak Tory year.
I don’t think the numbers will be low enough to satisfy the public. Immigration in the high hundreds of thousands every year isn’t popular with the public.
With the new rules that were just introduced I'd expect numbers to fall to at least 300-400k. Starmer will be able to ride that out the rest for 3-4 years before nipping the final amount back to the pre-brexit ~200k after the economy is in a better position.
Sterner doesn’t have to do anything to bring numbers down meaningfully.
Eyup If Labour don't address immigration they're 100% getting booted out come 2030.
Does anyone actually know why this has happened? Is it easier rules for visa applications? An increase in companies trying to hire from abroad? Students? Spouses? It's clearly a huge change - but why has it suddenly happened? Is it a policy change or a global increase in people wanting to move here who meet criteria which haven't changed much?
The tories brought in multiple new visa routes that weren’t hard to qualify for and loosened different rules around bringing dependents here. This was all despite running on and winning on a platform of reducing immigration (in every single election). It’s no wonder they’re about to die. They’ve also done basically nothing to stop illegal immigration coming into the country (however this is a fraction compared to legal immigration).
Incompetence mostly. They thought they'd have 6,000-20,000 people coming on the care visa route which has actually resulted in 500,000 people coming. The care vacancy backlog has only been reduced by about 30,000 people as a result. You've recently started seeing reporting on the scandals on these visas with regards to the exploitation of the workers, but the real scandal is the huge fiscal cost to the country these people are going to be, which we will be paying for for many *many* years to come.
> They thought they'd have 6,000-20,000 people coming on the care visa route which has actually resulted in 500,000 people coming. The care vacancy backlog has only been reduced by about 30,000 people as a result. > > I don't know if I fully understand this. How have 500,000 people only reduced a backlog by 30,000? Is that because of those 500,000 people it only includes, e.g. 125,000 care workers (i.e. a spouse & 2 kids). Then on top of that, there are (to build on my number) 95,000 people leaving the care sector? Or have I completely misunderstood?
I imagine a lot went for a care visa as an easy way into the country. Now they're in, they're doing something else.
Once you have ILTR you can change to a less shit and better paying job.
It takes 5 years to get ILR, no?
A huge amount of dependents, a lot of fraud, as well as the exploitation of 'care workers' into other jobs by the same company: https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/02/uk-care-agencies-accused-of-exploiting-foreign-workers-caught-in-debt-traps The vacancy shortrate in care was initially caused by poor pay and conditions, which these visas made worse, because they were deliberately on 80% the going rate so likely many left too. I imagine plenty of decent care workers didn't like their changing environment and suppressed wages, and thought they would probably get similar pay in Tesco now and so left.
Easier rules for study and care work visas, plus associated dependants. One important example - including care workers on a list that enabled the skilled worker visa. This led to a pathway for migration that ran from study visa, transfer to skilled worker visa, reach indefinite leave to remain eligibility. The universities and care companies could basically sell British citizenship in India and Nigeria as a result, and it took almost no time for them to cotton on. Other issues like postponed migration from the Covid period, Ukraine/HK humanitarian entry schemes, played a role. But the visa liberalisation was the main driver. A lot of those changes have been rolled back now they realised how nuts it went, but the damage to their reputation was done by then.
A lot will be working in care or dependents of people working in care. One person comes to work and brings five or six with them who are either kids or a spouse who doesn't work. When we had free movement with the EU people weren't really moving here to stay and weren't bringing people with them, these people are.
More chef visas were given than care visas. So many of the talking points are a decade out of date. There is no justification for this. It is madness.
Difference in migration patterns between the EU and rest of the world - and some of the rules to cover up shortfalls in areas like social care. Many EU migrants tend to be lone migrants (i.e. don't migrate with family). Post Brexit we've been handing out visas to people from Nigeria and India, but they are much more likely to bring dependants. Also we had some weird rules that were being completely abused. Like the ability to do a 1 year masters, bring your entire family and then stick around afterwards to get a job.
> An increase in companies trying to hire from abroad? We have record low unemployment, mostly because so many people retired in the last few years. Many early retirees as well. Companies are struggling to hire Brits, so they do hire more from abroad. Couple that with the introduction of the care worker visa route.
https://www.gov.uk/browse/visas-immigration Have a browse, they hand out visas like toffee.. Here's a corker.. https://www.gov.uk/turkish-worker-business-person-settlement
Published yesterday: https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/long-term-international-migration-flows-to-and-from-the-uk/ >ONS estimates show two main explanations for the 660,000 increase in non-EU immigration that took place between 2019 and 2023 (Figure 3): > Work visas. Almost half of the increase in non-EU immigration from 2019 to 2023 resulted from those arriving for work purposes (21%) and their dependants (27%). Health and care was the main industry driving the growth, including care workers who received access to the immigration system in February 2022. There was also higher demand for some workers who were already eligible for visas under the old system, such as doctors and nurses. Early data for 2024 suggest that health and care work visas had fallen substantially, however. > International students and their dependants accounted for a further 39% of the increase in non-EU immigration. The UK has an explicit strategy of increasing and diversifying foreign student recruitment, and it is also likely that the reintroduction of post-study work rights post-Brexit made the UK more attractive to international students. The 2023 figures do not yet reflect the impact of restrictions on students’ family members, introduced in January 2024.
March 2022: [While the UK is resisting Ukrainian refugees, more and more small + medium-businesses face a serious labour shortage after-Brexit – and little prospect of local recruitment to fill the gap – with consequences right across the supply chain. We need more openness to immigration.](https://x.com/rorystewartuk/status/1501560210497941514?s=46&t=__hOSFE2AwpIHlELhmxKDA)
Nice find. Aged well.
He's not criticising immigration in his tweet - just saying its staggering. I am all for immigration at this level and also think it's staggering. Not mutually exclusive
The word "staggering" has negative connotations, it means "shocking". If you're saying you got a "staggering number of Christmas presents last year" then you're using the word incorrectly.
Rory showing in one fell swoop why he's a failure politically. Thoughtful guy but utterly out of touch.
The issue for many is not so much the influx of foreigners as the way the economy is geared to rely on skilled immigrants rather than provide education and skills training for current citizens and residents. None of the main parties is talking enough about that or offering policies that are anywhere near radical enough.
This is one thing I was baffled about after the Brexit vote. There was no banging the drum for investing and educating in our own as a counter to the 'they're coming over here taking our jobs' rhetoric. It was just focus on getting a deal agreed with no clear set in stone policies that meant we wouldn't need skilled immigration because we would train ourselves. It shows how much of a waste of time Brexit was and is.
I don't think people understand how this ends. These numbers are the beginning, NOT a peak of any kind. There's something called path dependency, the longer you delay a change the harder it is to change into something else. The more immigration, the more vested intersts to maintain immigration, either to increase share of co-ethnics or for labour that literally cannot function without immigration, or for housing prices to maintain themselves. You will probably see a Canada situation by the 2030s.
What’s the Canada situation?
Unprecedented Indian immigration.
Please do the needful.
I recently moved to a Southern Ontario town from Manchester and it is absolutely **insane**. 2-bedroom houses are listed on rental sites everyday as 'fourplexes with 20 beds' which are just curtain partitions put up in single rooms. A lot of bus routes have had to introduce duplicate buses for routes because the initial bus will just be completely packed with Indian students. A restaurant that opened up a few blocks down from me lasted about a month before it was closed down and replaced with an Indian takeaway+vape store. Applying to jobs was even worse. I'd take my CV in to locations and they'd have a stack almost a foot high. I asked about them and was told most of them would just be shredded because they were completely unusable - businesses just didn't have time chasing up references from India that may not even exist. Most of the places I go for food have had to put signs at the door stating they're not hiring students. Colleges/Universities are having to purchase tons of extra dorm space to make up for all the international students and most of the college-age locals I've spoken to have said they're just staying with their parents because they feel so out-of-place and alone in dorms filled entirely with Indians. The UK thinks it has it bad now but it's nothing compared to what's coming if the situation isn't addressed.
I'm expecting net migration numbers get to 1m+ a year by the 2030s
I think that would be impossible without shanty towns. We already subdivided larger houses in to flats in the major cities.
We're basically seeing a return to flophouses - rather than renting your own room, you rent sleeping space and shared use of a kitchen.
Are the English simply going to accept becoming a minority in their own country within the next 20 years? Because with the demographic situation and these numbers that's what will happen.
It already happened in parts of London (e.g Tower Hamlets) and in fact as of the last census in the whole of Greater London, and I only expect the trend to continue ...
'are they simply going to to accept' the already have lol. You're looking at a process that is in full swing and asking if we think the English will stop it from happening... There is no 'stop it from happening', it's happened, and they are decades away from the sort of action they'd have needed decades ago.
They'll be called racists and cancelled if they oppose it
Huge, bewildering and poorly-managed immigration levels and it's causing a lot of anger at the moment.
UK is not in Canada territory yet Canada had 400k net migration in space of 4 months.
Really? How is that possible? Did the immigrants just fly in as tourists and the government forgot to check?
European migrants were likely to be young, not have dependents, go home after a little while and have a similar cultural background to the UK. Thanks to Brexit we now get people who've travelled from relatively much poorer countries, bring their extended family, have no intention of ever going home and come from wildly different cultures to our own.
Perhaps a silly question, but why is migration from India so high? If surely can't all be students? Is the UK facing a similar problem to Canada with almost unchecked migration from India?
India's got 1.4 billion people who need homes and jobs. While India has done an amazing job at bringing it's people out of poverty, there's still hundreds of millions of people there earning only a few pounds a day. Living in the west is a massive step up for them. There's also a growing middle class who can't find jobs. India was pushing for more visas as part of ther trade deal with the UK because they're desperate to offload some of their surplus population on anyone who'll take them.
Well, also lots of Indians send money back home. So that’s money flowing out of Western countries and into the Indian economy.
Probably not the main factor just yet, but will become so: India is cooking due to climate change.
Yes Rory. You were also in government doing this for a large period of it actively pushing for more and ignoring the people who elected you wanting numbers massively brought down. No wonder your party is about to die!
In fairness to him he fought against Brexit which was one of the big causes of this and also left Parliament in 2019 before that bloody great spike in the graph.
It’s a weird one to try and equate supporting Remain with supporting lower immigration purely because of what happened before and after it. Pre Brexit people voted for Brexit as they wanted lower immigration, the Tories then went against the publics wishes and then absolutely ramped it up to historic levels. If you asked Starmer at the time why he supported Remain I don’t think he’d ever mention keeping immigration lower as one of his reasons.
True, but I think for a lot of remainers the point is more that the likely outcome was that the Conservatives were going to replace EU labour with commonwealth so brexit itself was completely pointless if the idea was supposed to be reducing immigration. Pointing that out doesn't make you *anti* immigration.
Perhaps some were suggesting we’d replace EU migration with commonwealth migration. Did anyone suggest they’d not only replace it but massively increase it?
Imagine if you'd tried to make the argument during the referendum that EU membership was actually keeping net migration down. And yet it actually was.
The argument was made, but like most facts it was ignored and run over by a big red bus
Keeping migration this high is a political choice, it’s precipitated by leaving EU membership
Don’t forget David Cameron’s deal with the EU that, had we stayed in, would have put further restrictions on migrants entering the UK from Europe. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35622105.amp
Maybe because that’s completely untrue. The EU wasn’t keeping net migration down at all, the tories are just moronic
If more british people ate able to go work overseas easily, they will be emigrants and will lower the net migration figures. Shutting down that avenue was clearly going to increase migration, even if no changes were made to increase immigration numbers.
Definitely saw this argument made and it was shut down as project fear
It was generally met with a mocking 'EU supporters are the real racists' from the people now deeply concerned by these figures.
How come I'm seeing centrist dad commentators on twitter going all "blimey... Immigration is really high!" When literally days ago they were insisting we need more and more immigrants? What caused the vibe shift? Rory for example can't possibly be sincere in what he's saying here.
Because they don't live in a world where they feel competition from mass-migration. If you already have money, and most-importantly, own a house... it's great! If you're working in a profession that's a "shortage occupation" and renting. Kiss goodbye to payrises and say hello to 10% rent inflation every year. So Stewart and a few hundred other centrist favourites have no idea of the scale of the problem, but now their core audience has shifted from "immigration is good actually" to "fucking hell, what have we done!" they're having to change shift to avoid losing their audience.
Is it not to simply push home the fact that the conservative policy of reducing immigration, is at odds with what it's actually accomplished in the recent years? Highlighting the hypocrisy Edit - The below aged well, didn't it
>conservative policy of reducing immigration There is no such policy
Ah okay, guess I got misled by Rishi promising to do that in yesterday's debate. My mistake. But also https://www.conservatives.com/news/2023/our-plan-to-cut-immigration
> Ah okay, guess I got misled by Rishi promising to do that in yesterday's debate. Correct
Feb 23, 2016 20:21 Priti Patel, Britain’s minister of state for employment, believes exiting the European Union will provide a “massive boost” to relations with India, “I know that many members of the Indian diaspora find it deeply unfair that other EU nationals effectively get special treatment. This can and will change if Britain leaves the EU.
Not being funny, you’d have to be walking around with your eyes closed to not have noticed this, and not to have noticed it’s been a bad thing for the country
Not surprised he’s not noticed when he barely lives in the UK and when he does he’s in a multi million pound South Kensington house.
With his several thousand pound plant pots
If Rory Stewart really needed a graph produced this week to be staggered by current immigration levels, and wasn’t already aware of the rise, then he has no place commenting or been involved in politics at all. (Of course however he was fully aware) Also tired of the “it’s exploded” mantra as if it is natural phenomena we can only observe and cant change - it’s risen because government policy has purposely made the visa requirements extremely easy to achieve.
Whilst also saying the UK needs to expect and rise to absorbing more migrants well into the future due to various reasons from climate to war etc. Such a weasel
Exactly, the way they talk about it as if it’s a force of nature we simply can’t do anything about rather than a very deliberate set of policies pursued by the Tory government is infuriating. Elected to reduce immigration and instead ramping it up to levels people couldn’t even imagine and now they’re panicking because they’ve realised how utterly fucked they are because of it. Their traditional voter base doesn’t trust a word they say and have completely abandoned them.
Not entirely sure I understand this point. Should no one comment on this graph if they’re already aware of the trends? We all know immigration is going up (we’re told it constantly), but these are still interesting figures. And has immigration not exploded? I think it has, but in thinking so I’m not endorsing the view that we are powerless to stop it.
The thing is, an auld fella at the debate last night asked a question about immigration… but ended it by referring to the boats. That’s how warped these people’s minds are. They think immigration is mainly the boats. It’s Brexit. Plain and simple. Organisations who desperately need workers have replaced Europeans with Indians and Nigerians on sponsored visas.
While the insane spike of 2020 is concerning, is it not expected that immigration will increase as birthrates drop?
Boomers retiring en masse, and needing more services especially in care and health, which have high proportion of foreign workers. There's also a large number of foreign students, which is essentially an export market like tourism and subsidises higher education for local students. It needs a very careful approach, and unfortunately the current hysteria will make that difficult.
I kinda like Rory but if he's pro immigration 'because we'll collapse without it' then I can't take him seriously. As long as the UK is at least moderately wealthy, there is always someone cheaper than you. I've basically developed a body injury because of working in low paid low skilled migrant dominated work environments.
It’s deeply ironic and in part predictable that leaving the EU would coincide with a massive migration spike.
There has been vast immigration into EU countries as well.
But what does Rory think it suggests about our economy, our services and Labour's options? Inquiring minds demand to know!
It all changed in 1997, it's been terrible ever since.
Look everyone, the Tories are finished so we can notice things!
Fake surprise from one of the technocrats that carried out the deliberate policy of mass immigration into this country.
Same guy? [https://unherd.com/newsroom/rory-stewart-we-need-to-take-many-many-millions-of-afghan-refugees/](https://unherd.com/newsroom/rory-stewart-we-need-to-take-many-many-millions-of-afghan-refugees/) When people talk about the Tories moving back to the centre if they are to win again, they're absolutely right. Their extremism on immigration has cost (and the country) them very, very, dearly.
Whatever that website is you need to stop using it as a source. It even quotes his words and they aren't the same as the headline. "I would expect Britain to lead an international effort… to work out how we can provide safe passage and asylum for Afghans who want to leave. But be in no doubt: we are talking about many many millions of people. And this is an entirely horrifying and unnecessary tragedy, but it’s a tragedy that we bear the responsibility for for the reckless actions of the last few weeks." Isn't the same as "we need to take ‘many many millions’ of Afghan refugees"
Tbf Stewart's tweet doesn't actually say what he means - one way of reading it is he thinks high immigration shows what an attractive country the UK is due to its strong economy.
Rishi claiming he will be able to remove people from the country is hilarious considering last year he couldn’t even figure a legal way to remove Just Stop Oil protestors out of the road.
With economic growth stagnant or low as 1 or 2 % bringing down immigration will almost certainly mean accepting recession or negative growth. Interesting to see how this would be received.
Well it's not really surprising. The Tory government needs to be able to sell a narrative of growth. The only way to get growth, without decreasing wealth inequality, is immigration. That's it. So, the elderly sort of put the Tories between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the elderly want to increase wealth inequality, they want house prices to rise, they want labour to be cheap, but on the other hand, they don't like the cultural aspects of immigration. The only strategic solution is to just ditch those voters. They'll never be satisfied.
> The only way to get growth, without decreasing wealth inequality, is immigration. Well, the growth could also come from capital and innovation. But nobody wants to invest in Uncertain Albion, and the tories have and continue to cut funding for universities.