[Baloo]

What a terrible take.

We had Brexit which stemmed EU migration, which we needed to fill huge gaps in our workforce (in the NHS for example).

Having immigration doesn't stop us from increasing the minimum wage, we could vote for policy that increases salary & workers rights regardless of migration.

Migrants, like my father, don't necessarily live in squalor. My father moved here when he was in his twenties, with almost nothing, eventually started a business and then left after the Brexit vote. We were poor, but far from squalor. Your picture of immigrants is clearly tainted.

The housing situation in this country is pathetic, this is for natives and migrants alike. Terrible quality of housing is again not a migrant problem, but exploitative landlords & underfunded & corrupt councils. Which could be changed while still having healthy migration to the country.

Lots of people in the UK are racist, xenophobic & they don't even realise it. The kinds of people that refer to Brits living abroad as 'ex-pats', because they don't like being branded as an immigrant. That refer to their local Asian takeaway as the 'chinky' on the corner. The kinds of people that call any brown person a 'paki'. Let us not forget Nigel Farage stirring the whole shitshow with his 'queues of Romanian criminals' backdrop. The islamophobia. The antisemitism.

[goodSteveramos]

The population of England has increased by several million people in just the last 5 years due to immigration. Blaming the housing shortage on not building enough new housing is like blaming the victim of an automobile theft for not having two cars. I think you hate English people and enjoy seeing them learn to compete for resources with foreigners in their ancestral homeland and your entire argument amounts to calling English people racist for not liking they way immigration is affecting their lives.

[Baloo]

It's people like you that are destroying this country. You need to take a long look at yourself and your beliefs. I don't know where you're getting this figure of 'several million people in last 5 years', since UN estimate is 2 million increase since 2015 (total population, not just migrants) https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/united-kingdom-p....

Our country is incredibly corrupt, the problems are nothing to do with migration.

We actually desperately need migration given our population demographics shifting to aging citizens, there simply is not enough young people to work & look after all the retirees. Native Brits aren't having large enough families. We have a massive gap in the workforce, even with record low unemployment.

Your analogy is total rubbish & makes no sense. The housing shortage is absolutely due to pure corruption & a failure to build sufficient homes. The government target is to build 300,000 new homes each year - they have failed to hit their targets year after year (by at least 30%). Not only do we need more homes, but more social and affordable housing. See: https://i.imgur.com/ePK5QqQ.png

I think that you dislike foreigners and use shitty analogies to try and justify your distain for people that aren't 'natives'. Your entire argument is a simple, dumbed down perspective on what is really a multifaceted & complex issue. You want an easy answer, so you point your finger at the first thing your simple mind can grasp. Well guess what? You stop all migration tomorrow & see how this country death spirals.

Perhaps you should start to look at the real culprits, greedy people that are screwing the average citizen with a rigged system that favours wealthy individuals at the expense of everyone else. I mean ffs, you're commenting on an article that highlights how the wealthy traded human lives to save some money on cladding. We just went through a pandemic where they scammed the public out of billions for PPE contracts. We have 'Lords' that literally rinse the public, cash for honours?

>Take the revelations about the Aliyevs, the ruling family of oil-rich Azerbaijan which is led by a friend of Prince Andrew and has been home to huge British investment. When I visited Baku in 2012, I met an astonishingly brave woman called Khadija Ismayilova, who has endured blackmail, been filmed on hidden cameras having sex in her home and been imprisoned on trumped-up charges to stop her exposing corruption.

>Now we learn that a network of offshore companies tied to this gruesome family and its close associates has traded almost £400m of UK property over the past 15 years — including flogging a £67m property to the Queen’s crown estate.

>Again, these sleazy disclosures cut deep into the heart of the UK establishment. They include one Russian businessman whose companies have backed 34 Tory MPs and made millions from an allegedly corrupt Russian pipeline deal, while another prominent Tory donor who backed Johnson’s leadership campaign was reportedly involved in one of Europe’s biggest corruption scandals.

https://unherd.com/2021/10/how-britain-was-corrupted/

[goodSteveramos]

Wouldnt a corrupt country also be one that imports migrants to compete with its own people in the housing and labor markets to boost the profits of a disloyal wealthy ruling class? You have yet to refute that increasing demand for housing increases housing prices or that increasing supply of labor depresses wages. Do immigrants pay a special tax to cover the cost of building new housing for them?

[Baloo]

Migrants contribute to the workforce & to the tax intake. It's only an issue if you fail to build the infrastructure required to accommodate the population. You keep framing this as a problem with migrants, when it's a failure of government policy re: building sufficient services. The idea that things would be magically different if we simply had a lower number of migrants is pure fantasy, the situation would likely be even worse.

Consider this. Singapore has a migrant population of 43% vs UK 13%. Singapore has one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. Why? Because of their housing policy. In Singapore you will live longer, be less obese, make twice as much money, less likely to be unemployed, pay less tax, less likely to die at infancy, spend less on healthcare. That's with x4 the amount of immigration. Migration has nothing to do with the problems you're talking about, you could triple migration with no issues if you actually build for it. UK isn't even in the top 20 of countries when looking at migrants as a percentage of the population.

We have an aging population so our tax revenues will drop as less people are in the workforce, less people spending on goods and services. Without migrants we would not be meeting the replacement rates as more people are dying than being born in the UK. Do you understand that we actually need more young people?

I'm not even sure that you're British tbh given your spelling of "labour". The irony that you are using the American version, are you a migrant?