| First, they didn't have to. Crazy idea: educate more people, lower barriers to entry, hire people from poorer western countries and not Africa. Poland has hospitals staffed 100% by Polish people. What prevents UK from doing the same? Second, if immigration was only for skilled workers to plug shortages of certain skills, it would not be a problem. It's a problem because in 2025 estimated 41 thousand unskilled people, mostly young men, landed in UK just via small boats. Those are not doctors or nurses or engineers or even fruit pickers. They are unemployed and therefore a massive drain on British resources. UK gov for some unexplained reason decided that they are responsible for housing and feeding them. The money comes from taxing UK citizens. The housing is zero sum game so it also comes from depriving some UK citizens, driving up the prices. And those people get sick too so they also take away hospital resources from UK citizens. And they don't work so you now have mostly young males loitering in neighborhoods. |
In Canada the standard complaint is that "immigrants take the jobs" not that "immigrants aren't working". It seems like it's a lot easier to get a job at a Tim Hortons if you speak Hindi like the owners and managers. A job at a restaurant if you speak Levantine Arabic.
And those are just the public tip of the iceberg. Construction crews are mostly foreign. Our roofers were Indian. Our landscapers were Lebanese / Syrian. The people we interacted with spoke great English, but their workers didn't.
The big difference is that Canada had constant immigration. They came over 40 years ago and since they had trouble finding employment became entrepreneurs and restaurants and construction and other blue collar services are the most fertile areas for entrepreneurs. Now they have a huge advantage in hiring low cost labor.