By the time we got around to implementing it enough old people had died off that the vote would have gone the other way already.
That's what we're dealing with. Underinvestment only enriches their camp.
Like when people are against a president if the economy isn't doing well, regardless of if the alternative candidate would've been better.
This also isn't an issue thats being campaigned on. If there was another vote to join the EU, and people got flooded with anti-eu messaging specifically targeted at the demographic, I'd bet that number would drop.
And there are plenty of people on HN would say otherwise and say UK is fine.
You also see this in countries still in the EU and it will happen as long as we will not have true integration, it is always easier to blame the EU for your own failings, since it is harder for the EU to fend for itself in national politics.
One recent example in my country is nitrogen deposition. Long ago, countries have committed to keeping certain nature reserves in good health (or improving them when necessary). Then many subsequent governments always chose the side of the farmers at the detriment of nature. Now many reserves' soil quality is in a terrible state and the courts have told the government to stop and fix the problem. Then we got a bunch of right-wing populist countries that have wasted many more years by blaming the EU and questioning scientific methods for measuring deposits - while it has been abundantly for a long time what actually needs to be done, buy out farmers.
At any rate, this constant undermining and blaming of the EU has the effect you'd expect it to - it destroys trust in the EU. Ironically, the saving grace now seems to be the agressor and the lost ally. More people realize that we can't act in an increasingly hostile world as small and mid-sized countries.
Sortez les sortants...
The UK just keeps kicking young people down. The boomers voting against our interests are whipping us into working to pay for their triple locked pensions.
The 18 year olds who vote less but vote for good parties are doing good, overall. The 60 year olds voting Tory their whole lives - not so much.
It's very easy to blame the young for all the problems earlier generations created and exacerbated. Not too wise though.
The observed damage that the UK has inflicted to itself has been caused so far by all the parties that have been in power.
Eh, this is far from a given. Mao's Red Guards were passionate idiots. And America's young men are in thrall of Clavicular.
The most powerful empires in history have had large rebublics at their cores for good reason. The wisdom of a crowd greatly increases with its diversity.
Unfortunately the UK has a voting cohort that is both large and willing to screw over subsequent generations.
It's truly a crown in the gutter moment where you can be completely off-the-wall nuts (vide AfD) and, if you're just willing to campaign on anti-immigration, your ranks will instantly swell. Yet the establishment is somehow completely incapable or unwilling to capitalize/capture this.
I personally was very pro-EU in my youth and deeply soured as I knew more and more to the point I'm staunchly against nowadays.
It started in 2005 with the referendum result being ignored. Then 2012 came with the shambolic management of the Greek crisis, something even the IMF points as ineffective. Then I was paid to put in place the Green Taxonomy and I saw how unready and dumb the whole thing was. Then there was the rejection of the Draghi report which made lose hope.
I find the mix of the euro being a deeply unfair currency union strongly advantaging Germany at the expense of the periphery, the fact that Germany keeps playing on it and amplifying the effect in direct violation of the treaty and yet always get a hall pass and their holier than though attitude despite being basically free loaders completely impossible to tolerate.
The 2019 CEP study showed it well. The union costs billions of GDP to France and Italy to give a minor advantage to the German. It's a dogmatic straight jacket managed by priests with zero actual economic understanding and serving the interests of a big mercantilist using development funds to shore up its tributaries in the east and still managing to gradually lose relevance as it can't even manage having a proper strategy despite the advantages, and a few fiscal parasites around it.
At 36, I deeply wish from my country to be free of the monster than the union has become and deeply ressent being a prisoner of a monetary union which intentionally didn't plan an exit path. And for what? Surrendering the ability to make law to the citizen of other countries who share neither my language, nor my culture, clearly don't have the same vision of the future than us and wants to force us into their ineffective model? No, thanks. No GDP gains or alleged diplomatic weight is worth this debasement.
I don't understand Brexiters because being out of the euros they had the best of both worlds but I respect their desire to be truly sovereign and free from the constant Germanic hegemonic push.
Edit:Lots of downvotes, very few counterarguments. I'm guessing facing the tensions at the heart of the project makes some of you frankly uncomfortable.
Also young people always blame last gen for whatever, so expects -8 ~ 0 years old would vote for exit again…
For instance: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/brits-would-overw...
The article also says nothing about how the same age group votes at the time, but the numbers I can find suggests that over 70% votes remain. The leave side was pretty much fueled by an age group that has felt a decline in British industry and employment, much of which would have happened regardless of the EU. Immigration and Eastern European workers was just a convenient scape goat for the right, but it was believable for those who had suffered through the UKs decline in areas such as manufacturing. The younger demographics never saw this, they primarily saw the benefits the EU provided.
FWIW I think Brexit was dumb but I never felt strongly about any of it because it doesn't effect me in any way. I'm not saying their views on Brexit specifically are likely to change.
Have you got an ancestor that was born in Canada? [1]
It sounds like that a child of a "red coat" born on the lands that would become Canada is sufficient... [2]
[1]: [Heads Up: Canadian Genealogy is about to get VERY popular!](https://old.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/comments/1qqkzte/heads_up...)
> On December 15, 2025 Canada enacted "Bill C-3", granting citizenship to people born before Dec. 15, 2025 with ANY level of Canadian ancestry they can document. (It used to be a "first generation limit")
[2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/comments/1qqkzte/heads_up...
> ancestors domiciled in the former colony of Newfoundland are still considered as Canadian born or naturalized for the purpose of citizenship by descent.
This is misleading.
Outside the first generation, the Canadian parent must have spent 3 years cumulatively in Canada prior to the birth, otherwise the child will not be a citizen. That's not a threshold you're likely to meet with a few holiday trips here and there.
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/ne...
An anti immigration sentiment has also taken over half the country due to rising costs and shortages, which is trickling down to various aspects of the life here.
The harsh weather is not pleasant either. Ironically, young Canadians are looking to move elsewhere.
The years where I want the freedom of movement the most will have passed by then.
The ballot paper arrived the day before the vote.
It was impossible to return it in time, and indeed, when I checked, my vote had arrived too late and was not counted.
I think this was indicative of much of the thinking on both sides of the debate though; focusing tightly on a single, subjective aspect for or against.
"Why the EU is important / abhorrent to me right now?" rather than something like "What is the anticipated future nature of the EU and what does that mean for the UK?"
The Leave side was for immigration control (which has not materially changed, we still have an influx of small boats, but have made it harder for educated, hard working people to get in), and mythical funding for the NHS to the tune of £350m a week which never happened.
On a related note; do you enjoy what America is right now? Because centralizing power and handing your country’s (American states are/were/should be essentially countries) sovereignty and self/determination to Brussels is how you get this, become the US of Europe, the next iteration in the centralized war machine of the psychopathic, narcissistic parasitic ruling class. When you lack diversity through separate, unique, district, and sovereign countries where people have oversight and control and can push back against horrible ideas and actions, you end up like us.
I’ve always found it unfortunate that the EU did not become a legitimate, constitutional form of the USA like it was before the Civil War that created this centralized authoritarian fake federal state that we know today. It would have been awe inspiring and really could have become the example for the rest of the world. Instead, the current version of the EU is strangling the whole continent.
The EU is right now talking about becoming a great military force to fight Russia. That’s the kind of movement you’re advocating for, my friend.
You think young people are kept down now, wait till they’re laying in some muddy battlefield as chopped meat or hiding from drone swarm or hypersonic missile attacks on their cities due to the belligerence of the EU aristocrats with no clothes.
Uh, the fact that I cannot stay in Europe for more than 90 days in a 180 day period without a visa? As for all that other rubbish, every European city I’ve been to lives better than the people where I live in London. That’s proof enough for me that the EU is working.
Obviously they can still travel to Europe, but they will need an ETIAS Visa Waiver in the future, instead of just going, they can't move for work and studying just as easy without applying for Visa/Permits and they don't have the same rights and access to services as Citizens of a country.
Correction: to not have to fight Russia. The EU falling apart is Putin's wet dream because he's very afraid of a confrontation with the whole bloc, and wants to subjugate the small European countries piecemeal (and yes, on their own, they would have to submit or face missiles/drones or, even worse, human meatwave attacks by a foe that has been whipping its populace into a death cult for decades for exactly that eventuality).
The separate, unique sovereign countries are the ones with the horrible ideas and actions. See Victor Orban's Hungary. The whole point is to not let some goulash mussolini control European affairs.
> The EU is right now talking about becoming a great military force to fight Russia. That’s the kind of movement you’re advocating for, my friend.
Would you rather... not be able to fight Russia? It's not like the EU is the one with the invasion plans and threats, they're just preparing for the changing world order.
[1]: Gilbert, Nomadic Peoples and Human Rights (2014), p. 73: "Freedom of movement within a country encompasses both the right to travel freely within the territory of the State and the right to relocate oneself and to choose one's place of residence".
But then often immigration isn't the problem. It is a solution preying on the fear of people that "outsiders" are harming their opportunities, housing, way of life etc. The real problem is that people are not making living wages and wages are not catching up to cost of living.
As politicians pushing anti-immigration come to power they also realize this problem. They'd rather not solve immigration because then they need to face up to the actual living wage crisis issue. It also helps keeping the immigration talking point open so that it can be used in next election.
There has never been a successful multiracial democracy in history. There are many books on this - one was even on Obamas summer reading list awhile back.
> The real problem is that people are not making living wages and wages are not catching up to cost of living
Importing labor devalues native labor. This is outside of the cultural change, etc. These are real problems.
> They'd rather not solve immigration
Because they serve the rich and the rich benefit from immigration at the expense of natives. Immigration is a solved problem. Do it only when needed or when it benefits the people, not a select few.
Let me fix that for you: because the establishment is owned by the corporations who want to suppress wages, rise demand, pump gross GDP, and pump real estate.
And because governments running on deficits are slaves to the banking cartel, too.
The immigration we're talking about, the one of Africans etc. immigrants flooding west, is destructive to the economies based on pretty much every statistic I've seen.
Those immigrants are on welfare in disproportional numbers compared to native population.
E.g. in US 72% Somalis are on welfare and the same stats are in West Europe.
They cost the state gigantic amount of money.
And per-capita crime stats are so bad that governments are hiding them from public.
This is all documented by government's own statistics and reasonably well reported.
Immigration COULD be a net positive to the economy IF it was managed properly but it isn't and it isn't.
Tourism isn't immigration and I don't see what trade has to do with it.
There's many stories, but let's call this the average story: "Immigration brings growth, growth advances everyone".
Well, it doesn't, at least not at the moment. Oops.
Now we can argue why, of course, but a certain amount of backlash was to be expected. It was clear for 20 years or more exactly what would happen when "the alternative" to the prevailing "left+green" coalitions gains power. To an extent I don't understand how anybody can claim to be surprised.
Also, in a democracy I would think that arguing that "the uneducated masses" are wrong is a quick path to irrelevancy. That, by the way, is exactly how we want the system to work. The system needs to work well for the uneducated masses. Figure it out, or accept that the other guys are going to win the election.
Almost every country in the west is tightening it's system. In the UK claiming ILR will take a significantly longer period of lawful residence, and a shorter time will require you to meet a high income threshold. It is nearly impossible to get PR in Canada now unless you are fluent in both English and French and have a PhD or several years of canadian work experience. The bar has also gone up in Australia too.
The reason why this doesn't seem to move the needle on the anti-immigration vote is because the folks on that side can always just move the goalposts and be the "true" anti-immigrant party. I believe these days Reform UK wants cancel all ILRs and start actively deporting long term residents who don't meet an ever raising bar. Its madness.
Madness is for UK government to tax UK citizens to pay for housing and food of immigrants.
Incentives drive behavior. If you're African and see you can live for free in England, of course you'll try to get that deal. And in age of social media, they know.
Denmark did that and saw dramatic drop in number of people trying to immigrate there.
What you desperately try to paint as racism is just immune response from UK citizens.
They can see their taxes are raising, gov services are getting worse but gov finds the money to pay for housing for 110 thousand immigrants.
They connect the dots and that's why Reform UK would win the elections (if the elections were done today).
Because Labour, which won election recently with good majority, is not, in fact, ignoring voters and not doing anything meaningful.
Reform UK promises drastic changes because that's what majority of UK votes are demanding now.
It's how democracy is supposed to work. The politicians are supposed to be responsive to demands of voters.
There are billboards where offers of guaranteed rents are advertised etc.
It’s completely obvious to me (and often supported by exit polls) that people who are voting far right aren’t actually against immigration - only on the surface. Once you dig just a little bit deeper, often socioeconomic struggles surface. The working class has been taking a beating since the what, 1980s now? And it’s not like there’s any sort of legislature on the horizon that would fix their predicament.
So people look for a scapegoat. The far right gives them a scapegoat goat, and the enlightened center doesn’t know how to handle it.
the American and German far-right by contrast seem to be the polar opposite of data-driven. No the lazy 'IQ by country' maps don't count.
That is very true however you're misunderstanding why the German (where I'm from) and Americans parties aren't publishing this data. It's not because they're lazy, but because they can't.
And before you're now thinking: "aha! So they're not net negative!" ...well, these statistics aren't available either.
The reality is that the data to create these graphs aren't public, or never created. The likely reason for that being labeled 'nazi' for even considering gathering such data.
I personally suspect that they're net negative, in total but net positive on average (so numerically, most immigrants being positive). At least that would reflect my personal experience with with immigrants. However, you only need a very small percentage of immigrants to game the system in order to make the whole sample size negative because of the insane amount of money a bad actor can drain.
vide https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-e...
from https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/12/18/why-have-danes-t...
And I highly doubt other governments don't have similar calculations or aren't aware of them.
Japans big catastrophe happened in 1990 with the bubble bursting, but that was years before the peak in working age population. Since then, the economy has not improved much but also has remained somehow stable.
At the same time, it’s a testament to the weakness of other parties that they can’t even articulate that sufficiently well.
For example, converting heaths and meadows (which are unnatural for a delta anyway) into food forests might have increased carbon capture, reduced nitrogen-related pressures, and supported biodiversity in a way that aligns more realistically with achievable environmental goals.
Right now they're paying lip service to goals that are impossible to achieve, even if all economic activities were cancelled today, they wouldn't make a dent.
A referendum should be held on the subject.
i get what you mean about not being able to fix it. from what it sounds like, the UK is leading the US by about 10-20 years in terms of "energy leaving the system."
Are they still, considering they were mostly moving to the US before and now the idea is kind of scary?
Some other real problems, please solve without immigration:
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/bumper-british-strawb...
https://britbrief.co.uk/business/economy/uk-population-decli...
We live semi-rural, 700sqm house, office and workshop on an acre. Fibre makes working from home easy. Kids' school is 500m up the road. Village is friendly. Healthcare is acceptable, paid through taxation. We don't worry about surprise bills. And 10 minutes away from a 1h train to London.
I could absolutely earn more working in London but I'd be living in a shoebox or missing my kids' childhood while I sit on a train. Nah. We made a good choice.
Are there better cities outside the UK for tech work? Maybe? Do they offer me a better lifestyle than rural Britain? Doubtful.
It is oddly concerning, scary, and amusing at the same time that you are totally unaware of your own "Mussolini" tendencies of imposing your will or those ideas you have been trained to repeat and parrot on others. Why does everyone, everywhere, in all countries need to bow to the will you have been trained to parrot? Why can't people of other countries decide and do other things?
You really don't see the problem in that?
Have you even ever visited Hungary? Do you speak Hungarian? Do you live there and are culturally invested through generations of ancestors there? Why do you care so much about what Hungarians do in Hungary? What happened to democracy?
Why then if none of those apply to you, would you have any right, let alone care or concern with what Hungarians want, do or who they elect outside of you simply being a useful idiot for the central power in Brussels that commands you to really really care about Hungary's elected leaders?
It's literally no different than the fools we have her in the USA who really really care about combatting and countering and bombing and invading Iran (and Iraq before) ... which has absolutely zero actual, direct national interest implications or effects on the USA in any way. You are quite literally just a "dumb American" now as you morph into the grotesque that is modern America.
Yes. The part of Austria I live in used to be Hungary, it's still tightly linked to it culturally and through blood ties. My grandparents spoke Hungarian at home.
Difference is, it prospered, while Hungary proper is poor, run-down and has an antisemitic dictator. Hungarians are the cheap labor prevalent in Eastern Austria, similar to Mexicans close to the border in the US. They clean our toilets, because their government sucks.
I don't want that fate for my Hungarian brethren. Don't talk as if I didn't know, when it's clear it's you that doesn't.
It is you who is the useful idiot for fascists worldwide, out of some misguided sense of nationalism or whatever. The nation state is the obstacle to be overcome. It is what's keeping people back.
LOL, if you need to be so openly racist at least try being consistent.
A common strategy of the far right.
Do you have different data or different definition of majority?
I was taught that 67% is majority + 16% but maybe leftist math is different.
You want to know why?
Because I've met more marginalized people. When I was 16, I didn't know anyone who was openly queer, and I lived in a moderately-affluent, nearly-all-white area of the US.
Now, I know many people who are queer, poor, disabled, and/or people of color, and because I was raised to care about people and believe to value every human life, I want them to be treated as well as I (a middle-class, white, straight, cis man) am.
Only weird twist is that I have become a royalist.
It's not from 20 to 40, it's from like 50 to 70, as peoples critical thinking skills go and they become more gullible, more susceptible to manipulation and misinformation. It remains to be seen if it will happen with a tech savvy elderly population though.
When discussing where to live my wife realized that she would potentially triple her salary as a nurse with 10+ years of experience.
Tourists like Japan because it is clean, safe and relatively cheap, but given the option it really does not make sense to work there.
Its statistically reasonable and not racist
This is bullshit. Donald Trump isn't a credible source on statistics about immigration. The highest percentage I can find for food stamps is 54% and a high percentage of food stamps recipients are employed.
https://cis.org/Report/Somali-Immigrants-Minnesota?utm_sourc...
Asylum seekers in the US are a net positive source of revenue. They also create jobs and drive economic growth.
https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/28fe4e756...
2/3 of natural born US citizens will live in a household that receives food assistance at some point in their lives. 60-75% of Somolis are working. So there's a good percentage there that are working and paying taxes, but need some extra assistance.
I don't see a lot of fake news/statistics going around about white immigrants to the US. Funny how it's all Somolis and Hatians that are stuck being smeared by misinformation. What could that be about.
No, it still does.
> but a certain amount of backlash was to be expected.
Ultimately by lower class people who tend to be racist, though. Mostly it's just that they don't like seeing new languages and foods popup.
> in a democracy I would think that arguing that "the uneducated masses" are wrong is a quick path to irrelevancy.
Maybe, but the uneducated masses shouldn't be making these decisions, which is why democracy is the real problem here.
Do you seriously think progressives will come out on top, or even have much of a say at all, in a non-democratic system? I mean, really?
... which suggests that if you can't lift up and convince "lower class" people, racist or otherwise, you should just get out of the way. Because if that's the case the only outcomes are bad, and worse.
I think a superior system to the one we have now is one where progressive values are embedded in from the start. Objectively, they are superior positions that can be backed up by data.
> which suggests that if you can't lift up and convince "lower class" people, racist or otherwise, you should just get out of the way
These people routinely vote against their own interests. They shouldn't have a say.
Voting in an educated manner?
Voting for candidates and policies that will help people overall, rather than those that will hurt people overall, just so that they can hurt Those People?
It's a given in Britain; ie, where we're talking about.
> Mao's Red Guards were passionate idiots.
Ok. And?
> America's young men are in thrall of Clavicular.
Clavicular? What? Were you trying to type Caligula - in which case, again, what?
American youth are far better voters than the elder generations - at least in terms of being against things like genocide, or in favor of things like universal healthcare, affordable housing/education, a liveable environment etc.
Unless you favor America's current status quo, which some people might. Personally, ew.
> The most powerful empires in history have had large rebublics at their cores for good reason.
Ehm you might consider the Dutch/British/Spanish/Mongolian/Roman/American empires role models of exemplary voting, but I certainly don't.
> The wisdom of a crowd greatly increases with its diversity.
If that's true (in certain contexts, with caveats, etc), then maybe by that logic we shouldn't be dismissive of young people, eg, just because they generally vote a bit less than older generations.
No more so than the older generation's various head melters though.
The current millenial/GenZ generations are dealing with multiple economic crises during their career development, as well as property and other asset bubbles keeping them from accumulating the same assets as their parents.
Which they'll eventually pass to their millennial offsprings when they die.
Perhaps that isn't the whole story, maybe old people tend to have more life threatening conditions, so triage puts them first. But from my perspective, private health insurance is now mandatory in the UK if you're not old or a child, and I am even going to put my children on private health insurance. So now I'm paying a fortune in taxes for a health system I can no rely on, so must pay for private too.
Otherwise a comprehensive health insurance wouldn’t cost 200£ a month per person (I just requested a quote from AXA, as a 45 year old with no health problems, adding all packages, unlimited specialist visits and no excess)
I'm a bit older than you, and the taxable value of my PHI is £140/month. I've not looked into what that covers, or what the excess etc is, and have never even considered making use of it.
And why would I? When I needed treatment in a hurry, I was blue lighted to Barts and spent two weeks in their ITU getting world-class care free of charge, with not a single thought given to cost or having to call my insurer to ask permission for particular treatments or whatever. Thank fuck for the NHS!
IME, what they mean is two different things:
First, the fact that it can be hard to keep up with change—technological, cultural, all types—for several decades straight. When the world changes dramatically between when you're 10 and when you're 30, and then again between when you're 30 and when you're 50, it can be really hard to be willing to keep changing with it. New things become the enemy. Why in my day, we paid with credit cards by running an imprinter over them with a big ka-chunk, and we liked it! None of this newfangled chip and pin garbage. There are too many chips in things anyway! Etc.
And second, the fact that, before my generation, it was basically a guarantee that as you went from 20, to 40, to 60, you would be getting meaningfully wealthier, and as such, identifying with the financial political issues of your new socioeconomic class...and picking up their cultural politics by osmosis.
But two major things are breaking these assumptions.
The second thing above no longer holds. Starting with younger Gen X and elder Millennials, we just haven't had the opportunities to grow our wealth that our parents and grandparents did at the same ages. We're still identifying with the younger people who don't and can't own homes.
And there's been a tectonic cultural shift during our lifetimes, bringing queer people out into the light in ways that they had never been allowed to be before. Obergefell v Hodges broke open the closet and let gay people come out, and the rest of the queer community has been following them ever since. For those of us who genuinely believe in loving our fellow human beings and giving them true equality, that makes it much, much harder to accept a status quo (or reversions to an earlier one) that denies them those rights, simply because we all really know they're there in a way most of us didn't before.
Strongly disagree. I think it's exactly what is being referred to most of the time.
> Why in my day, we paid with credit cards by running an imprinter over them with a big ka-chunk, and we liked it! None of this newfangled chip and pin garbage. There are too many chips in things anyway! Etc.
Right, this comes down to a decrease in critical thinking ability.
> Starting with younger Gen X and elder Millennials, we just haven't had the opportunities to grow our wealth that our parents and grandparents did at the same ages. We're still identifying with the younger people who don't and can't own homes.
Right, but this has nothing to do with going conservative, but in needing to overhaul the system that allows hording wealth.
Do explain the miracle of Poland. What kind of economics work for Poland but couldn't possibly work for England.
Do explain how 41 thousand unskilled young man landing in UK shores via small boats are good for economy. Majority of them do no work, not even the low skill jobs. They cost UK citizens a lot of money because UK gov took upon themselves to pay for their housing and food.
The same stats are in every country that allowed massive immigration: the immigrants are a massive drain on resources of the country. And those resources are 100% come from taxing labor of citizens.
Currently UK pays for housing 100 thousand immigrants.
It's pretty obvious that if they stopped paying for housing them, they would save a lot of money.
Properly managed immigration could, in theory, be a net positive for countries.
But as it stands now if you combine immigration with well fare, you get a net drain.
If Brits are willing to impoverish themselves to <2,000 USD per capita[0] and then are lucky enough to find a willing benefactor who will pay to rebuild their crumbling infrastructure for ideological reasons, I'm sure the UK could experience similar growth.
[0] https://www.macrotrends.net/datasets/global-metrics/countrie...
Imagine complaining about that (audible eyeroll).
So you want the UK to stop feeding and housing them but I guess keeping the laws forbidding them from working and renting? Why don't you and your mates don't do something about that already? Oh I know, last time they tried some ended up in prison for trying to kill the immigrants.
Mugrants arriving by boats because increasingly unhinged and rightwing governments paid off by dark money linked to Kremlin (we remember the suppressed intelligence report on Russian interference in voting) cut the country from the EU and closed down ALL the legal routes of immigration. Arriving "illegally" is the only way for them to claim for asylum.
And the funny thing is, the vast majority of these applying for asylum get their claims approved because they genuinely qualify, it's that UK is not offering any legal routes to anyone except Ukrainians (white Christians, I bet that had no impact) and a very few Afghans (these pesky translators, working for our troops risking their life now have a gall to ask for help once we let the Taliban back).
Did you see the graph showing illegal migration numbers before and after the Brexit vote? I bet you wouldn't like that. Because previous UK could just hand them back to the French.
All in all this is a self inflicted wound on all levels.
With the additional cherry on top of the utter lie in your last sentence. Immigration is not a net drain. Immigrant taxpayers are a net GAIN, and a very significant one, while the British citizens are a net LOSS to the treasury.
If we deported all the Brits the country would be much better off
I do agree that there needs to be a honest conversation about what (economic) immigrants offer vs. what they cost, but it needs to be done properly.
We will need immigrants because we are below 2.1 in Total Fertility Rate. But, the EU doesn't need to be the comfy life raft of the world as it has been for the past 2-3 decades.
Like voting for AfD. I doubt many people look at this organization and its leaders to conclude that "ah, here is the talent I would love to have running my country." They're merely the only available option against. Same with brexit.
But when they face deficit, they raise taxes instead of, crazy idea, not spending billions of money taken from UK citizens to provide free housing and food for foreigners.
UK citizens are rightfully pissed off that their life is getting worse.
That's not the social contract and being pissed off about that is not racism. It's self preservation.
The same happens in Spain, Germany, France, Italy.
That's your big mystery of why AfD or Reform UK are popular: because the parties currently in power are flat out refusing to implement clear desires of their voters.
That's how democracy is supposed to work: AfD and Reform UK and Le Pen are gaining because they are promising to implement the desires of citizens of German, UK or France.
The foreigner-hate is so short-sighted. Your underpaid hospital worker, house cleaner, fruit picker, taxi driver, UberEats delivery is usually foreign, they don't mind working the exploitative conditions because for them the money is much better than home, providing you with affordable fruits, taxis and delivery (until the rent-seeking corporations want even more than 30%...). Get rid of them, and you'll have to pay living wages for your fruits and delivery. Heh, Westerners, still wanting to enjoy the fruits of colonization.
(Yeah the solution shouldn't be to continue allowing the exploitation, probably a better wealth distribution, but hey, why are you looking at my wallet, look at Elon's wallet!)
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.
Spain is a bad example to reach for here, they are on track to regularize a huge chunk of unauthorized migrants: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62n6gw1dp9o
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.
I see your winginess from your post. You're going to stop reading this because you'll find it disgusting, but hey I'll bother anyway: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/dina-nayeri-un...
She wrote: > Civilised people don’t ask for resumes when answering calls from the edge of a grave. It shouldn’t matter what I did after I cleaned myself off and threw away the last of my asylum-seeking clothes. My accomplishments should belong only to me. There should be no question of earning my place, of showing that I was a good bet. My family and I were once humans in danger, and we knocked on the doors of every embassy we came across: the UK, America, Australia, Italy. America answered and so, decades later, I still feel a need to bow down to airport immigration officers simply for saying “Welcome home”.
> But what America did was a basic human obligation. It is the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks. It is your duty to answer us, even if we don’t give you sugary success stories.
But heck, "civilised people", I'm beginning to doubt very much that Western Europeans deserve that moniker.
You write:
> Poland has hospitals staffed 100% by Polish people. What prevents UK from doing the same?
Maybe because UK kids don't want the underpaid overwork conditions? Why not pay them better and give more of the taxpayer's money for the NHS, oh some of you will moan about that as well? Maybe the NHS will be forced to spend the money for outsourcing, ensuring the Tory-run outsourcing companies earn those nice bucks - hey why not direct your anger at them?
> And they don't work so you now have mostly young males loitering in neighborhoods.
Yeah, perversely refugees applying for permit aren't allowed to earn income, so again it's the government preventing them to work. Allow them to pick those fruits for some income and you'll moan about the government making the country even more attractive for people to run away from bullets and bombs...
Moaning about irregular migration but "forgetting" UK has no legal routes and can't reject them back or France since UK left the EU.
Moaning about UK hosting them (often in dangerous conditions) while forgetting they're forbidden from renting, and finally complaining about UK feeding them while pretending that giving them work is not an offence.
Right Reform kook. Or maybe from their Konfederation party seeing he seems to be from Poland.
Nope: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016885102...
