Spoken word poet Hollie McNish spells out what's wrong with most of the arguments used against immigration. She cites as her inspiration a book by economist Philippe Legrain called Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them.
Spoken word poet Hollie McNish spells out what’s wrong with most of the arguments used against immigration. She cites as her inspiration a book by economist Philippe Legrain called Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them. (Hat tip: Adam Mordecai)
Left Foot Forward doesn't have the backing of big business or billionaires. We rely on the kind and generous support of ordinary people like you.
You can support hard-hitting journalism that holds the right to account, provides a forum for debate among progressives, and covers the stories the rest of the media ignore. Donate today.
85 Responses to “Next time someone claims that immigrants are destroying Britain, show them this”
vermilion J
Immigration has cost this country at least £120 billion since 1997, you thick, ball-less, gormless twat.
Danalese
Obviously Hollie McNish needs to stay with her poetry – she appears to have no knowledge whatever about economies!
Name one, just one – benefit that immigrants provide to the UK! They provide additional taxes? Only by taking a job that the British are looking for and in which case that British person would be paying those taxes! They take the jobs that the British do not want? Only because those vacancies are advertised in other EU countries at wages less than a British person could live on in the UK? They replace an aging society? What when we have more than a million school leavers every year entering into the employment market! They are filling specialised positions – only because the British employers are looking for cheap labour and do not want the expense of training our far more highly educated workers. So, what is the benefit of having immigrants here? Cheap labour, you say. Yes, true – but how does that benefit the UK?
dashiky
the reason immigrants have a higher rate of employment is because they are forced to work and find jobs to be able to stay in the country, IE the they try to only let the employable in.
Pro-Mass immigration = “i’m rich and I want more people to work for less money for me”
Multiculturalism can be great, I have lived and travelled to many countries around the world.
I have seen how immigrants amalgamate into a communities creating a diverse well rounded culture(a melting pot). On the other hand you see where groups from certain countries all move into the same area,and do not amalgamate. Creating their own “mini country” within a country. (on that same subject read about taqiyya)
Claire Redwood
You know, you should get your facts right. Between 2002 and 2012 immigants have contributed with more than £25 billion to the UK economy.
And in 2014 net migration was 298,000. There are around 70m people in the UK and that net migration figure adds less than 0.4% to the population – hardly a flood.
To illustrate the point further, it’s the same as if you put 235 people in a hall and just one extra person walked in, that would represent the level of net migration into the UK.
Maybe, it’s just parties like UKIP who have gotten in your stupid heads..
NHSGP
No they didn’t.
Assuming that migrants have the same cost as UK nationals, and that they pay a fair share of common goods,
The expenditure was 670,681 bn
The revenue was 555,584.
See table 4b. Make sure you account for the public goods at marginal cost bit. ie. Natives pay, migrants don’t. Also not the assumption the foot note that migrants are only charged 80%, Brits make up the difference.
They also omit pensions, dependents etc from their costs.
http://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/CDP_22_13.pdf
What evidence do you have for 70 million people?
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/pop-estimate/population-estimates-for-uk–england-and-wales–scotland-and-northern-ireland/mid-2014/mid-year-population-estimates-for-the-uk-2014.html
64,596,800 is the population of the UK.
So what does that mean? 5 million illegals?
On net migration. I don’t actually care about net migration.
I care purely and simply. Does each and every migrant make a net contribution to the UK?
if they don’t then some else gets to pay for them to be here. Either in being made poorer by taxes, or by not getting the services they need.
So with 2 major factual errors in your post, its rather funny don’t you think that you’re complaining about facts.