We Need To Talk About Immigration

[shlomo]

37 minutes ago, onlooker said:

Then why is GDP per capita going down when the politicians are telling us that with more immigrants GDP per capital should be going up? It is a zero sum game, to a great extent.

GDP is going down because the money from the Russians and Chinese and rich Arabs has stopped coming to the UK, sorry not the narrative you want to hear, all these xenophobic idiots getting what they want making us poor, because they can’t think strategically 

[burk]

18 hours ago, Trampa501 said:

This is a dishonest statement. First of all, Polish/Irish/Australian/Spanish/Italian workers in the NHS would be classified as white, but they are still migrant workers. Secondly, the proportions are different in say London than in Cumbria. Yes we have native Brits in the nhs (and contrary to the narrative we do train up doctors and nurses), but because of the churn rate we rely on migrant labour to fill the gaps. And one thing is certain - it won't be any of the anti-migrant posters (or indeed myself) who will help that situation.

As I see it, to turn this ship around several things need to happen.

Yes retention needs looking at, say for example if the govt has spent for arguments sake £100k training a nurse and they leave for abroad within five years then that sum should be paid back to the govt.

Salaries need improving in social care as well as junior positions to aid retention 

Simply put,

We've been living beyond our means for decades in regard to cheap fixes to push growth at any cost in the form of proflagate borrowing, selling our public utilities & immigration.

This must and has to end.

We are reaching an inflection point both economically and societally where I genuinely can see collapse within my lifetime.

This obsession with GDP line up at all costs regardless of anything resembling a country left at the end it  from yet more kamikaze govt policies from either red team or blue team will be our headstone.

The insane and imo utterly unsustainable levels of immigration is not 'strategic' as Shlomo believes but rather a last desperate act of successive govts too embarrassed to admit the last 40 years of neoliberal, globalist doctrine has been an unmitigated failure.........

[winkie]

Someone is doing something......

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68374806

[Will!]

Sky News: Sacked inspector's damning reports expose chaotic and dysfunctional Home Office

Quote

The chief inspector of borders and immigration, David Neal, was sacked following an interview he gave to a newspaper in which he called out alleged security failings at London City Airport.

David Neal is a former Brigadier in the Royal Military Police.  He seems like a straight talker.

[shlomo]

8 hours ago, burk said:

As I see it, to turn this ship around several things need to happen.

Yes retention needs looking at, say for example if the govt has spent for arguments sake £100k training a nurse and they leave for abroad within five years then that sum should be paid back to the govt.

Salaries need improving in social care as well as junior positions to aid retention 

Simply put,

We've been living beyond our means for decades in regard to cheap fixes to push growth at any cost in the form of proflagate borrowing, selling our public utilities & immigration.

This must and has to end.

We are reaching an inflection point both economically and societally where I genuinely can see collapse within my lifetime.

This obsession with GDP line up at all costs regardless of anything resembling a country left at the end it  from yet more kamikaze govt policies from either red team or blue team will be our headstone.

The insane and imo utterly unsustainable levels of immigration is not 'strategic' as Shlomo believes but rather a last desperate act of successive govts too embarrassed to admit the last 40 years of neoliberal, globalist doctrine has been an unmitigated failure.........

If we try to live within our means without borrowing vast amounts of money and lots of immigration, we might collapse 

I think the deck of cards will collapse 

[zugzwang]

Angus Deaton regrets pretending to be a Nobel Prize-winning scientist.

 

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Symposium-Rethinking-Economics-Angus-Deaton

Like many others, I have recently found myself changing my mind, a discomfiting process for someone who has been a practicing economist for more than half a century. I will come to some of the substantive topics, but I start with some general failings. I do not include the corruption allegations that have become common in some debates. Even so, economists, who have prospered mightily over the past half century, might fairly be accused of having a vested interest in capitalism as it currently operates. I should also say that I am writing about a (perhaps nebulous) mainstream, and that there are many nonmainstream economists.

• Power: Our emphasis on the virtues of free, competitive markets and exogenous technical change can distract us from the importance of power in setting prices and wages, in choosing the direction of technical change, and in influencing politics to change the rules of the game. Without an analysis of power, it is hard to understand inequality or much else in modern capitalism.
• Philosophy and ethics: In contrast to economists from Adam Smith and Karl Marx through John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, and even Milton Friedman, we have largely stopped thinking about ethics and about what constitutes human well-being. We are technocrats who focus on efficiency. We get little training about the ends of economics, on the meaning of well-being—welfare economics has long since vanished from the curriculum—or on what philosophers say about equality. When pressed, we usually fall back on an income-based utilitarianism. We often equate well-being with money or consumption, missing much of what matters to people. In current economic thinking, individuals matter much more than relationships between people in families or in communities.
• Efficiency is important, but we valorize it over other ends. Many subscribe to Lionel Robbins’ definition of economics as the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends or to the stronger version that says that economists should focus on efficiency and leave equity to others, to politicians or administrators. But the others regularly fail to materialize, so that when efficiency comes with upward redistribution—frequently though not inevitably—our recommendations become little more than a license for plunder. Keynes wrote that the problem of economics is to reconcile economic efficiency, social justice, and individual liberty. We are good at the first, and the libertarian streak in economics constantly pushes the last, but social justice can be an afterthought. After economists on the left bought into the Chicago School’s deference to markets—“we are all Friedmanites now”—social justice became subservient to markets, and a concern with distribution was overruled by attention to the average, often nonsensically described as the “national interest.
•  

Second thoughts

Like most of my age cohort, I long regarded unions as a nuisance that interfered with economic (and often personal) efficiency and welcomed their slow demise. But today large corporations have too much power over working conditions, wages, and decisions in Washington, where unions currently have little say compared with corporate lobbyists. Unions once raised wages for members and nonmembers, they were an important part of social capital in many places, and they brought political power to working people in the workplace and in local, state, and federal governments. Their decline is contributing to the falling wage share, to the widening gap between executives and workers, to community destruction, and to rising populism. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson have recently argued that the direction of technical change has always depended on who has the power to decide; unions need to be at the table for decisions about artificial intelligence. Economists’ enthusiasm for technical change as the instrument of universal enrichment is no longer tenable (if it ever was).

I am much more skeptical of the benefits of free trade to American workers and am even skeptical of the claim, which I and others have made in the past, that globalization was responsible for the vast reduction in global poverty over the past 30 years. I also no longer defend the idea that the harm done to working Americans by globalization was a reasonable price to pay for global poverty reduction because workers in America are so much better off than the global poor. I believe that the reduction in poverty in India had little to do with world trade. And poverty reduction in China could have happened with less damage to workers in rich countries if Chinese policies caused it to save less of its national income, allowing more of its manufacturing growth to be absorbed at home. I had also seriously underthought my ethical judgments about trade-offs between domestic and foreign workers. We certainly have a duty to aid those in distress, but we have additional obligations to our fellow citizens that we do not have to others.

I used to subscribe to the near consensus among economists that immigration to the US was a good thing, with great benefits to the migrants and little or no cost to domestic low-skilled workers. I no longer think so. Economists’ beliefs are not unanimous on this but are shaped by econometric designs that may be credible but often rest on short-term outcomes. Longer-term analysis over the past century and a half tells a different story. Inequality was high when America was open, was much lower when the borders were closed, and rose again post Hart-Celler (the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965) as the fraction of foreign-born people rose back to its levels in the Gilded Age. It has also been plausibly argued that the Great Migration of millions of African Americans from the rural South to the factories in the North would not have happened if factory owners had been able to hire the European migrants they preferred.

Economists could benefit by greater engagement with the ideas of philosophers, historians, and sociologists, just as Adam Smith once did. The philosophers, historians, and sociologists would likely benefit too.

[zugzwang]

Dupe.

Edited March 16 by zugzwang
Dupe

[zugzwang]

Dupe.

[shlomo]

23 minutes ago, zugzwang said:

Angus Deaton regrets pretending to be a Nobel Prize-winning scientist.

 

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Symposium-Rethinking-Economics-Angus-Deaton

Like many others, I have recently found myself changing my mind, a discomfiting process for someone who has been a practicing economist for more than half a century. I will come to some of the substantive topics, but I start with some general failings. I do not include the corruption allegations that have become common in some debates. Even so, economists, who have prospered mightily over the past half century, might fairly be accused of having a vested interest in capitalism as it currently operates. I should also say that I am writing about a (perhaps nebulous) mainstream, and that there are many nonmainstream economists.

• Power: Our emphasis on the virtues of free, competitive markets and exogenous technical change can distract us from the importance of power in setting prices and wages, in choosing the direction of technical change, and in influencing politics to change the rules of the game. Without an analysis of power, it is hard to understand inequality or much else in modern capitalism.
• Philosophy and ethics: In contrast to economists from Adam Smith and Karl Marx through John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, and even Milton Friedman, we have largely stopped thinking about ethics and about what constitutes human well-being. We are technocrats who focus on efficiency. We get little training about the ends of economics, on the meaning of well-being—welfare economics has long since vanished from the curriculum—or on what philosophers say about equality. When pressed, we usually fall back on an income-based utilitarianism. We often equate well-being with money or consumption, missing much of what matters to people. In current economic thinking, individuals matter much more than relationships between people in families or in communities.
• Efficiency is important, but we valorize it over other ends. Many subscribe to Lionel Robbins’ definition of economics as the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends or to the stronger version that says that economists should focus on efficiency and leave equity to others, to politicians or administrators. But the others regularly fail to materialize, so that when efficiency comes with upward redistribution—frequently though not inevitably—our recommendations become little more than a license for plunder. Keynes wrote that the problem of economics is to reconcile economic efficiency, social justice, and individual liberty. We are good at the first, and the libertarian streak in economics constantly pushes the last, but social justice can be an afterthought. After economists on the left bought into the Chicago School’s deference to markets—“we are all Friedmanites now”—social justice became subservient to markets, and a concern with distribution was overruled by attention to the average, often nonsensically described as the “national interest.
•  

Second thoughts

Like most of my age cohort, I long regarded unions as a nuisance that interfered with economic (and often personal) efficiency and welcomed their slow demise. But today large corporations have too much power over working conditions, wages, and decisions in Washington, where unions currently have little say compared with corporate lobbyists. Unions once raised wages for members and nonmembers, they were an important part of social capital in many places, and they brought political power to working people in the workplace and in local, state, and federal governments. Their decline is contributing to the falling wage share, to the widening gap between executives and workers, to community destruction, and to rising populism. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson have recently argued that the direction of technical change has always depended on who has the power to decide; unions need to be at the table for decisions about artificial intelligence. Economists’ enthusiasm for technical change as the instrument of universal enrichment is no longer tenable (if it ever was).

I am much more skeptical of the benefits of free trade to American workers and am even skeptical of the claim, which I and others have made in the past, that globalization was responsible for the vast reduction in global poverty over the past 30 years. I also no longer defend the idea that the harm done to working Americans by globalization was a reasonable price to pay for global poverty reduction because workers in America are so much better off than the global poor. I believe that the reduction in poverty in India had little to do with world trade. And poverty reduction in China could have happened with less damage to workers in rich countries if Chinese policies caused it to save less of its national income, allowing more of its manufacturing growth to be absorbed at home. I had also seriously underthought my ethical judgments about trade-offs between domestic and foreign workers. We certainly have a duty to aid those in distress, but we have additional obligations to our fellow citizens that we do not have to others.

I used to subscribe to the near consensus among economists that immigration to the US was a good thing, with great benefits to the migrants and little or no cost to domestic low-skilled workers. I no longer think so. Economists’ beliefs are not unanimous on this but are shaped by econometric designs that may be credible but often rest on short-term outcomes. Longer-term analysis over the past century and a half tells a different story. Inequality was high when America was open, was much lower when the borders were closed, and rose again post Hart-Celler (the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965) as the fraction of foreign-born people rose back to its levels in the Gilded Age. It has also been plausibly argued that the Great Migration of millions of African Americans from the rural South to the factories in the North would not have happened if factory owners had been able to hire the European migrants they preferred.

Economists could benefit by greater engagement with the ideas of philosophers, historians, and sociologists, just as Adam Smith once did. The philosophers, historians, and sociologists would likely benefit too.

In the 40s and 50s and 60s white American workers were the best in the world nowadays the Chinese are the best until another country takes the baton 

You cannot revisit the past the present has changed 

[Ballyk]

2 hours ago, shlomo said:

In the 40s and 50s and 60s white American workers were the best in the world nowadays the Chinese are the best until another country takes the baton 

It depends on the incentive structures in place.  South Koreans are genetically no different from North Koreans, yet they have super high productivity, relatively.  Same with Northern and Southern Irish, to a lesser extent. 

The problem with our benefits system is that it disincentives work among the lower working class, beyond a certain number of hours, due to the working tax credit system.

And for the higher working class, 'fiscal drag' means high taxes kick in at a relatively low salary level, disincentivising them from doing overtime / going for promotions / working longer hours.

If we don't have a hard working working class, we 'need' to import it!  (ie we don't need to at all, we just need to change the tax system to incentivise work).

Edited March 16 by Ballyk
'

[shlomo]

7 minutes ago, Ballyk said:

It depends on the incentive structures in place.  South Koreans are genetically no different from North Koreans, yet they have super high productivity, relatively.  Same with Northern and Southern Irish, to a lesser extent. 

The problem with our benefits system is that it disincentives work among the lower working class, beyond a certain number of hours, due to the working tax credit system.

And for the higher working class, 'fiscal drag' means high taxes kick in at a relatively low salary level, disincentivising them from doing overtime / going for promotions / working longer hours.

If we don't have a hard working working class, we 'need' to import it!  (ie we don't need to at all, we just need to change the tax system to incentivise work).

The government is running out of free money so they will have to do something like that 

[FANG]

17 hours ago, Ballyk said:

If we don't have a hard working working class, we 'need' to import it!  (ie we don't need to at all, we just need to change the tax system to incentivise work).

They are happy allowing people to come to this country and will continue paying them minimum wage, thus replacing the indigenous population. Just look at security companies as an example, full of immigrants and this is only the start.

Its a race to the bottom.   

  

Edited March 17 by FANG

[debtlessmanc]

On 01/03/2024 at 09:05, Trampa501 said:

 

It’s been said on here many times that much of the money in London is extracted out of the rest of the country. A case in point being the professional organisation I am a member of. I am told. I have to pay £200 a year by the uni. Where does it go ? A lavish place in London no one uses and a London based CEO who earns £500 k p.a. More than a Nobel laureate I know. Wonder which one advanced the standing of the U.K. more?

Edited March 17 by debtlessmanc

[spyguy]

44 minutes ago, debtlessmanc said:

It’s been said on here many times that much of the money in London is extracted out of the rest of the country. A case in point being the professional organisation I am a member of. I am told. I have to pay £200 a year by the uni. Where does it go ? A lavish place in London no one uses and a London based CEO who earns £500 k p.a. More than a Nobel laureate I know. Wonder which one advanced the standing of the U.K. more?

I agree - and Im not a daft lefty.

Ive never seen a good breakdown of London income.

Most is just services provided to elsewhere.

The trading bit, as we found, was no more than leveraging the UKs future tax base to speculate on property. There is no accounting.

As the current situtation goes on, youll find that the migrants (50%+) in London are drawing huge dollops of benefits and expensive public services.

Youll also find a lot of those building a lot less than full.

There fact that Canary Wharf is emptying to back to back to CoO shows that -

1) FInsec/pro services as a mass employer in London is over.

2) Demand for London Property is falining and falling.

With WFH form home it looks like London earnings' was nothing more than workers travelling into London to pay tax, whilst the increasingly foreign  resident population of London sits on benefits.

 

[debtlessmanc]

on the original subject, it seems that the Irish Govt does not like asylum seekers camping near them

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/03/16/asylum-seekers-cleared-from-camp-at-mount-street-return-to-find-tents-destroyed/

"The men The Irish Times spoke to were initially happy to move on from the Mount Street camp, which had become unhygienic in recent weeks. However, they were not provided with accommodation, instead being given tents and told to pitch “anywhere you want on the mountain” after arrival at the site near Saggart in southwest Co Dublin"

 

The UK and ireland have proved themselve sompletely incapable of buidling sufficient houses without allowing for immigration never mind with. I guess permanent shanty towns will start appearning at is the case in eg Paris.

Edited March 17 by debtlessmanc

[shlomo]

2 hours ago, debtlessmanc said:

on the original subject, it seems that the Irish Govt does not like asylum seekers camping near them

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/03/16/asylum-seekers-cleared-from-camp-at-mount-street-return-to-find-tents-destroyed/

"The men The Irish Times spoke to were initially happy to move on from the Mount Street camp, which had become unhygienic in recent weeks. However, they were not provided with accommodation, instead being given tents and told to pitch “anywhere you want on the mountain” after arrival at the site near Saggart in southwest Co Dublin"

 

The UK and ireland have proved themselve sompletely incapable of buidling sufficient houses without allowing for immigration never mind with. I guess permanent shanty towns will start appearning at is the case in eg Paris.

Taking your post at a tangent 

The job situation in London has become very bad all you hear about is job losses 

What is the situation in Manchester  like?

Jobs affect immigration for the first time I am noticing their are not any jobs out their.

Edited March 17 by shlomo

[debtlessmanc]

54 minutes ago, shlomo said:

Taking your post at a tangent 

The job situation in London has become very bad all you hear about is job losses 

What is the situation in Manchester  like?

Jobs affect immigration for the first time I am noticing their are not any jobs out their.

I am not really the right person to ask, but I have hard there is not much work around above minimum wage.

[shlomo]

52 minutes ago, debtlessmanc said:

I am not really the right person to ask, but I have hard there is not much work around above minimum wage.

Immigration is to fill jobs, the job situation has become very bleak so we will have to cut back on immigration 

Even your sector is going to have big job cuts, 

 

Edited March 17 by shlomo

[debtlessmanc]

35 minutes ago, shlomo said:

Immigration is to fill jobs, the job situation has become very bleak so we will have to cut back on immigration 

Even your sector is going to have big job cuts, 

 

It is having to - now for some institutes

but it will affect some more than others anyway I am 60 next year, I can retire but I dont really need to and the research money and students are rolling in. 
each generation has booms and busts. It was HE in ours. Next I am not sure IT?

[Dyson Fury]

Don't worry.  The Home Office and Border Force have everything under control.  A well-executed operation resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of a dangerous gang who were smuggling illegal migrants on a lorry.

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/dover/news/men-jailed-after-39-migrants-including-boy-6-found-in-ref-303449/

 

Quote

Two men who attempted to smuggle 39 migrants out of the UK – including a six-year-old boy – in the back of a refrigerated lorry have been jailed for 12 years.

 

[winkie]

https://www.ft.com/content/3a8e4b8b-1e30-4423-83a0-818f2b7dec05

Some people are earning plenty of money from the asylum seekers......

[shlomo]

16 minutes ago, Dyson Fury said:

Don't worry.  The Home Office and Border Force have everything under control.  A well-executed operation resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of a dangerous gang who were smuggling illegal migrants on a lorry.

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/dover/news/men-jailed-after-39-migrants-including-boy-6-found-in-ref-303449/

 

 

Britain is not the land of milk and honey as one Brazilian told me, who after working in a few menial office jobs went back home to be poor but with his family 

[hurlerontheditch]

Quote

Since the Brexit vote and the Conservatives' victory in 2019, the 12 months to June 2022 saw the fastest population growth since the 1960s. Current projections from the Office for National Statistics put the UK on course for 74 million people by 2036 - six million more than there are today.

Quote

In 2022, it's estimated to have reached an all-time record of 745,000.

Then, there's the number of visas issued to people relocating to the UK. Last year there were more than 1.4 million.

For context, last year almost 30,000 people arrived by small boat.

Quote

At the end of last year, the government announced plans to cut net migration by reducing the number of people coming to the UK by 300,000.

Remember, the latest estimate for net migration is 672,000 for the year to June 2023.

The estimate published just before the Brexit referendum - and which, at the time, Boris Johnson called "scandalous" - was 333,000. That estimate has now been revised down to 303,000.

So if the government meets its new target, that would take the numbers back towards where they were… just before the Brexit vote.

 

 

Say one thing, do another? The government’s record rise in net migration - BBC News

 

 

absolutely bonkers numbers. The torys wanted brexit to take back control, they won, and took control and used that control to open the gates fully

[PeanutButter]

US

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68208637

Migrants now come from as far afield as West Africa, India and the Middle East.

Of migrants from outside the Americas, the greatest increase comes from China. More than 37,000 Chinese nationals were detained at the US-Mexico border last year, about 50 times the figure from two years ago.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68296878

A senior US immigration official has said that authorities plan to release thousands of migrants from detention amid a severe budget crunch.

The official from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told CBS, the BBC's US partner, that between 4,000 and 6,000 migrants could be released.

A bipartisan border bill that would have funded immigration detentions collapsed last week.

More than 6.3 million migrants have entered the US illegally since 2021.

ICE is currently holding about 38,000 migrants in long-term detention facilities.

The bipartisan border bill that faltered due to Republican opposition last week would have earmarked $7.6bn (£6bn) for ICE, including an additional $3.2bn for detention capacity that would have boosted the agency's ability to house detainees by several thousand beds.

According to the Washington Post - which first reported the story - the bill's collapse prompted ICE officials to circulate an internal proposal to slash costs by cutting detentions from 38,000 to 22,000.

While the proposal would see some of the migrants deported back to their home countries, many would be released into the US, the report added.

 

 

 

[debtlessmanc]

4 minutes ago, PeanutButter said:

US

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68208637

Migrants now come from as far afield as West Africa, India and the Middle East.

Of migrants from outside the Americas, the greatest increase comes from China. More than 37,000 Chinese nationals were detained at the US-Mexico border last year, about 50 times the figure from two years ago.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68296878

A senior US immigration official has said that authorities plan to release thousands of migrants from detention amid a severe budget crunch.

The official from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told CBS, the BBC's US partner, that between 4,000 and 6,000 migrants could be released.

A bipartisan border bill that would have funded immigration detentions collapsed last week.

More than 6.3 million migrants have entered the US illegally since 2021.

ICE is currently holding about 38,000 migrants in long-term detention facilities.

The bipartisan border bill that faltered due to Republican opposition last week would have earmarked $7.6bn (£6bn) for ICE, including an additional $3.2bn for detention capacity that would have boosted the agency's ability to house detainees by several thousand beds.

According to the Washington Post - which first reported the story - the bill's collapse prompted ICE officials to circulate an internal proposal to slash costs by cutting detentions from 38,000 to 22,000.

While the proposal would see some of the migrants deported back to their home countries, many would be released into the US, the report added.

 

 

 

Surprise about China- I can only guess they are poor. It’s possible they are Christians?

of course much of the problems in South America are due to demand for illegal drugs in the US.

Edited March 25 by debtlessmanc