Britain Is Full

The right-wing media, conservative commentators and various people on here occasionally talk about Britain being full. No room for immigration, broken system, all these criticisms of immigrants in the UK.

This culminated in the shock statistic that there would be 70 Million people in the UK by the year 2028, two thirds of the additional people being immigrants. As it happens this projection is wrong and based on faulty data, but that's not really the point.

Is Britain full? Are there too many immigrants? Are we too lax? Or are we too strict? Is it right-wing scare tactics? Is this the modern version of The Mail's 1930's campaign to stop German Jews from coming over to the UK?

I saw Panorama and felt it was rather sensationalist.

They quoted a statistic that one in 4 births in the UK is to a mother not born in the UK. They did not source anything.

I am extremely skeptical about these "facts" that are being used.

Not at all, there is plenty of room for more people. Just scare-mongering, lets welcome the immigrants. They've never harmed me or this country.

Britain is not a football stadium.

Ya think you Poms have it bad,we Aussies have a sign on the front gate for all to see and read.

maybe scotland is willing to take its share of new arrivals

I agree, I see no problem with them as long as they come here legally and go through the appropriate channels like we would have to if we went over to another country.

I was appalled at how many people joined that 'England is Full' Facebook group.

its all very well people saying we have thousands of people immigrating here every year

but what they fail to mention is the thousands of people leaving every year.

when that is taken into account, our population isn't growing that quickly.

I agree completely.

Weren't there the same arguments in the 70's?
Actually, I was talking to an Indian couple, who moved to this country in 1979. They were saying that they had never had any problems where they lived, no crime etc...but now some 'bloody Romanians had come over and moved in' and that they shouldn't be allowed in because they brought crime with them.

I think we'd start running out of resources (water, electricity, gas etc) before Britain was 'full'. There are 50 countries with a higher population density than the UK.

There's nothing inherently wrong with immigration or the vast majority of immigrants. My concern is the level of recent immigration and the effects it appears to be having on the British psyche. I am also concerned that the more extreme elements within British politics are gaining ground partly because we seem scared to openly discuss immigration as an issue at all.

Although, in fairness to the OP, there doesn't appear to be a problem with immigration in Scotland. The Scotsman newspaper didn't even list immigration as one of the twelve options when it took a poll of the most important election issues.

https://www.scotsman.com/CustomPages/CustomPage.aspx?PageID=81991

I am of the view that current levels of immigration are too high and apparently uncontrolled in any meaningful way.

This link takes you to the MigrationWatch website where you can find several authoritative articles which are well supported by accompanying data.

https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/what-is-the-problem

and here's a link to what Wiki says about MigrationWatch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MigrationWatch_UK

I read somewhere a while back that the people entering this country minus the people leaving works out at about a few thousand a year. Immigration isn't a problem here, illegal immigration is.

Apparently many more than a few thousand ....

"The scale of immigration
5. Foreign immigrants are now arriving at the rate of about ? million a year - or nearly one a minute. Allowing for those who leave, net foreign immigration reached 330,000 in 2007. It fell to 250,000 in 2008; of the drop of 80,000, nearly 70,000 was due to lower net migration from Eastern Europe." - MigrationWatch

Yes, illegal immigration is a problem, a problem that this government has notably failed to address effectively, if at all.

My biggest concern regarding immigration is that there seems to be no limits on numbers whatsoever. In fact, if the entire population of the EU outside of Britain wanted to come here tomorrow, they would be legally entitled to do so.

The government talks tough about tightening the criteria for non-EU residents wanting to come here but I'd say that non-EU immigration is well down the list of areas that need restricting.

And fell to 163,000 last year. https://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/26/migration-asylum-statistics

That better for you?

And how would you stop illegal immigration just to ask? Stop all shipping into the UK? Wire lorry chassis up to the electrical system so people can't cling underneath them?

The BNP talk about ending illegal immigration, I've yet to get an answer as to how they would do that.