Another day, another profoundly unserious piece on immigration. "At times, this will cost money". If you are "serious" about "tackling" this issue, have to start by acknowledging it will cost a huge amount of money or show any sign at all of having done any scoping of what it would involve. - ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

stephenkb.bsky.social • 100 days ago

Another day, another profoundly unserious piece on immigration. "At times, this will cost money". If you are "serious" about "tackling" this issue, have to start by acknowledging it will cost a huge amount of money or show any sign at all of having done any scoping of what it would involve.

Reposted from Sunder Katwala (sundersays)

I think @joshglancy.bsky.social misses a couple of foundational points of context in this piece

If net migration at 700-900k is unsustainable, but is already sbout *half that level now* (year to Dec 2024, figures in May 2025) are further tight changes needed?

www.thetimes.com/article/3fcc...

Comments

pollik.bsky.social•100 days ago

I wonder if it is time to examine more closely the root causes of migration...and work towards fixing them.

I will happily await outcomes of studies, but I will predict that equality and safety rank high.

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

Happily the Budget is a good test of seriousness: if you can't go 'we actually need even *more* stuff like this. MORE barriers for hiring for the private sector' then you aren't serious about this policy aim!

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

934,000 vacancies in the UK overall last year. Around one in ten of those work 'for the NHS'. Basically unless you are willing to pen a piece saying "Immigration is too high. Time for Labour to shutter Deliveroo so the NHS has enough porters this year", shut up.

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

It really just is as simple as 'if you believe this, why haven't you quit your writing job to work in a care home?' because if you can't persuade *yourself* to Do Your Bit To Tackle Immigration, why do you think it's going to appeal to the other 48 million voters in the UK?

motomatters.com•100 days ago

The fundamental question underlying the immigration debate is "who is going to do all the work"?

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

I like how the piece describes talking about the NHS as "pieties". No, I think you'll find those are real jobs that really do need doing.

tworooks.bsky.social•100 days ago

this issue is deeply entwined with adult social care, elderly and end of life care as anyone with experience of looking after their parents will know

omaromalleykhan.bsky.social•100 days ago

Already in the 1971, 1 in 3 NHS doctors were foreign born. For over 50 yrs, there have been suggestions (some more handy wavey than others) about how to change that, tho less concrete policies (or £) on how to deliver

adsquires.bsky.social•100 days ago

V good - entirely agree. His overblown emotive language ducks actual rational discussion of policy impacts. The fact overseas student visas (a popular group here) bring a lot of £ to UK unis is a "mumbled piety" so he doesn't feel the need to address it & say where unis should get £ from instead 1/

nearlytoolate.bsky.social•100 days ago

The NHS right from its inception has always been utterly reliant on immigrant labour. Dr Sunak, for example. It has *never* been sustainable from homegrown labour

bifuriosa.bsky.social•100 days ago

"Other people - I have an important job as a columnist / family trust fund / am retired / etc etc etc"

iainl7.bsky.social•100 days ago

Maybe they could have a word with their business pages colleagues, who keep talking about CEOs as “Job Creators”, and persuade them it’s a bad thing.

paulbriley.bsky.social•100 days ago

No. The fundamental question is "who determines the level of pay for essential workers?"

Pay is exceptionally low. Work conditions & hours are exceptionally poor.

Few will accept this from UK citizens. This leaves only immigrants where relative pay & conditions are worse!

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

No, this is actually irrelevant. Pay and conditions matters a lot, but it doesn't change 'do you actually need a social care worker, Y/N?'

paulbriley.bsky.social•100 days ago

While care homes & private healthcare provision under NHS badge is very profitable due to exploiting workforce then it's inevitable jobs will remain unfilled with pressure for more immigration.

celestialweasel.bsky.social•100 days ago

Selective Employment Tax reinvented for the new millennium

heartinamber.bsky.social•100 days ago

'The government can fundamentally restructure the labour market with no negative effects on anyone, but cannot raise income tax without destroying the economy' is, as ever, a fascinating thing to believe

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

Quoting myself as I don't want to pile on but I think I have a new favourite comment in this debate: someone saying me going 'have you, over the last four elections, voted for higher taxes or not?' as a personal attack.

seanmatthews1.bsky.social•100 days ago

It's headlined with 'tough decisions'. Of course it's profoundly unserious.

aremay.bsky.social•100 days ago

This is a remarkably silly paragraph - no grappling with the implications of bankrupting a bunch of universities, for example. No understanding of the impact on social or health care (you noted his flippant use of "pieties"). But of course, the Times has been rotting from the head down for a while.

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paperghost.bsky.social•100 days ago

so many things to choose from. the "creaking health system" made something like 4bn in surcharge fees last time i checked and most visa holders aren't down the GPs every day. most visa holders never touch the "creaking welfare system" due to no public funds and the fact that most end up leaving!

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

Visibly has done *no* reporting on the policy area at all.

disappoptimism.bsky.social•100 days ago

Let us cut off our own nose as a society, then learn how funny things really smell

joxley.jmoxley.co.uk•100 days ago

How much money does he want to give Assad?

aremay.bsky.social•100 days ago

"wads" of it. Of course, the UK cranking up the aid budget to give to countries in the Middle East is something that be easily done, with no political or policy consequences.

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

Unclear also what "Middle East depots" are going to do to stop 421k people getting work visas in India and Nigeria. Start shooting Air India flights out of the sky?

joxley.jmoxley.co.uk•100 days ago

Yes, that's the other huge confusion going on here. Reduce asylum claims to zero and we've still got 600k net migration.

aremay.bsky.social•100 days ago

Maybe they will take in Ukrainian refugees, or issue Hong Kong visas, instead?

milesbrasher.bsky.social•100 days ago

Now we know who's behind the massive surge in bomb threats for Indian Airlines

joxley.jmoxley.co.uk•100 days ago

And upon receiving that cash they would honour our requests, right?

aremay.bsky.social•100 days ago

For MBS is an honourable man,
So are they all, honourable men

cepmurphy.bsky.social•100 days ago

That's what I'm wondering. Easy to make out "give money to despots to handle immigration for us" as a hard decision, not so easy to deal with "turns out he spent our cash on big guns he's using in a way we don't like, which is itself causing more refugees"

paperghost.bsky.social•100 days ago

he wants to tighten student dependant rules further - okay, where? it's only research postgrads who can bring spouses. do we stop them too? he complains about "low skilled" grads doing deliveroo, despite work not being a condition of entry. how on earth is additional, not mandatory work a bad thing?

valoisdubins.bsky.social•100 days ago

Austerity was a decision by Cameron/Osborne. Brexit was a decision by Johnson.

Reversing these decisions is hard.

Acting as if they were not inevitable is a total failure of political courage.

nelgonde.bsky.social•100 days ago

I don't understand why people expect better from The Times than The Daily Telgraph. They're both drinking the same Kool Aid

bust3d00.bsky.social•100 days ago

It's not really possible to win any argument when one side has total control of the media, and is very happy to lie

thereal-dk.bsky.social•100 days ago

Think it's pretty reasonable to point out that policy changes that tripled immigration over the last few years doesn't appear to have massively improved growth / public finances / public services. Makes it tough to claim going back to what it was a few years ago will lead to massive problems.

blackbeardsghost.bsky.social•100 days ago

I don't want to alarm you, but growth can still be made a lot worse!! Ideally we'd go back to having FoM, but we can't so now were left with an buck of bad choices

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

More importantly, those "policy changes" involve, you know, 1) lockdown 2) Ukraine 3) Hong Kong. We literally have no way of knowing if immigration *has* actually tripled in recent years.

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

@thereal-dk.bsky.social's argument I think would absolutely hold up if UK migration figures had gone from 2019 to 2022 levels in a 'normal' 2020. But that's not what happened.

thereal-dk.bsky.social•100 days ago

100% fair that it's been a very unusual few years. But "no way of knowing"? By now we should pretty much know how much of the increase was Hong Kong and Ukraine, and how much was the new work and study visa regimes. And the impact of each.

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

The word 'lockdown' is the FIRST of the changes, FGS. We know that roughly (emphasis on the word 'roughly') 140k people came via the Hong Kong route and roughly twice that via the Ukrainian one.

blackbeardsghost.bsky.social•100 days ago

Quite. But we've apparently jumped past the reflection, and study phase, and landed straight at the liberals have lost the argument, and deliveroo is eating our economy stage, which in turn is going lead to the abysmal performative policy stage

blackbeardsghost.bsky.social•100 days ago

Bucket of*

sprawlmaven.bsky.social•100 days ago

Yes, because of course, we all know that failing to address or solve a problem is completely completely cost free 🤷🏻‍♀️

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

What do you even *mean* by this? Yes, everything has costs. Not every problem has a solution you will like. The “just reduce the number, no I will not discuss specifics” crowd are demonstrating that they do not actually want to bear the costs of reducing numbers.

sprawlmaven.bsky.social•100 days ago

Apologies I was being snarky and I’m sorry I was misunderstood 🫣

I did not intend to waste your time 😬
In my experience, people who cannot discuss specifics do not understand what they’re talking about

lukebax.bsky.social•100 days ago

That’s the kind of response that’s nice to see over here and wasn’t common on Twitter of late.

sprawlmaven.bsky.social•100 days ago

I’d rather suspect that’s why quite a few of us are refugees from Twitter and really heart warmed to see what is actually possible

Most people are pretty decent on a full stomach and a good night sleep ☺️

camtreblig.bsky.social•100 days ago

It’s gotten to the point where if someone wrote an article saying that we should have compulsory national service but for instead of the military it’s health and social care, with a 20 year prison sentence for draft dodgers, it would actually raise the quality of the discourse

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

Indeed. I would have objections like 'this seems like it would be wildly unpopular' and 'integrating these national service volunteers into the NHS will be very disruptive, you remember how people are more likely to die in August because it's when the new doctors start?' but it would at least...

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

...be something you could go 'yes, this is something that engages with one of the actual policy obstacles'.

camtreblig.bsky.social•100 days ago

It’s why dismissing the idea that immigration props up the NHS and universities as “pieties” is so infuriating. This isn’t a subjective view, it’s either true or it isn’t true that they would collapse without immigration. It would almost have been more intellectually honest for him to just deny it

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

Indeed. It's the rhetorical equivalent of raising your voice so you hope no-one will notice you're bang to rights.

camtreblig.bsky.social•100 days ago

I hate to be one of those people who makes everything about Brexit, but I think one thing the Brexit debates did was to normalise dismissing claims that there are tough choices to be made by saying that the concept of tough choices is unpopular

olliebradfield.bsky.social•100 days ago

Genuinely slightly obsessed with National Service for the NHS

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camtreblig.bsky.social•100 days ago

I think there is a decent chunk of affluent and/or older Brits who, deep down, fundamentally believe that poor younger people should be required to be their servants, and that demographic would absolutely love this idea

krisholt1.bsky.social•100 days ago

They’re an offshoot of the ‘I suffered so they should suffer too’ group.

camtreblig.bsky.social•100 days ago

Among older people that’s definitely the case, but lots of them are motivated by straightforward classism. They see themselves as minor nobility/landed gentry and believe they deserve serfs

iampaulkerry.bsky.social•100 days ago

But the alternative also costs money, and the country has been trying not to pay. The UK has had net migration of ~4m over the last 15 years, but I don't think many would say it has had a commensurate increase in policing, hospital or prison capacity, let alone housing.

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

Absolutely anyone who actually looked at the data would have no option but to say it has had a commensurate increase in state capacity because the biggest issuer of work visas is the British state.

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

4mn is five per cent of the UK's total population. In the NHS alone, a fifth of employees are born overseas, which is an imperfect measure of immigration, but not so imperfect as to make your point seaworthy, I'm afraid.

iampaulkerry.bsky.social•100 days ago

Sorry but I don't think that data is relevant, imperfect or not. You could sack all the UK-born staff and make it 100% and it still wouldn't amount to an increase in capacity. Besides which, you don't just need personnel, you need other stuff. There are fewer, not more beds. Prisons are overflowing.

iampaulkerry.bsky.social•100 days ago

Police numbers have barely risen. Point is, you have a bigger population, you need more provision. Have we budgeted for that provision? No.

Now you may say that the alternative is more expensive, and I would say that's probably true. But I also think it's false to think this is cheap.

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

Where did I say it was cheap? I simply said that it was cheaper than losing the best part of four million jobs.

phyphor.one-dash.org•100 days ago

The problems aren't due to immigration but the funnelling of public money to private companies who skim off profit and pass back any costs, and who have no incentive to actually provide a functional service.
Neoliberalism, Thatcherism, is a failed idea but we're stuck with it.

phyphor.one-dash.org•100 days ago

When Thatcher said "the problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" she was almost perfectly correct, except that is the issue with neoliberalism siphoning off money from the Treasury to private companies. At least with social welfare systems the money goes back in.

swalesmetroprof.bsky.social•100 days ago

I also think people are missing the bigger picture...re the economy, need for a younger productive population and the unavoidable increasing numbers of international climate change migrants. The current debate is a populist race to the bottom...
https://swalesmetroprof.blog/2023/08/18/the-population-conundrum/

aph13.bsky.social•100 days ago

"The majority of people in Britain are not bigots." Perhaps not, but the majority of people do believe many things that are not true.

dogpatchryan.bsky.social•100 days ago

Does anyone ever talk about where the £100s of millions that immigrants paying the NHS surcharges will come from should they return immigration to halcyon levels?

stephenkb.bsky.social•100 days ago

Almost all of the participants in this debate I think haven't done enough work to even *know* about the NHS surcharge, I think.