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People absolutely do have a problem with legal immigration, especially post-Boriswave.

If legal immigration means millions of new people every year and rapid demographic change, of course that will cause a political issue.

It would be very strange (basically unheard of in human history) if it didn't.

People I know who are non-white all report increased racism (mostly not aggressive but noticeable) since Covid, despite having English accents so clearly not being illegal immigrants.

That is caused by reckless immigration policy stoking resentment

There are no millions of people every year, stop spreading lies. Net immigration to the UK in 2025 where 170000 people. Decidedly not millions!

In Canada it has been closer to 500k per year

Maybe not millions per year but millions over a very short time

Close to a quarter of our population are immigrants right now. It's become a pretty fragmented society imo as a result.

When was Canada ever a unified society? You have two official languages primarily based on which end of the country you live in.

Fair enough.

Maybe it's just rose colored glasses then, but it certainly feels like we're more divided than ever before

It’s no longer more than a million a year (thanks Kier Starmer, I guess) but there are now at least 15 million people in the UK who aren’t White British, it is absurd to pretend that isn’t a big number.

A lot of people ideally want immigration to be negative, so +170k is still going in the wrong direction.

There are potential arguments in favour of that level of immigration but you need to convince people that it’s fine for their country to change beyond all recognition in the space of a single generation.

And unsurprisingly, the people trying to do that are finding it a tough sell

Net immigration was never more than a million (let alone "millions" which was the lie I responded to). It reached a peak of 900 000 in 2023.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06...

> illegal immigration is the type of immigration people are upset about here in the UK. most people have no problem with legal migration.

People claim that, but you can't read someone's immigration status from their face.

Reform take peoples concerns about the massive increase in population numbers and the knock on effects of housing and infrastructure, and cultural clash since we swapped eu immigration for sub Saharan and South Asian, and point it to the small boats.

I have no problem with refugees. I do have problem with a million people a year arriving through Heathrow. Farage and co want that though as it’s good for business (more workers, higher asset prices) so they blame it on the tiny numbers of small boats.

Brexit meant we swapped immigration of mostly like minded Europeans and temporary workers for permanent immigration from poorer countries with more medieval views.

I’m fairly left on the spectrum, I was door stepping for remain, and for Lib Dems in 2017,2019 and a by-election, I’m very much on the tax wealth not work side, and I have no problem in paying tax despite earning more than 90% of the people in the county, including the old folk who just keep taking and never paying.

But it seems I’m not left enough because I have a problem with the massive amounts of legal immigration under a populist right wing government and I should be sent to a gulag.

Yes, I agree with you.

In fact I would argue: if someone is truly left wing in the traditional sense (i.e. they believe Marx when he says politics is all about class conflict, they want to live in a society where workers have more power, they support trade unions etc.) then logically... they should oppose mass immigration.

Mass immigration exists because it's in the interests of the capital owning classes. It massively reduces the bargaining power of labour, and the potential power of trade unions.

Yet most supposedly "left wing" people support mass immigration and for some reason they can't understand they're voluntarily acting as willing foot soldiers for people they profess to hate

"anyone claiming the UK’s legal migration is any sort of problem right now, or in the past, should probably not be listened to in any way shape or form for anything they have to say on the matter."

This sort of position is, IMO, disgusting and immoral. I cannot express how appalled I am that someone would state something like this. Anyone who's a citizen of the UK most certainly has a right to express their opinion on legal immigration, either in favor or against.

> Anyone who's a citizen of the UK most certainly has a right to express their opinion on legal immigration, either in favor or against.

Sure, but we don’t have to heed their opinion.

And that’s why we’ll sadly get Farage as Pm, because people like you feed the “metropolitan elite” image.

> should probably not be listened to

> a right to express their opinion

...