. This 1m+ comes after years of migration well above target, and with the expectation that it will continue for years...No nation can magic up extra houses and school places and jobs and roads in this sort of time frame...
I dont know where you got that number, because it is double the ones I was looking at. However, you just admitted immigration has ben happening for years. the timefram in question is decades. The fact that we have not built suficient houses is government policy dating back to the Thatcher regime, which halted government housebuilding. Mass housing in the Uk has never been staisfied by the private sector and has always relied on government action.
However there's also a debate around the most need - and genuine refugees surely have a claim above East European migrants.
And there is the nub of the problem. Doubling the Uk population by taking migrants would inevitably drop our standard of living. We could house them, feed them, built new towns, and everyone could still have countryside to visit and admire. The effect on jobs would be to drive down wages, because I see no way demand would keep up with the new supply of labour. The building program would be very costly, which is why Thatcher got rid of it. In return you get a capital asset, but no one here now wants that asset or the people living in it. Its a perfectly simple choice, taking in these people would be at our personal cost, and that is why we do not like it. We cannot meet need around the world, even if we reduce our own wealth to the new average level that would be created by sharing it. People want to come here because we are rich, have a widely known language and are relatively welcoming. The first and last of these are significantly because we exclude others. The middle one is a consequence of our elite position in the past as well as now. Taking in those refugees means losing this position, which is what the refugees are aspiring to.
I think the UK has to look at all aspects of migration policy and that must include migration from within the EU.
Maybe it does. But firstly EU migrants are not a problem on grounds of quantity, and are essential to the economy because they include many with key skills which are essential to us. It is the ransom refugees which are the problem, and they do not come from EU countries.
Middle Eastern and North African migrants have to be part of a global response.
Haha, yes. The US has half the population density of europe, so maybe they should take the first 300,000,000 refugees, ubtil such time as their population density matches ours? Any one think thats going to happen?
We in the UK cannot accept a situation where the people smugglers are running our migration policy, where people we would reject if they applied are somehow accepted if they turn up. We are deporting economic migrants from Ukraine and Moldova (quite a lot) so it does happen.
One of the founding principles of the EU has been that it will make the poorer member countries wealthier. Which in the end means that migrants will return home. History has shown that this works. It is an excellent system for the safe supply of needed workers.
We should be deporting Iraqi migrants (the south and centre has a functioning government)
So the north and periphery do not?
and Libyans (the west has a functioning government).
not north, south, east? i dont think theres a point countinuing through your list. It is self-evident the situation there is unstable and has a good chance of getting worse. Descending into utter chaos, even, with complete failure of oil production, preserving which was a main aim of intervention.