Paddington Bear wrote: Mon Jun 20, 2022 9:29 am
Britain has an established and well integrated Indian population, as well as an established and somewhat less well integrated Pakistani population as a result of cultural and economic ties as a result of the Empire. Clearly.
This does not explain what is happening currently. India has a burgeoning population who have ambitions in life that cannot be satisfied at home, and the populations of the West are ageing. Therefore one thing you will have noticed going to
any city in Europe, particularly those with higher incomes, is that the Indian population is exploding. You would have had to look quite hard for a curryhouse in Paris 20 years ago. Britain happens to be easier than some of these others to get into for reasons primarily connected to our visa system and the ease of 'setting yourself up'.
None of this is really inevitable as you suggest. Successive governments have talked tough on immigration to win votes, but have deferred to the Treasury on implementation of any measures that would actually restrict immigration. A government that explicitly wanted to change this could very easily do so (albeit not overnight) - it is a deliberate policy choice throughout all levels of government not to. I.e. we have a shortage of nurses to which immigration is the preferred solution. We also reject a pretty significant number of British people from nursing degrees who we could accept, or we could have non-degree routes into the field etc. If Cameron had wanted to go that way we'd see quite a different NHS by now.
The plural of anecdote is not data but I imagine that I am reasonably unusual on this bored in interacting with a fair amount of recent immigrants to Britain from India, and most are very open about why they have come here over, say, Germany. Because it's easier to do so because of government policy.
It seems you're agreeing with elements of what I'm saying, but you think the weight of the UK's history isn't the primary factor. Whatever the case we seem to agree "lefty liberals" aren't particularly to blame and this is wider spanning politics and different governments.
"Setting yourself up" is easier for many moving to the UK, because they go and live with their aunties/uncles/cousins and already speak the language. The "explosion" in Indians living in "any city in Europe", would go totally unnoticed in the UK, the entire Indian populations of places like Hungary or Finland or Austria, are below that of many medium/small English towns. The main reason for this difference is empire, it's the same reason Portugal's biggest immigrant group is from Brazil, Spain's is Morocco (which is an "all of the above", geographically very close to Spain, less economic opportunity than Spain, colonial history with Spain/France) and a list of Spanish speaking South American countries, France's is Algeria followed by Morocco.
India is different as you say, it's a globally significant civilization much like China. It would be strange if Indian migration was only and singularly to the UK, the UK still far outweighs other European destinations though. I'm not buying the UK's visa system creates the difference, there's 1.5 million Turks in Germany and 1m Algerians in France. If Indians really had been as interested in other European destinations over decades as they've been in the UK, that would show in the numbers, instead Germany and France have about 150k-200k Indians each a fraction of the UK. We would need to Google for comparisons of visa regimes for more data. But my original point wasn't restricted to India, it's the entire Commonwealth of 2.6 billion, the UK is significantly over represented as a destination country for all those countries. Many young Malawians dream of going to SA when they're old enough, it would be surprising if a small number weren't dreaming of the UK, I doubt any dream of Helsinki.
I agree that training should be connected to the immigration debate. But vested interests prevent that debate ever happening, any serious debate about education/training would immediately challenge those who benefit from the UK's unequal education system (tough sell), and raise the issue of tax payer funding (another tough sell). With hard jobs like nursing there's a high attrition rate, so more need to be trained than strictly needed (part of a serious debate would recognise that spending on education/training will include a lot of waste, another tough sell). Easier for many to just rant about immigrants and blame "lefty liberals".
As far as anecdotes go. I don't live in a ghetto, it's top 10% easily and probably top 5%. One next door neighbour is from Pakistan and his wife is British Pakistani, I think all their kids were born in the UK, I know him quite well he wouldn't dream of even going on holiday to Europe ("it's more anti-Muslim than here"), he runs a business and his family are quite devout. The other next door neighbour is a British Indian and white British couple, he says his parents came to the UK because "it was the centre of the world then". Over the road there's Sikh house comprising three generations, they saw me wearing a Springbok jersey and immediately started sledging about cricket scores (I have no interest in cricket, but I now know when India is beating SA), I've been invited to some of their huge gatherings, it's just standard chain migration and every male running multiple businesses. The other house over the road is an Indian Hindu family, they're very private. That's all the houses directly next to and opposite me, they all moved in over the last few years. Funny how as soon as South Asian families started moving in the sale signs started going up (not sure where they're moving to, when 58% of UK births are white British combined with immigration).
UK government policy is a factor in all this (education/training as you say), but for most of the last decade the UK government had a policy to cap migration and an immigration minister in cabinet and an often irrational "hostile environment" programme ... all that added up to not much change. I look at it all and conclude "inevitable the UK will look like its former empire".
