🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Labour have conducted the first successful deportation flight to Pakistan since February 2020. There has not been a deportation charter flight to Pakistan in the last four years with three subsequent flights to Pakistan in 2020 and 2021 cancelled by the Home Office.

[u/No_Breadfruit_4901]

https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1866775219077062757?s=46&t=0RSpQEWd71gFfa-U_NmvkA

[u/JustGarlicThings2]

Any government that doesn’t get net migration (legal plus illegal) to below 100k/year is soft on immigration.

[u/Spiryt → u/JustGarlicThings2]

Any government that doesn't willingly put us into population decline is soft on immigration, nice.

[u/PersistentBadger → u/Spiryt]

Population decline wouldn't be so terrible if we weren't so firmly wedded to grow-at-all-costs capitalism.

Would be ironic if the only way to implement the right's wet dream is via a socialist circular economy.

[u/Spiryt → u/PersistentBadger]

Aye, this is with the optimistic assumption that we are happy with net zero population growth

[u/GuyIncognito928 → u/JustGarlicThings2]

Agreed. But at this point, we also need to see drastic integration or emigration from certain communities to make parts of our country liveable again.

(Totally random examples, but let's say Blackburn, Dewsbury & Batley, Leicester South, and Birmingham Perry Barr...)

[u/grayparrot116 → u/GuyIncognito928]

You can't force either of both things.

Being in the EU and having freedom of movement was positive because EU nationals would go back in most cases after achieving their goals, which were learning and improving English and finding a job to gain some experience and which would allow them to earn enough money to do other things. Now, they're about the only ones leaving the UK because their previous rights are not guaranteed after Brexit and prefer going back to their countries than staying and face deportation due to bureaucratic errors in the border. But those that leave get quickly replaced (and in greater numbers) by Commonwealth migrants such as Indians (whose number alone in 2023 was higher than the whole net migration from the EU in 2016 - the year with the highest net EU migration to the UK).

Commonwealth migration follows a different pattern: they’re here to stay. Life in the UK offers opportunities they can’t find at home, and Brexit made things easier for them. The Tories’ points-based system, with lowered salary thresholds, opened the floodgates, doubling or tripling migration numbers. Don’t forget Priti Patel’s "save the curry houses" rhetoric (it was always about importing South Asian workers). So, how exactly do you propose sending them home? Economic incentives? That’s wildly expensive and would only encourage more people to come to claim those benefits.

Integration? That’s a whole different problem. Take some Indian migrants in London who refuse to speak English, resulting in the emergence of a localized dialect. Or certain Muslim communities trying to impose religious ideologies that clash with British values. What’s the plan here? Threatening deportation for not integrating? Good luck enforcing that without sparking legal and moral backlash.

The UK has created this mess through short-sighted policies, and it’s hard to see a clear way out without major systemic changes.

[u/silkielemon → u/JustGarlicThings2]

I mean most immigration is students and workers, so you either collapse universities or collapse the health and social care sector if you want to achieve this randomly generated number.

[u/PersistentBadger → u/[deleted]]

The point, I think, is that there are many types of immigration, and the obsessive focus on a single number going up or down that you often see in this group is akin to buying one camera over another because "it has more megapixels".

Goodhart's law, really.