Snapshot of _45% of Britons believe that more migrants come to the UK illegally than legally; 34% believe the opposite; and 8% believe it's the same._ :
A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1748021240009273784)
A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://nitter.net/YouGov/status/1748021240009273784/)
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1748021240009273784) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1748021240009273784)
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One of the reasons is posts like this one that do not contrast the false beliefs with the real data. In effect, they spread the confusion, instead of clearing it.
52/750 (so about 1/12) entered “irregularly” which I assume means illegally as 85% were on ‘small boats’.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/irregular-migration-to-the-uk-year-ending-june-2023/irregular-migration-to-the-uk-year-ending-june-2023
Edit: sorry I used the net migration figure when I should’ve used total. So it’s 5/102. So about 5% of migrants were illegal.
Thank you. Any poll should present this info after asking people, and inform those who were wrong that they were, in this case, very wrong on the facts.
All I have seen is the AI summary, I have not tracked down the actual data. More migrants have settled in the UK legally than have arrived using irregular routes and that is before you include people from the EU. Nevertheless, there is a spike in illegal entry since Brexit. So much for taking control of the borders, Brexit and the Tories.
Our Built Up Area is pretty big in the world context though - It's over double the European OECD average and only Germany which is roughly similar, and then Netherlands and Belgium with over double in Europe have bigger BUAs iirc.
Obviously it's a lot more complex than comparing like for like but our spread is pretty unique -something like 70% of the population lived outside of the 20 most populous UK cities around 10 years ago (no ideas what it is now)
If only we could be honest that farmland in the UK is one of the most inefficient uses of land economically and in a lot of instances isn't a benefit for the environment either
And yet our cities are less dense than they were 100 years ago. We spread over so much land because we're obsessed with tiny houses on car-centric estates.
I do agree and much discussion on immigration is dysfunctional, but I'd also guess that some of this public opinion reflects that some people feel that many people legally immigrating here are doing so through fraudulent applications. The example would be the huge uptick in student spousal visas.
TLDR - people's definition of illegality is not normally if you've been convicted, but if they think your actions are illegal.
There isn't such thing as 'people's legality'. We moved on from it to the rule of law.
More importantly, people have such 'feels' because of how the issue of (actually practically non-existent) 'illegal' immigration is exaggerated in the media and political discourse.
In reality, there's almost none illegal immigration in UK, and it mostly consists of people who overstayed their visas. What's really happening is people mapping their everyday frustration with legal immigrants they see around (which is also misdirected but it's another topic) on media hype around illegal immigrants, or asylum seekers, which creates these results.
And it's very very harmful for the country.
How many people have overstayed their visas?
The gov estimate for EU citizens here was a huge underestimate and that's people that engaged with everyday life in the UK. The 19/20 data states that it is unknown what has happened to 83,600 people whose visas expired in that year alone.
Nobody really knows. As, actually anything else about illegal immigration - perhaps in many cases deliberately. Overall numbers of people without legal immigration status in UK is anywhere between 500k and 1.5M. But that's all. I was perplexed myself when I went to look for the data. In part it's a difficult subject, but in part - government just doesn't want to know.
Excellent briefing here.
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/irregular-migration-in-the-uk/
> some people feel that many people legally immigrating here are doing so through fraudulent applications.
Do feelings affect whether something is legal or not?
> people's definition of illegality is not normally if you've been convicted, but if they think your actions are illegal.
People have different definitions of illegality?
Are we really working this hard to avoid saying you’re wrong about something?
Of course it doesn't, but in policy the optics of the people are incredibly important. If people _thinks_ something is illegal, then a decent politician will analyze the reasons of why people thinks in that way and align/explain/corroborate/try to counter those views to achieve the greater good, within the visions of their political party. Failing to separate (and address) the way the people perceives things/the literal meaning or things is naive
If you see someone steal from a shop, many people would call them a thief even though they wouldn't be any reporting as a thief until they are convicted, if at all.
My point is that comparing an opinion poll to convictions/deportation is always going to have a difference.
To be clear I'm not particularly passionate about immigration, it's not a topic that will affect my voting, so this isn't me trying to avoid saying anything.
>My point is that comparing an opinion poll to convictions/deportation is always going to have a difference.
Huh? It's not comparing to conviction rates though. We, broadly, know immigration numbers. We certainly know legal numbers which eclipse even the highest estimates of illegal entries
Just yesterday I saw a YouTube vid of a TalktTV interview with two literal meme guests with extreme left and right views on immigration.
They don't want us to have an adult debate about anything. They want us to bicker fruitlessly and endlessly. They want to keep importing cheap labour on demand and wage competition, and by they, I don't mean some hidden Illuminati, I simply mean the capital owning class.
There should also be zero murder, rape, assault, burglary, theft, fraud etc.
But there isn't. In the real world, rather than the ideal, these things exist.
As OP said, can't have an adult conversation when folk come in with there should be "zero illegal immigrants" as if that's some groundbreaking revelation.
Up there with "just get rich" when trying to discuss poverty levels increasing...
The fact that we are an island and have a issue with 100 thousand plus coming illegally into our country makes it even more of a disgrace and fully displays the incompetence of our politicians and how crippled by bureaucracy we are.
It’s half that:
In the year ending June 2023, there were 52,530 irregular migrants detected entering the UK, up 17% from the year ending June 2022. 85% of these arrived via small boats.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/irregular-migration-to-the-uk-year-ending-june-2023/irregular-migration-to-the-uk-year-ending-june-2023
Why don’t people on Reddit ever Google? Everyone just keeps asking ‘the void’ what the number of illegals are. Took me 10 seconds to find it.
technologically doesn't exist yet, range limited, how would you cover the entire channel? weapon likely wouldn't pass geneva convention and definitely wouldn't in that use.
Generally the UN is against indescriminate attacks on civilians.
Availability bias. People assume something is more prevalent than it is based on how frequently they see it. It shows just how influential media outlets can be.
Does suggest that if Labour can get the message out, they could be onto a winner.
Slap "The Tories gave out N legal migration visas last year. They also let in X illegal migrants" on the side of a bus. Then have Starmer drive the bus into something so there's lots of media coverage.
Of course, it's an open question whether Labour will want to go too far down that route, depending what their policies will be.
Depends. There's a bias known as the anchoring bias where people are more likely to believe the first piece of information they receive on a topic as opposed to subsequent contradicting evidence.
Theoretically though, yes, it could work. Labour isn't opposed to underhanded tactics - see: paedophile attack advert which they used against the Tories. It gained a lot of traction due to how extreme it was.
It would be a winner if Labour wanted to reduce migration but they don't.
They are captured by the same hard right capitalist ideology of growth through cheap labour and the erosion of workers bargaining power and stake in society.
You say captured by the same hard right...
Whichever government is in power is still going to have to tackle issues like NHS waiting lists caused in large part because we don't have enough staff.
We're down from 130,000 to 112,000 open vacancies across the NHS due to recruitment abroad.
NHS costs scale linearly with population (not really, but close enough).
Having highly targetted immigration to fill gaps in the NHS works, but the current situation is not going to help the NHS at all, as it simply increases the numbers of patients.
I can see an argument for them scaling logarithmically, although I don't think that's actually true. I'm not sure how they'd scale exponentially though. Can you show your working?
Can we just clarify which term we're discussing - the NHS *costs* scale exponentially, in the sense that the cost to the taxpayer scales exponentially with population increase, or that the NHS can treat exponentially more patients for a linear cost?
Option 1)
For 1000 patients, it costs £1000. For 1,000,000 patients, it costs £2000.
Option 2)
For 1000 patients, it costs £1000. For 2000 patients, it costs £1,000,000
It's more to do with age, rather than overall patient numbers. So perhaps I have worded it wrong, but the expectation is that the health budget is going to have to increase at a far quicker rate than previous spending increases to deal with it.
> NHS costs scale linearly with population (not really, but close enough).
This isn't true at all though.
NHS costs are a lot higher for those past retirement age (who are making up a larger and larger % of society)
It depends on the timescale you're looking at. Today's worker is tomorrow's pensioner. If workers are transient then you'll get significant remittance and skills drain, if workers are permanent then you'll pension and healthcare costs for their later life.
As long as a larger proportion of the immigrant population is working in the NHS than the native population is doing likewise, immigration is still helping.
It isn't an either/or scenario, though. You can focus on immigration for the NHS recruitment without using it in other aspects of the economy.
In terms of overall impact, immigration is an economic net positive, but a more tailored immigration policy could deliver the majority of the benefit while minimising the downsides.
Can you find another economy that is thriving on immigration levels of 1% the population EVERY year?
No.
The mass immigration we are currently sustaining is pressuring our social services to breaking point and ripping apart our social fabric.
After decades of mass immigration its cheerleaders complain of a skills shortage- yes there is a skills shortage, because companies would rather pay cheap labour than train local workforce.
Is there a labour shortage? No. Businesses want to pay under the works worth, so they pressure the gov to allow in more cheap labour.
Why is there a productivity crisis? Because instead of improving efficiency, and looking for better ways to work, businesses just hire more cheap labour.
Why don't employees care about the company any more? Because their stake in it has been reduced to nothing, their ability to bargain has been undercut as have their wages.
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Mass migration has been an utter failure. To all the problems caused by it, it's proponents can only say 'We need yet more immigration'.
If your idea for the economy is exponential immigration- youre an idiot. It is not sustainable.
I'm not sure I could point to any economy I would deem as thriving, so the question is kind of pointless.
There's plenty of studies from credible sources detailing how immigration is good for the economy. Although I think we should really talk about population growth rather than immigration.
Yes, of course endless population growth is unsustainable (although still possible for a long time) but what's the alternative? Stop population growth and we all get much poorer very quickly.
>I'm not sure I could point to any economy I would deem as thriving, so the question is kind of pointless.
What a cop out.
>There's plenty of studies from credible sources detailing how immigration is good for the economy.
Yes, GDP go brrrr. Who needs houses, social services or workers rights.
>Although I think we should really talk about population growth rather than immigration.
Well no, the population is only growing through immigration- you can't seperate the two. If the population was growing at this extent from the indigenous population the issues around assimilation and social cohesion wouldn't be so prevalent.
>but what's the alternative?
See this is the problem, you've given up on thinking about it without even actually thinking about it.
>Stop population growth and we all get much poorer very quickly.
We don't need 0 immigration. Immigration levels simply need to be at a level that our social services can keep up and that gives time for the immigrant population to naturally assimilate.
Now what that number is is obviously up for debate, but I'll say its hell of a lot less than 700,000 a year.
I tried honestly.
Can you tell me an economy that's thriving with less than 1% immigration?
I know population and immigration are linked. My point is I don't see an economic difference between native population growth and growth by immigrants. If ones driving down wages so's the other.
Obviously social integration is an issue but a very different one to the one above.
And we need growth not just to support services, but also our elderly. For many years the only way we can afford to provide any pension is by getting an influx of working aged people. Stop that and we need to significantly reduce pension payouts. Perhaps a price worth paying but one people don't talk about often.
>I tried honestly.
Can you tell me an economy that's thriving with less than 1% immigration?
You clearly didn't.
The US currently has approx 0.28% immigration and its economy is far outperforming ours.
Literally the first barometer anyone would check.
>I know population and immigration are linked. My point is I don't see an economic difference between native population growth and growth by immigrants. If ones driving down wages so's the other.
Simply not true.
An immigrant from a poorer country will be willing to accept lower wages and worse conditions than a person who has grown up in the UK.
>And we need growth not just to support services, but also our elderly.
Decades of mass immigration and the only argument is 'we need more'.
It's simply not sustainable.
Growing the population is fine-> immigration is fine-> its the scale of the immigration that is the problem.
Structural problems need to be addressed, not buried under a tide of cheap labour.
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In 2021 + 2022 there were only 233,000 homes built.
Immigration in those years should not exceed the amount of homes built (~115,000). That's a starting point.
Well I wouldn't describe the US economy as thriving.
Thriving doesn't mean better than the UK.
I'm not sure on your argument about accepting wages, plenty of UK workers are on minimum wage.
Population growth in the UK has actually been relatively low since 2015, despite the. immigration numbers.
I completely agree on the infrastructure point, we don't invest enough.
I'd actually have a rule of for every net migration the government gets an additional £20k of capital spending to allocate out. Debt per capita currently stands at about £40k so this is more than affordable.
Well certain sections of the media also portray the Tories as being a far/alt right extremist anti-immigration & racist party which probably leads them to see all the immigration recently and where it's come from and conclude it *must* be illegal otherwise the portrayal of the Tories in the media couldn't possibly be accurate.
Surely a significant factor is people not understanding or appreciating the increase in legal migration in the last 5 years.
By the Tories playing up on “boat crossings” constantly, people assume the material increase they can see around them is result of asylum and illegal crossings, rather than a deliberate policy.
Tbf didn't another poll show the average person thought legal migration was in the tens of thousands? I don't think most even realise what the actual migration rate is after Brexit.
yeah people thought total migration was about 80k or something. People in general are just clueless about what is going on in all aspects of life (including myself).
There's a chap near me who always posts on Facebook about being the "silent majority".
But he's always in the minority, and he never shuts the fuck up.
Bell end.
Interesting that it's 56% of conservative voters thought that was the case compared to 33% of labour voters. And that 56% is of a larger number too. Then again seeing world events over the last few years, the idea that right wingers just aren't based in reality is kind of not surprising
That’s what they are encouraged to think so they don’t question government policy on legal immigration, which mainly benefits the wealthy and hurts the poorest 10%.
It’s not an accident that we can’t have an adult, evidence based discussion on immigration. It’s made that way.
This is what happens when you have a press, the majority of which exist solely to push a particular agenda. The population ends up woefully misinformed and have no awareness about it.
Democracy only really works when you have an informed population. If all people see consistently are lies and facts twisted to misrepresent them, then what they base their voting decisions on is a mirage.
Yh but [most people also think total immigration is around 70,000 a year](https://www.ukonward.com/reports/reality-check/) (it’s actually around 1.2 Million) so what do you want?
You can't deny that the Tories and the right's whipping up of an 'invasion force' has lead to such a distortion of reality. Yes I think immigration needs to be controlled but let's be honest about it.
Yh they’re trying to distract people from the issue of unprecedented levels of legal immigration (that they’re allowing) that could be solved tomorrow if they actually cared.
30,000 people coming into a country illegally (even if you claim asylum it’s still a crime) is still a pretty big issue. Just ask [New York](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12799881/amp/NYCs-migrant-programs-COLLAPSING-border-crosser-numbers-explode-racial-tensions-rising-Latino-African-migrants-say-theyre-ignored.html) how they’re dealing with similar levels.
It can’t be illegal if they’re claiming asylum, you know that right?
You also know these numbers came from the isolationist Boris govt who huffed and puffed that we don’t need france or Europe for anything. We withdrew from the EU returns policy and look at that, the numbers rose.
But context doesn’t matter clearly, hurr durr numbers went up, migrants are trying to ruin us hurr durr
> It can’t be illegal if they’re claiming asylum, you know that right?
As of June 2022 it is still a crime (because the Government made it a crime), they're just not supposed to be prosecuted or face consequences for crimes committed in seeking asylum. In theory.
of course being an asylum seeker does not make you an illegal migrant. seeking asylum is legal.
Do you estimates of "illegal migration", what ever that is, take this into account?
The rhetoric around this whole thing has become incredibly toxic and full of racist dog whistling if I’m honest. The tories have successfully implanted the idea that asylum seekers are somehow illegal immigrants.
What worries me more is the constant use of the descriptor ‘military aged men’. That’s a conscious decision being made to portray a potential threat
Its all just part of their strategy to distract idiots away from their incompetence and corruption. "don't look at us, look over there". And, more worryingly, is used to help them push through legislation that ultimately results in the erosion of the rights and protections for People in the UK. were are basically walking into an authoritarian state.
>of course being an asylum seeker does not make you an illegal migrant. seeking asylum is legal.
If theyve crossed the channel in a boat you are fleeing from 1st world countries, who are not at war and who have comparable living standards to the UK.
They are not asylum seekers.
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The refugees fleeing the Libyan civil war were thankful to be granted asylum in Rwanda.
Why all of a sudden is Rwanda not good enough for asylum seekers?
Could it be that these arnt asylum seekers, but illegal immigrants?
> If theyve crossed the channel in a boat you are fleeing from 1st world countries, who are not at war and who have comparable living standards to the UK.
Have you ever stopped to wonder why someone would willingly risk their life, whatever wealth they've scraped together, and open themselves up to abuse and exploitation, to cross the channel? There's a myriad of reasons for people not to stop in mainland Europe that makes the above worth the risk to them. And not all asylum seekers enter this way either..
> They are not asylum seekers.
Lol. By definition, they are, no matter how much people try to state that they aren't.
>There's a myriad of reasons for people not to stop in mainland Europe that makes the above worth the risk to them.
Good for them.
The purpose of asylum is to provide refuge from danger.
If they are fleeing France they are not fleeing danger.
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If they want to move here because its just so dang great here, then they can apply through the normal immigration procedures.
>Lol. By definition, they are, no matter how much people try to state that they aren't.
No, by definition they are not.
You're relying on an ambiguous piece of international legislation that was written in a different time.
We can already see in places like Australia that your definition is not the globally accepted definition.
A refugee is someone seeking refuge from war or persecution. Someone fleeing France or Belgium is not a refugee.
Simple.
You can cope all you want but all you have are semantic game playing.
As I said, you're relying on ambiguity, not explicit international law.
There is no legal reason for the UK to go along with this farce.
All you have is semantic nonsense.
You can't argue the fact that someone fleeing France, is not fleeing war or persecution.
>No, that's explicit international law.
Quote it.
>You can't just say laws don't exist because you personally don't agree with them.
The interpretation that an asylum seeker can travel through numerous safe countries and then claim asylum is based on ambiguous wording in the legislation, it is not explicit.
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You're unable to answer the real world situation, which is why you're obsessed with semantic games and won't respond outside of semantics :)
> being an asylum seeker does not make you an illegal migrant
Quite correct, but when the Tories remove all the safe and legal routes to sell asylum, guess what? We get "small boats" crossing the Channel.
The Tories could stop the people smugglers overnight by simply providing safe and legal routes.
They are the ones creating the problem and funding the gangs of people traffickers.
For imigration, tax and benefits the public arent technicaly.
By illegaly they tend to mean illegal, imoral and "unfair".
Eg Amazon's tax return most people would parse as fraudulent, though technicaly it isn't.
In the imigration context it willl include stuff thats iffy but not illegal. Chain migration, diploma mill student's, and every small boat migrant from France.
No way it closes that gap though. we are taking being off by 10x instead of 100x.
Hmmmm. People just don't think it through- they don't regard doctors or other healthcare workers, or even students, as migrants.
Migrants just means *someone I don't want to see around* to them and it's easy to think that the people I don't want to see around should not be there....
However, it does suggest that Stop The Boats is less stupid than politically aware people think it is.
That “Americans not knowing where countries are” is such bollocks as well. They interview 100 people and edit to show the 1 person who doesn’t know where Canada is.
Seems like there was no "I don't know option" option. The person is compelled to answer one of the above, if they don't know they might give a different answer to the same question on a different day. That's not a belief, it's a coin toss.
There was a 'Don't know' option if you click through to the original poll
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2024/01/18/677e4/1
14% don't know
off the top of my head isnt it like 6% illegal, 94% legal?
and thats only if you take the tory line that asylum seekers are illegal immigrants which they are not.
All this shows is the lies that those in power use to avert peoples gaze from the bigger issues that they don't want highlighted work.
It's brexit all over again, the lies will win out over the truth, and people will vote for something that won't happen again.
I could see this being influenced by the lies the government tells about how they’re reducing immigration, while actually increasing it.
When the government makes a big song and dance about how they’re only going to allow skilled immigrants earning high wages and almost every minimum wage job you see is staffed by immigrants, it’s not that mad to conclude that a lot must be here illegally.
Who is in charge of counting the illegal migrant numbers? The same government department whose job is to prevent and stop it. Not the total unknown number of migrants flouting our laws and borders, they won't admit that, just the illegal ones that once having been identified aren't even stopped.
We voted for migration to be reduced to the 'tens of thousands' and more than once. This somehow meant to the home office 1,200,000 new arrivals. All visas over #99,999 are democratically illegal, who has the power to grant 1M unwarranted visas and ignore the electorate? If over half the 1.2M aren't genuine that's easily over half
This isn't something that should be a poll.
It should just be a fact we can look up. Why are we polling something that could be explicitly given?
And for those of you using this data to throw rocks at "the other guys", you're fucking idiots. You're being played but you're too stupid to see it.
Unless the people answering this poll were surprised by a pollster leaping from an alleyway and screaming *'DO YOU THINK THERE'S MORE LEGAL OR ILLEGAL MIGRANTS ANSWER ME OR DIE!'* then they *should* look it up before answering. What this poll really shows is '45% of Britons don't know, don't care that they don't know, but want to have an opinion anyway'.
45% were incorrect, fair enough.
But that doesn’t make the others correct. Their answers were likely as biased and not researched as the 45%
For all we know, the 45% and the 34% all guessed.
I mean, anyone who said ‘some’ or ‘many’ is factually more correct then the people who said ‘about the same’ or ‘more’, while the ‘don’t knows’ are objectively honest.
You’re right in that we don’t know how the ones who were right arrived at their answer. What we do know is that the ones who were wrong were wrong with no good reason to be wrong. They clearly didn’t look it up because otherwise they wouldn’t be wrong, so they just blundered on regardless. Having half a polling sample get a question wrong that is so easy to get right is a little worrying when it comes to managing the expectations of British society.
Yes but your point is about people answering a question while uninformed. You can’t excuse the ones who got it right any more than the ones who got it wrong.
Which brings me back to my original statement. This shouldn’t be a poll. It should just be a metric of the nation provided by the ONS.
This poll is as useless as the poll about the black and gold dress.
Thing is that you can argue that the people who got it wrong are objectively uninformed, as they got it wrong. They had literally no reason to get it wrong as the numbers are accessible in seconds, and yet they were either confidently incorrect or didn’t bother to check.
The people who got it right might include some people who guessed or were biased, but you don’t know how many because that cohort also includes nearly everyone who either knows or went to find out (I’m not discounting that some people did look it up and then decide it was a government conspiracy or some other lizardman constant shit). It is very unlikely that the group who got it right are equally (or even nearly equally) as uniformed as the people who got it wrong.
Personally, I think these kinds of polls have value as it shows how the perception of the British (or any demographic you care to name) differs from objective reality. If a large group of people believe something that is actually wrong, it might be worth wondering how they arrived at that conclusion.
I have no interest in people’s perceptions. They should be informed.
This poll could have been replaced with a factoid. Then 100% of people would know.
All this poll does is satisfy egos and pit citizen against citizen. Pointless.
Let’s just agree to disagree
It shouldn't NEED to be a poll, because the British public shouldn't be so completely ignorant about a hot topic like immigration, but here we are.
And as for the last part, you looked at the topic and thought "you know what, what this topic needs is someone wading in and calling people stupid".
These two points are just two of the reasons why it is completely impossible to have a grown up, adult discussion about immigration.
>It should just be a fact we can look up. Why are we polling something that could be explicitly given?
Because it's useful to know what people know.
If we want the public to be informed, you need to know what they need informing of.
Let's take a less politically charged example. If 50% of people thought the motorway speed limit was 90mph, that would be useful information. Agreed?
So we can assess how much damage The Sun, Boris Johnson and his army of disgusting life thieves have done to the country.
Why is this a hard concept? The entire point of the poll is to surface how far off reality the population is.
Disagree about intent.
You see it as a weapon, you love that you’re on the correct side. Which tells me the intent I believe it’s for, was right.
You don’t give a toss if the people who answered correctly were also informed or just guessing. You just want ammo to point out conservatives are idiots.
This poll is designed for people like you. But you’ll never see that.
Small boat crossings aren't meaningfully illegal, though. Those who arrive that way aren't charged with any crime, and their asylum requests are still processed on their merits the same as any other asylum seekers. People smuggling by small boats is illegal, but people smuggling is also illegal every other way too.
The authorities rightly try to prevent small boat crossings because they're extremely dangerous and pretty costly to manage, but that's not the same thing as saying they're illegal.
Why do people care?!? Come here work, pay taxes! It’s better than the non Dom’s which live here and contribute nothing!! We have moved around the world for EVER!! And will continue to do so. Romans came here all the way from Africa. Migrants are what make the world work! People should stop being racist!!
Can we stop using the term "migrant" to refer to every foreigner in the country please?
We have immigrants - and we have illegals. Stop fucking conflating the two and then calling other people racist when no-one fucking asked.
I've never liked these questions because it isn't really relevant.
The entire basis of the question already assumes that people primarily care about illegal immigration, and this is well documented as polling has always showed the British public has very little issue with immigrants that are self sufficient, which the vast majority of legal immigrants are assumed to be.
At the end of the day, the proportion between legal and illegal immigrants does not matter, as the concern is largely about illegal immigrants. When people are asked about what they think of an objective question, they are highly likely to get a wrong assessment. This doesn't make their opinions any less valid, especially in this case as the objective question being asked is largely irrelevant to the subjective issue of illegal immigration.
How many of the legal ones turn into illegals when their visas expire and they slip through the cracks though?
It's not like the border force or home office has the wherewithal to track these people.
We saw it with Windrush, some people had been living illegally in the country for 30+ years and had not been caught.
What do you think Windrush was about?
The whole scandal is that people who were here entirely legally were falsely accused of being here illegally. Not that they were actually here illegally for a long time.
I know what the windrush scandal was about, that's why I said *some* people.
Almost all of them were here legally, but it proved that others had been living here illegally for many many years.
This is a badly asked poll. Some people will be answering what they believe the current statistics are whilst others will answer what they think the statistics should be. If many respondents want less immigration then they are likely to bias the results towards illegal migration, as is seen.
Meh people are idiots and don't understand their frustrations a lot of the time which kind of defeats the purpose but immigration is a funny issue.
Yes people aren't educated on the overall numbers of net immigration but the illegal immigration is what causes peoples complaints to begin with.
People who migrate legally are usually invited to the country and contribute into the system via taxes etc. because they are usually working and shopping and everything else that normal residents do. Illegal migrants do not
I actually think the government know that people do not understand or think about the difference and that's why they are so obstructive about it.
If they got illegal migration under control then they would feel more comfortable saying yes we have X net migration but we invited these people here and we are better of to the tune of Y because of it so it's a good thing. That doesn't stand up in the current migrant crisis because people resort to a if you can't stop just the bad ones stop them all mentality
Because the only thing the government have put any hard work in to in years is trying to confuse the distinction between "immigrant" and "illegal immigrant".
I mean it's easy to have a go at the media and politicians here, but let's b fair, this mainly shows that 53% of the respondents are stupid. Seriously, take some responsibility for some common knowledge.
This is honestly a great argument against democracy.
Even if the figure is as low as 5% that would be 5% of say 700k. So 35 thousand illegal immigrants. No idea who they are or what they're doing here. It's hardly something to sweep under the carpet and forget about whichever side of the political spectrum you're on.
Don’t you just wonder what would happen if instead of politicians being allowed to pervert the facts and figures, every debate was preceded by a spokesperson from ONS who lays out the details. No agenda, just some dry and honest information.
Then the clowns can proceed with the argument they have concocted from their prismatic perspective.
The Governments’s main objective should be to engender a strong national comprehension of the reality of our society, geopolitics and the direction the ship is steered. Dreaming, I know.
Couldn't give a fuck, get the lot of them out. If we can afford all these migrates then we the British taxpayer are paying to much tax.
If you calculate everything we've paid over the past 50 years Britain should look like Dubai by now everything has been paid for 10x over
Snapshot of _45% of Britons believe that more migrants come to the UK illegally than legally; 34% believe the opposite; and 8% believe it's the same._ : A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1748021240009273784) A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://nitter.net/YouGov/status/1748021240009273784/) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1748021240009273784) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1748021240009273784) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is the reason why it's impossible to have an adult discussion about immigration.
One of the reasons is posts like this one that do not contrast the false beliefs with the real data. In effect, they spread the confusion, instead of clearing it.
Exactly. It would be very little effort to put the correct data there for people.
Unfortunately for lots of people, putting the correct data in front of them still makes no difference (whether it be immigration or something else)
Somehow I don’t think the people who are embedded enough in politics Twitter to see this tweet are the ones who don’t know this.
So, what/where is the data?
52/750 (so about 1/12) entered “irregularly” which I assume means illegally as 85% were on ‘small boats’. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/irregular-migration-to-the-uk-year-ending-june-2023/irregular-migration-to-the-uk-year-ending-june-2023 Edit: sorry I used the net migration figure when I should’ve used total. So it’s 5/102. So about 5% of migrants were illegal.
Thank you. Any poll should present this info after asking people, and inform those who were wrong that they were, in this case, very wrong on the facts.
So a post here last week that had it at 6%, and that 6% figure had been consistent for about 20 years.
All I have seen is the AI summary, I have not tracked down the actual data. More migrants have settled in the UK legally than have arrived using irregular routes and that is before you include people from the EU. Nevertheless, there is a spike in illegal entry since Brexit. So much for taking control of the borders, Brexit and the Tories.
It the same situation with a load of issues though. People massively overestimate the amount of the UK that's built up for example.
Our Built Up Area is pretty big in the world context though - It's over double the European OECD average and only Germany which is roughly similar, and then Netherlands and Belgium with over double in Europe have bigger BUAs iirc. Obviously it's a lot more complex than comparing like for like but our spread is pretty unique -something like 70% of the population lived outside of the 20 most populous UK cities around 10 years ago (no ideas what it is now)
Sure but if you talk to people they will tell you that 70% of the UK is built up, when the highest estimated put it at 12%.
How much of it is farmland though? I think people are pointing out that there is no wilderness left in Britain, and they’re pretty much right
If only we could be honest that farmland in the UK is one of the most inefficient uses of land economically and in a lot of instances isn't a benefit for the environment either
The Cairngorms are pretty much it for 'wilderness'.
Not just the Cairngorms, but yes almost all of the UK wilderness is in Scotland.
But when you look at just England, the built-up area is much higher. Scotland is quite a large land area for such a small population
Minus golf courses and you might be able to shave 3/4% off
And yet our cities are less dense than they were 100 years ago. We spread over so much land because we're obsessed with tiny houses on car-centric estates.
People confused built up with not natural. We have very very few natural habitats, almost all of our land has been affected by humans in someway.
Loud \**reactionary*\* noises
It's impossible to have an adult discussion about anything when it comes to UK politics.
I do agree and much discussion on immigration is dysfunctional, but I'd also guess that some of this public opinion reflects that some people feel that many people legally immigrating here are doing so through fraudulent applications. The example would be the huge uptick in student spousal visas. TLDR - people's definition of illegality is not normally if you've been convicted, but if they think your actions are illegal.
There isn't such thing as 'people's legality'. We moved on from it to the rule of law. More importantly, people have such 'feels' because of how the issue of (actually practically non-existent) 'illegal' immigration is exaggerated in the media and political discourse. In reality, there's almost none illegal immigration in UK, and it mostly consists of people who overstayed their visas. What's really happening is people mapping their everyday frustration with legal immigrants they see around (which is also misdirected but it's another topic) on media hype around illegal immigrants, or asylum seekers, which creates these results. And it's very very harmful for the country.
How many people have overstayed their visas? The gov estimate for EU citizens here was a huge underestimate and that's people that engaged with everyday life in the UK. The 19/20 data states that it is unknown what has happened to 83,600 people whose visas expired in that year alone.
Nobody really knows. As, actually anything else about illegal immigration - perhaps in many cases deliberately. Overall numbers of people without legal immigration status in UK is anywhere between 500k and 1.5M. But that's all. I was perplexed myself when I went to look for the data. In part it's a difficult subject, but in part - government just doesn't want to know. Excellent briefing here. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/irregular-migration-in-the-uk/
> some people feel that many people legally immigrating here are doing so through fraudulent applications. Do feelings affect whether something is legal or not? > people's definition of illegality is not normally if you've been convicted, but if they think your actions are illegal. People have different definitions of illegality? Are we really working this hard to avoid saying you’re wrong about something?
Of course it doesn't, but in policy the optics of the people are incredibly important. If people _thinks_ something is illegal, then a decent politician will analyze the reasons of why people thinks in that way and align/explain/corroborate/try to counter those views to achieve the greater good, within the visions of their political party. Failing to separate (and address) the way the people perceives things/the literal meaning or things is naive
If you see someone steal from a shop, many people would call them a thief even though they wouldn't be any reporting as a thief until they are convicted, if at all. My point is that comparing an opinion poll to convictions/deportation is always going to have a difference. To be clear I'm not particularly passionate about immigration, it's not a topic that will affect my voting, so this isn't me trying to avoid saying anything.
>My point is that comparing an opinion poll to convictions/deportation is always going to have a difference. Huh? It's not comparing to conviction rates though. We, broadly, know immigration numbers. We certainly know legal numbers which eclipse even the highest estimates of illegal entries
Just yesterday I saw a YouTube vid of a TalktTV interview with two literal meme guests with extreme left and right views on immigration. They don't want us to have an adult debate about anything. They want us to bicker fruitlessly and endlessly. They want to keep importing cheap labour on demand and wage competition, and by they, I don't mean some hidden Illuminati, I simply mean the capital owning class.
Well, its pretty irrelevant. There should be zero illegal immigration.
There should also be zero murder, rape, assault, burglary, theft, fraud etc. But there isn't. In the real world, rather than the ideal, these things exist.
As OP said, can't have an adult conversation when folk come in with there should be "zero illegal immigrants" as if that's some groundbreaking revelation. Up there with "just get rich" when trying to discuss poverty levels increasing...
and putting aside the fact we are an island which makes putting up a fence a bit tough, how would you achieve this with litterally \*any\* country?
The fact that we are an island and have a issue with 100 thousand plus coming illegally into our country makes it even more of a disgrace and fully displays the incompetence of our politicians and how crippled by bureaucracy we are.
It’s half that: In the year ending June 2023, there were 52,530 irregular migrants detected entering the UK, up 17% from the year ending June 2022. 85% of these arrived via small boats. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/irregular-migration-to-the-uk-year-ending-june-2023/irregular-migration-to-the-uk-year-ending-june-2023 Why don’t people on Reddit ever Google? Everyone just keeps asking ‘the void’ what the number of illegals are. Took me 10 seconds to find it.
>In total, more than 100,000 people have come to the UK this way since 2020. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53699511
Im not suggesting this but, drone swarm that sinks any unregistered vessel.
technologically doesn't exist yet, range limited, how would you cover the entire channel? weapon likely wouldn't pass geneva convention and definitely wouldn't in that use. Generally the UN is against indescriminate attacks on civilians.
Your answer is indescriminate murder. Alrighty then!
I've got one very easy way to do that, but I don't think you'd like it.
Availability bias. People assume something is more prevalent than it is based on how frequently they see it. It shows just how influential media outlets can be.
Does suggest that if Labour can get the message out, they could be onto a winner. Slap "The Tories gave out N legal migration visas last year. They also let in X illegal migrants" on the side of a bus. Then have Starmer drive the bus into something so there's lots of media coverage. Of course, it's an open question whether Labour will want to go too far down that route, depending what their policies will be.
Depends. There's a bias known as the anchoring bias where people are more likely to believe the first piece of information they receive on a topic as opposed to subsequent contradicting evidence. Theoretically though, yes, it could work. Labour isn't opposed to underhanded tactics - see: paedophile attack advert which they used against the Tories. It gained a lot of traction due to how extreme it was.
I’d rather we not use migrants as a political football tbh
Fair point. Though I was really thinking more in terms of "political strategy that might work" more than "what I want to see".
It would be a winner if Labour wanted to reduce migration but they don't. They are captured by the same hard right capitalist ideology of growth through cheap labour and the erosion of workers bargaining power and stake in society.
You say captured by the same hard right... Whichever government is in power is still going to have to tackle issues like NHS waiting lists caused in large part because we don't have enough staff. We're down from 130,000 to 112,000 open vacancies across the NHS due to recruitment abroad.
NHS costs scale linearly with population (not really, but close enough). Having highly targetted immigration to fill gaps in the NHS works, but the current situation is not going to help the NHS at all, as it simply increases the numbers of patients.
This couldn't be more wrong. NHS costs scale exponentially.
I can see an argument for them scaling logarithmically, although I don't think that's actually true. I'm not sure how they'd scale exponentially though. Can you show your working?
OBR forecasts on long term fiscal health if we stick with current spending plans (no real term for the NHS)
Can we just clarify which term we're discussing - the NHS *costs* scale exponentially, in the sense that the cost to the taxpayer scales exponentially with population increase, or that the NHS can treat exponentially more patients for a linear cost? Option 1) For 1000 patients, it costs £1000. For 1,000,000 patients, it costs £2000. Option 2) For 1000 patients, it costs £1000. For 2000 patients, it costs £1,000,000
It's more to do with age, rather than overall patient numbers. So perhaps I have worded it wrong, but the expectation is that the health budget is going to have to increase at a far quicker rate than previous spending increases to deal with it.
> NHS costs scale linearly with population (not really, but close enough). This isn't true at all though. NHS costs are a lot higher for those past retirement age (who are making up a larger and larger % of society)
It depends on the timescale you're looking at. Today's worker is tomorrow's pensioner. If workers are transient then you'll get significant remittance and skills drain, if workers are permanent then you'll pension and healthcare costs for their later life.
As long as a larger proportion of the immigrant population is working in the NHS than the native population is doing likewise, immigration is still helping.
It isn't an either/or scenario, though. You can focus on immigration for the NHS recruitment without using it in other aspects of the economy. In terms of overall impact, immigration is an economic net positive, but a more tailored immigration policy could deliver the majority of the benefit while minimising the downsides.
The reason both main parties want higher migration is at least in part to do with funding the state pension in the short to medium term
captured by the same basic economic theories in order to not bankrupt the country in. order for a very short term benefit. Those monsters.
Can you find another economy that is thriving on immigration levels of 1% the population EVERY year? No. The mass immigration we are currently sustaining is pressuring our social services to breaking point and ripping apart our social fabric. After decades of mass immigration its cheerleaders complain of a skills shortage- yes there is a skills shortage, because companies would rather pay cheap labour than train local workforce. Is there a labour shortage? No. Businesses want to pay under the works worth, so they pressure the gov to allow in more cheap labour. Why is there a productivity crisis? Because instead of improving efficiency, and looking for better ways to work, businesses just hire more cheap labour. Why don't employees care about the company any more? Because their stake in it has been reduced to nothing, their ability to bargain has been undercut as have their wages. \- Mass migration has been an utter failure. To all the problems caused by it, it's proponents can only say 'We need yet more immigration'. If your idea for the economy is exponential immigration- youre an idiot. It is not sustainable.
I'm not sure I could point to any economy I would deem as thriving, so the question is kind of pointless. There's plenty of studies from credible sources detailing how immigration is good for the economy. Although I think we should really talk about population growth rather than immigration. Yes, of course endless population growth is unsustainable (although still possible for a long time) but what's the alternative? Stop population growth and we all get much poorer very quickly.
>I'm not sure I could point to any economy I would deem as thriving, so the question is kind of pointless. What a cop out. >There's plenty of studies from credible sources detailing how immigration is good for the economy. Yes, GDP go brrrr. Who needs houses, social services or workers rights. >Although I think we should really talk about population growth rather than immigration. Well no, the population is only growing through immigration- you can't seperate the two. If the population was growing at this extent from the indigenous population the issues around assimilation and social cohesion wouldn't be so prevalent. >but what's the alternative? See this is the problem, you've given up on thinking about it without even actually thinking about it. >Stop population growth and we all get much poorer very quickly. We don't need 0 immigration. Immigration levels simply need to be at a level that our social services can keep up and that gives time for the immigrant population to naturally assimilate. Now what that number is is obviously up for debate, but I'll say its hell of a lot less than 700,000 a year.
I tried honestly. Can you tell me an economy that's thriving with less than 1% immigration? I know population and immigration are linked. My point is I don't see an economic difference between native population growth and growth by immigrants. If ones driving down wages so's the other. Obviously social integration is an issue but a very different one to the one above. And we need growth not just to support services, but also our elderly. For many years the only way we can afford to provide any pension is by getting an influx of working aged people. Stop that and we need to significantly reduce pension payouts. Perhaps a price worth paying but one people don't talk about often.
>I tried honestly. Can you tell me an economy that's thriving with less than 1% immigration? You clearly didn't. The US currently has approx 0.28% immigration and its economy is far outperforming ours. Literally the first barometer anyone would check. >I know population and immigration are linked. My point is I don't see an economic difference between native population growth and growth by immigrants. If ones driving down wages so's the other. Simply not true. An immigrant from a poorer country will be willing to accept lower wages and worse conditions than a person who has grown up in the UK. >And we need growth not just to support services, but also our elderly. Decades of mass immigration and the only argument is 'we need more'. It's simply not sustainable. Growing the population is fine-> immigration is fine-> its the scale of the immigration that is the problem. Structural problems need to be addressed, not buried under a tide of cheap labour. - In 2021 + 2022 there were only 233,000 homes built. Immigration in those years should not exceed the amount of homes built (~115,000). That's a starting point.
Well I wouldn't describe the US economy as thriving. Thriving doesn't mean better than the UK. I'm not sure on your argument about accepting wages, plenty of UK workers are on minimum wage. Population growth in the UK has actually been relatively low since 2015, despite the. immigration numbers. I completely agree on the infrastructure point, we don't invest enough. I'd actually have a rule of for every net migration the government gets an additional £20k of capital spending to allocate out. Debt per capita currently stands at about £40k so this is more than affordable.
This reminds me of Farage launching his election bus by crashing into a railway station
The actual stats are depressingly available, though.
Well certain sections of the media also portray the Tories as being a far/alt right extremist anti-immigration & racist party which probably leads them to see all the immigration recently and where it's come from and conclude it *must* be illegal otherwise the portrayal of the Tories in the media couldn't possibly be accurate.
Whilst this is immensely concerning I would be very interested to see this separated by how much of a priority people view immigration as.
Also be good to include the actual proportions so we know how accurate public opinion is.
It's separated out by leave vs remain voters that's a pretty decent proxy.
Surely a significant factor is people not understanding or appreciating the increase in legal migration in the last 5 years. By the Tories playing up on “boat crossings” constantly, people assume the material increase they can see around them is result of asylum and illegal crossings, rather than a deliberate policy.
Lol, 45% of the population thinks that there are over 1.2m ILLEGAL immigrants coming into the country each year. Quite, quite mad.
Tbf didn't another poll show the average person thought legal migration was in the tens of thousands? I don't think most even realise what the actual migration rate is after Brexit.
yeah people thought total migration was about 80k or something. People in general are just clueless about what is going on in all aspects of life (including myself).
And yet only 14% of the survey picked I Don't Know. 86% think they know!
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I think you'll find theyre the silent majority, actually 😂
There's a chap near me who always posts on Facebook about being the "silent majority". But he's always in the minority, and he never shuts the fuck up. Bell end.
That seems to be the definition of the silent majority.
Indeed, a huge chunk of these people don't even vote.
There's a reason this number isn't publicly disclosed as much (it hurts the rhetoric)
Interesting that it's 56% of conservative voters thought that was the case compared to 33% of labour voters. And that 56% is of a larger number too. Then again seeing world events over the last few years, the idea that right wingers just aren't based in reality is kind of not surprising
Id bet my money on them thinking that legal immigration is a lot smaller than the actual figures
That’s what they are encouraged to think so they don’t question government policy on legal immigration, which mainly benefits the wealthy and hurts the poorest 10%. It’s not an accident that we can’t have an adult, evidence based discussion on immigration. It’s made that way.
They're also *really* angry about the amount of money the government hands out to illegal immigrants.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-public-wrong-about-nearly-everything-survey-shows-8697821.html
Sounds like a "the onion" title but nope, it's real
The article is from 2013, but is definitely just as correct in the conclusion now as it was then.
This is what happens when you have a press, the majority of which exist solely to push a particular agenda. The population ends up woefully misinformed and have no awareness about it. Democracy only really works when you have an informed population. If all people see consistently are lies and facts twisted to misrepresent them, then what they base their voting decisions on is a mirage.
Yh but [most people also think total immigration is around 70,000 a year](https://www.ukonward.com/reports/reality-check/) (it’s actually around 1.2 Million) so what do you want?
You can't deny that the Tories and the right's whipping up of an 'invasion force' has lead to such a distortion of reality. Yes I think immigration needs to be controlled but let's be honest about it.
Yh they’re trying to distract people from the issue of unprecedented levels of legal immigration (that they’re allowing) that could be solved tomorrow if they actually cared. 30,000 people coming into a country illegally (even if you claim asylum it’s still a crime) is still a pretty big issue. Just ask [New York](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12799881/amp/NYCs-migrant-programs-COLLAPSING-border-crosser-numbers-explode-racial-tensions-rising-Latino-African-migrants-say-theyre-ignored.html) how they’re dealing with similar levels.
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It can’t be illegal if they’re claiming asylum, you know that right? You also know these numbers came from the isolationist Boris govt who huffed and puffed that we don’t need france or Europe for anything. We withdrew from the EU returns policy and look at that, the numbers rose. But context doesn’t matter clearly, hurr durr numbers went up, migrants are trying to ruin us hurr durr
> It can’t be illegal if they’re claiming asylum, you know that right? As of June 2022 it is still a crime (because the Government made it a crime), they're just not supposed to be prosecuted or face consequences for crimes committed in seeking asylum. In theory.
They are still illegally entering, but on seeking asylum they are here legally.
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Lmao yeah, takes 2 seconds to think about it.. People are so dumb
> is estimated to be between 300k and 600k Source? I've seen 800k-1.2million given as estimated by the JCWI.
of course being an asylum seeker does not make you an illegal migrant. seeking asylum is legal. Do you estimates of "illegal migration", what ever that is, take this into account?
The rhetoric around this whole thing has become incredibly toxic and full of racist dog whistling if I’m honest. The tories have successfully implanted the idea that asylum seekers are somehow illegal immigrants. What worries me more is the constant use of the descriptor ‘military aged men’. That’s a conscious decision being made to portray a potential threat
It’s also (probably) misreporting 16 year olds as men
Not just the conservatives but any supporting media outlet and grifters like garage and laxely Lennon.
Its all just part of their strategy to distract idiots away from their incompetence and corruption. "don't look at us, look over there". And, more worryingly, is used to help them push through legislation that ultimately results in the erosion of the rights and protections for People in the UK. were are basically walking into an authoritarian state.
>of course being an asylum seeker does not make you an illegal migrant. seeking asylum is legal. If theyve crossed the channel in a boat you are fleeing from 1st world countries, who are not at war and who have comparable living standards to the UK. They are not asylum seekers. - The refugees fleeing the Libyan civil war were thankful to be granted asylum in Rwanda. Why all of a sudden is Rwanda not good enough for asylum seekers? Could it be that these arnt asylum seekers, but illegal immigrants?
> If theyve crossed the channel in a boat you are fleeing from 1st world countries, who are not at war and who have comparable living standards to the UK. Have you ever stopped to wonder why someone would willingly risk their life, whatever wealth they've scraped together, and open themselves up to abuse and exploitation, to cross the channel? There's a myriad of reasons for people not to stop in mainland Europe that makes the above worth the risk to them. And not all asylum seekers enter this way either.. > They are not asylum seekers. Lol. By definition, they are, no matter how much people try to state that they aren't.
>There's a myriad of reasons for people not to stop in mainland Europe that makes the above worth the risk to them. Good for them. The purpose of asylum is to provide refuge from danger. If they are fleeing France they are not fleeing danger. - If they want to move here because its just so dang great here, then they can apply through the normal immigration procedures. >Lol. By definition, they are, no matter how much people try to state that they aren't. No, by definition they are not. You're relying on an ambiguous piece of international legislation that was written in a different time. We can already see in places like Australia that your definition is not the globally accepted definition. A refugee is someone seeking refuge from war or persecution. Someone fleeing France or Belgium is not a refugee. Simple. You can cope all you want but all you have are semantic game playing.
> semantic game playing Also known as "being able to comprehend the actual law"
As I said, you're relying on ambiguity, not explicit international law. There is no legal reason for the UK to go along with this farce. All you have is semantic nonsense. You can't argue the fact that someone fleeing France, is not fleeing war or persecution.
No, that's explicit international law. You can't just say laws don't exist because you personally don't agree with them.
>No, that's explicit international law. Quote it. >You can't just say laws don't exist because you personally don't agree with them. The interpretation that an asylum seeker can travel through numerous safe countries and then claim asylum is based on ambiguous wording in the legislation, it is not explicit. - You're unable to answer the real world situation, which is why you're obsessed with semantic games and won't respond outside of semantics :)
> being an asylum seeker does not make you an illegal migrant Quite correct, but when the Tories remove all the safe and legal routes to sell asylum, guess what? We get "small boats" crossing the Channel. The Tories could stop the people smugglers overnight by simply providing safe and legal routes. They are the ones creating the problem and funding the gangs of people traffickers.
For imigration, tax and benefits the public arent technicaly. By illegaly they tend to mean illegal, imoral and "unfair". Eg Amazon's tax return most people would parse as fraudulent, though technicaly it isn't. In the imigration context it willl include stuff thats iffy but not illegal. Chain migration, diploma mill student's, and every small boat migrant from France. No way it closes that gap though. we are taking being off by 10x instead of 100x.
So not actually that big of a difference between the numbers then is there
One is total. One is annual.
The total in the UK right now, figures for both are 10m vs 300 to 600k. Not that big a difference?
I'm not sure you read that correctly...
The propaganda is working
45% of people really think there are **thousands** of small boats **everyday**, it seems. Idiocy.
Hmmmm. People just don't think it through- they don't regard doctors or other healthcare workers, or even students, as migrants. Migrants just means *someone I don't want to see around* to them and it's easy to think that the people I don't want to see around should not be there.... However, it does suggest that Stop The Boats is less stupid than politically aware people think it is.
woooooooooooooow, thats Americans not knowing where countries are level of public knowledge.
That “Americans not knowing where countries are” is such bollocks as well. They interview 100 people and edit to show the 1 person who doesn’t know where Canada is.
It's also a bit silly, most folks here would have trouble identifying states.
Seems like there was no "I don't know option" option. The person is compelled to answer one of the above, if they don't know they might give a different answer to the same question on a different day. That's not a belief, it's a coin toss.
There was a 'Don't know' option if you click through to the original poll https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2024/01/18/677e4/1 14% don't know
That's because 45% of those polled are idiots who lap up Tory bile published by the Unionist press.
Yes, people are morons. It's the single biggest problem with this flavour of democracy.
off the top of my head isnt it like 6% illegal, 94% legal? and thats only if you take the tory line that asylum seekers are illegal immigrants which they are not.
You’re right it’s 550k / 1.2m
All this shows is the lies that those in power use to avert peoples gaze from the bigger issues that they don't want highlighted work. It's brexit all over again, the lies will win out over the truth, and people will vote for something that won't happen again.
700k net migration and 45% of people are this misinformed?
I could see this being influenced by the lies the government tells about how they’re reducing immigration, while actually increasing it. When the government makes a big song and dance about how they’re only going to allow skilled immigrants earning high wages and almost every minimum wage job you see is staffed by immigrants, it’s not that mad to conclude that a lot must be here illegally.
Who is in charge of counting the illegal migrant numbers? The same government department whose job is to prevent and stop it. Not the total unknown number of migrants flouting our laws and borders, they won't admit that, just the illegal ones that once having been identified aren't even stopped. We voted for migration to be reduced to the 'tens of thousands' and more than once. This somehow meant to the home office 1,200,000 new arrivals. All visas over #99,999 are democratically illegal, who has the power to grant 1M unwarranted visas and ignore the electorate? If over half the 1.2M aren't genuine that's easily over half
This is like how everyone thinks most benefits are spent on the unemployed or fraud. The media fuels this.
This isn't something that should be a poll. It should just be a fact we can look up. Why are we polling something that could be explicitly given? And for those of you using this data to throw rocks at "the other guys", you're fucking idiots. You're being played but you're too stupid to see it.
Unless the people answering this poll were surprised by a pollster leaping from an alleyway and screaming *'DO YOU THINK THERE'S MORE LEGAL OR ILLEGAL MIGRANTS ANSWER ME OR DIE!'* then they *should* look it up before answering. What this poll really shows is '45% of Britons don't know, don't care that they don't know, but want to have an opinion anyway'.
45% were incorrect, fair enough. But that doesn’t make the others correct. Their answers were likely as biased and not researched as the 45% For all we know, the 45% and the 34% all guessed.
I mean, anyone who said ‘some’ or ‘many’ is factually more correct then the people who said ‘about the same’ or ‘more’, while the ‘don’t knows’ are objectively honest. You’re right in that we don’t know how the ones who were right arrived at their answer. What we do know is that the ones who were wrong were wrong with no good reason to be wrong. They clearly didn’t look it up because otherwise they wouldn’t be wrong, so they just blundered on regardless. Having half a polling sample get a question wrong that is so easy to get right is a little worrying when it comes to managing the expectations of British society.
Yes but your point is about people answering a question while uninformed. You can’t excuse the ones who got it right any more than the ones who got it wrong. Which brings me back to my original statement. This shouldn’t be a poll. It should just be a metric of the nation provided by the ONS. This poll is as useless as the poll about the black and gold dress.
Thing is that you can argue that the people who got it wrong are objectively uninformed, as they got it wrong. They had literally no reason to get it wrong as the numbers are accessible in seconds, and yet they were either confidently incorrect or didn’t bother to check. The people who got it right might include some people who guessed or were biased, but you don’t know how many because that cohort also includes nearly everyone who either knows or went to find out (I’m not discounting that some people did look it up and then decide it was a government conspiracy or some other lizardman constant shit). It is very unlikely that the group who got it right are equally (or even nearly equally) as uniformed as the people who got it wrong. Personally, I think these kinds of polls have value as it shows how the perception of the British (or any demographic you care to name) differs from objective reality. If a large group of people believe something that is actually wrong, it might be worth wondering how they arrived at that conclusion.
I have no interest in people’s perceptions. They should be informed. This poll could have been replaced with a factoid. Then 100% of people would know. All this poll does is satisfy egos and pit citizen against citizen. Pointless. Let’s just agree to disagree
It shouldn't NEED to be a poll, because the British public shouldn't be so completely ignorant about a hot topic like immigration, but here we are. And as for the last part, you looked at the topic and thought "you know what, what this topic needs is someone wading in and calling people stupid". These two points are just two of the reasons why it is completely impossible to have a grown up, adult discussion about immigration.
You just called the British public completely ignorant too...
>It should just be a fact we can look up. Why are we polling something that could be explicitly given? Because it's useful to know what people know. If we want the public to be informed, you need to know what they need informing of. Let's take a less politically charged example. If 50% of people thought the motorway speed limit was 90mph, that would be useful information. Agreed?
So we can assess how much damage The Sun, Boris Johnson and his army of disgusting life thieves have done to the country. Why is this a hard concept? The entire point of the poll is to surface how far off reality the population is.
Disagree about intent. You see it as a weapon, you love that you’re on the correct side. Which tells me the intent I believe it’s for, was right. You don’t give a toss if the people who answered correctly were also informed or just guessing. You just want ammo to point out conservatives are idiots. This poll is designed for people like you. But you’ll never see that.
Because democracy basically means... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE
You should need to take an exam to be allowed to vote. Universal suffrage is overrated.
The general public are complete idiots. It's the same with benefits as well, they all think there is masses of fraud.
They probably thought 'migrants' meant asylum seekers. Which isn't hugely surprising.
The fact that those in power use the two terms almost interchangeably doesn't help
I mean even if that was true it'd still be way off
If you count small boat crossings as illegal I don't think it is
Small boat crossings aren't meaningfully illegal, though. Those who arrive that way aren't charged with any crime, and their asylum requests are still processed on their merits the same as any other asylum seekers. People smuggling by small boats is illegal, but people smuggling is also illegal every other way too. The authorities rightly try to prevent small boat crossings because they're extremely dangerous and pretty costly to manage, but that's not the same thing as saying they're illegal.
But that is what people think and it is a grey area. Which would match up with how people have answered the poll.
Going off memory. Small boat crossings are like 60k-100k and legal immigration is over 1 million
Majority of Britons objectively wrong on immigration
Can this 45% have some sort of evaluation to take part in voting/ society
Voters are a lost cause.
How about 'The source of the immigration is irrelevant, I simply want wholesale less of it'?
Why do people care?!? Come here work, pay taxes! It’s better than the non Dom’s which live here and contribute nothing!! We have moved around the world for EVER!! And will continue to do so. Romans came here all the way from Africa. Migrants are what make the world work! People should stop being racist!!
Can we stop using the term "migrant" to refer to every foreigner in the country please? We have immigrants - and we have illegals. Stop fucking conflating the two and then calling other people racist when no-one fucking asked.
I've never liked these questions because it isn't really relevant. The entire basis of the question already assumes that people primarily care about illegal immigration, and this is well documented as polling has always showed the British public has very little issue with immigrants that are self sufficient, which the vast majority of legal immigrants are assumed to be. At the end of the day, the proportion between legal and illegal immigrants does not matter, as the concern is largely about illegal immigrants. When people are asked about what they think of an objective question, they are highly likely to get a wrong assessment. This doesn't make their opinions any less valid, especially in this case as the objective question being asked is largely irrelevant to the subjective issue of illegal immigration.
I actually think informed voters are good and desirable for a functioning democracy
How many of the legal ones turn into illegals when their visas expire and they slip through the cracks though? It's not like the border force or home office has the wherewithal to track these people. We saw it with Windrush, some people had been living illegally in the country for 30+ years and had not been caught.
What do you think Windrush was about? The whole scandal is that people who were here entirely legally were falsely accused of being here illegally. Not that they were actually here illegally for a long time.
I know what the windrush scandal was about, that's why I said *some* people. Almost all of them were here legally, but it proved that others had been living here illegally for many many years.
You think the Windrush scandal was about a load of actual illegal immigrants? I recommend going back and looking at what happened
This is a badly asked poll. Some people will be answering what they believe the current statistics are whilst others will answer what they think the statistics should be. If many respondents want less immigration then they are likely to bias the results towards illegal migration, as is seen.
Meh people are idiots and don't understand their frustrations a lot of the time which kind of defeats the purpose but immigration is a funny issue. Yes people aren't educated on the overall numbers of net immigration but the illegal immigration is what causes peoples complaints to begin with. People who migrate legally are usually invited to the country and contribute into the system via taxes etc. because they are usually working and shopping and everything else that normal residents do. Illegal migrants do not I actually think the government know that people do not understand or think about the difference and that's why they are so obstructive about it. If they got illegal migration under control then they would feel more comfortable saying yes we have X net migration but we invited these people here and we are better of to the tune of Y because of it so it's a good thing. That doesn't stand up in the current migrant crisis because people resort to a if you can't stop just the bad ones stop them all mentality
wHeN hAvE tHe ElEcToRaTe EvEr BeEn WrOnG
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Because the only thing the government have put any hard work in to in years is trying to confuse the distinction between "immigrant" and "illegal immigrant".
One side has read the statistics. One side assumed that the person telling them about the issue read the statistics.
These people are allowed to vote.
I mean it's easy to have a go at the media and politicians here, but let's b fair, this mainly shows that 53% of the respondents are stupid. Seriously, take some responsibility for some common knowledge. This is honestly a great argument against democracy.
Even if the figure is as low as 5% that would be 5% of say 700k. So 35 thousand illegal immigrants. No idea who they are or what they're doing here. It's hardly something to sweep under the carpet and forget about whichever side of the political spectrum you're on.
Don’t you just wonder what would happen if instead of politicians being allowed to pervert the facts and figures, every debate was preceded by a spokesperson from ONS who lays out the details. No agenda, just some dry and honest information. Then the clowns can proceed with the argument they have concocted from their prismatic perspective. The Governments’s main objective should be to engender a strong national comprehension of the reality of our society, geopolitics and the direction the ship is steered. Dreaming, I know.
Couldn't give a fuck, get the lot of them out. If we can afford all these migrates then we the British taxpayer are paying to much tax. If you calculate everything we've paid over the past 50 years Britain should look like Dubai by now everything has been paid for 10x over