Immigration in Britain

I firmly believe that immigration is a natural part of an open economy and society. But we have a huge problem in the U.K.
In the year to June 2022, there were 1.1 million visas granted to foreign nationals to come and live in the UK, and that is a record level. Add to that, more than 100,000 people have entered the country via illegal means in just under five years. According to Migration Watch UK, an independent watch dog, our politicians repeated promises to reduce and control immigration have been blatantly abandoned and betrayed, harming voter trust and democracy itself. It is said we need a new home to be built every five minutes to cope with all this.
So, is immigration actually benefiting my country? We have the right to decide who to allow in. We have border controls and all face legitimate questions over who to admit and who to turn away. The key questions are about who and how many people are good for our economy and society.
It is well known that most migrants come to Britain for an admirable reason, to try to better their lives. Many make a positive contribution to our society, including entrepreneurs, artistes, medical staff and scientists. Sadly, the UK is already a very crowded place by international standards, and the current pace of immigration-driven population growth is placing serious pressure on our roads, public transport, hospitals, doctor’s surgeries, schools and natural resources – all of which are struggling to cope.

Reliable figures show that there is little benefit of this mass immigration for the UK population and it is harmful for the poorest section of our population. Our society is becoming more fractured as the result of immigration. Three quarters of the public said in 2018 that immigration had increased divisions, and around half of them believe it has has led to a high level of tension.
So, what do we do about this? You need powerful politicians who will sort all of this out, but of course, Britain hardly retains any Members of Parliament who give a fuck. As I say so many times in these columns, they will say anything that may get them re-elected at the next election. Nothing else matters.
Restoring border controls is vital to ensure a unified community in which everyone is treated with dignity and in which British culture and values are protected, even enriched.
It’s not happening, and is unlikely to any time soon.
Immigration in The US

I am an immigrant. I have moved to a country I was not born in, several times.
Americans like to spit out the phrase “economic immigration” with a flair usually reserved for bad milk. The US Government even tries to filter out all economic immigrants who come looking for a better life. This is stupid. Think! ALL immigrants are economic immigrants. Every last person who gets on that jet is an economic immigrant.
Each year tens of thousands of Americans retire to Central and South America. Every last one is an economic immigrant. They are in fact moving to these far-away lands for economic reasons – to improve their lives by taking advantage of cost of living opportunities not available in their home country. Every last one.
Nobody ever moved to another country saying “Boy, I sure hope things are awful there. Maybe my life will take a turn for the worse.” No, we are all economic immigrants.
We like to separate out economic immigrants with needed skills and pretend that are not coming for the money. Oh, she’s a nurse or he’s a programmer… so that doesn’t count. So, we tell ourselves that they are welcomed – and they are.

My residency permit says I am in the high-Income category. Somehow it doesn’t feel that way to me. But I like being an immigrant… learning about history & meeting new people and cultures and discovering new food. Dirt poor in America is high income in most of the world.
To be sure I see a big difference between legal immigration and jumping the fence. Immigration must be controlled and the immigrants must follow the laws of their new homes. I even think it’s wrong to criticize a country you’re visiting while in that country. People who come to another country then trash talk that place, should go the hell back home. I mean it!
Here’s another beef I have: the rich in America love illegal immigration. Who do you think is hiring all the illegals? Folks on a fixed income do not have a pool-boy. While there have been some small efforts made to hold the rich accountable for hiring thousands of illegal immigrants to work in poultry processing plants, they personally still do not face any real legal cost.
We are all the children of economic immigrants. Live in the UK or RU? Do you really think your ancestors moved there be because the hunting was worse? Many, and I mean many, people living in the US now are the descendants of refugees from the Irish Potato Famine. It takes a special kind of willful ignorance to do your genealogy and then pretend you are against legal immigration in America.
Immigration in Russia

Immigration is quite an issue here in Russia. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, there has been an influx of Ukrainians, Belarussians, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Azeris, Armenians, Georgians, and other former USSR nations. There were attracted by the opportunities in Russia. Those people were taking any possible jobs, from waiters to available servicemen.
In fact, there were so many immigrants from Middle Asian countries, that there’s a joke now that no Russian can become a janitor in Moscow because all the positions are already taken by Uzbeks and Tajiks.
The trick wasn’t really some Uzbek mafia or something; the real reason was that no Russian wanted to take such ‘dirty’ jobs. On the other hand, our Middle Asian guests were eager to clean the streets and feel happy about it.
Lots of people in Russia didn’t like this invasion because of the ethnic crime wave. To some degree, there were right, but there were plenty of authentic Russian crooks around.

Around five or six years ago some Azeri guy killed a Russian teenage girl in the southern district of Moscow, called Biryulevo, quite a bad multi-apartment neighborhood. Locals were infuriated and just started to hunt down the Azeris living there. The conflict was settled when the police managed to catch the guy; later he was convicted.
Anyway, now Moscow looks like a post-Soviet Babylon though I suspect that all of the Ukrainian workers have left the country after February 24.
I don’t care about all these people coming in and taking root as I know from international practice that immigrants will be assimilated in one way or another. For example, at my younger daughter kindergarten’s group, there are plenty of exotic Oriental male names, such as Tembulat, Said, or Akhmed. These boys come from some Eastern regions but she sees no difference communicating with them, and guys have typical Russian names, like Misha, Dima, or Andrey.
These guys from the East speak Russian as native speakers and one day, I know, they will all become… Russians. No matter if you’re Dima or Akhmed.