This Farage Immigrants with HIV Business

[pjclarke]

I don't think anyone can disagree with that but IMO if they are looking at all areas to cut costs then no stone should be left unturned and that includes Health Tourism. Problem is most people don't want to go near it for fear of getting branded racist which is just ludicrous.

I do see the figures being posted and then the counter figure that it is only a miniscule percentage of the NHS spend but it's a figure that's only going to rise exponentially as time goes on. I don't know the up to date figures but in 2011 26% of babies in the UK were born to foreign mothers and didn't that reach over 50% in the London last year? This is just one area but these figures aren't going to level out so about time it gets looked at seriously rather than just saying it's only a small percentage of the budget now.

To be clear, the OP was about Farrage and the cost of providing 'free' HIV drugs to incomers, health care for all migrants and their children is a bit of an expansion. Having said that, those numbers raised my eyebrows and I investigated. They check out. According to ONS, for 2010, across London 64% of new arrivals had one or both parents born outside the UK, rising to 84% in one borough (hint: it is not Kensington and Chelsea). Across England and Wales the number was just under one in three.

https://fullfact.org/factchecks/UK_b...s_fathers-3364

Even me, the resident yoghurt-knitter, thinks that proportion is storing up problems, both for those already here and the immigrants themselves. But it seems counterintuitive, given that a 2010 estimate found the proportion of the UK population who were foreign born was a shade over one in nine. Are they breeding and intermarrying more? Are there no foreigners in Scotland?

Foreign-born population of the United Kingdom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[vetran]

Feck me going from dumb to dumber.
No I propose to focus on addressing this most important issue for the NHS rather than wasting time with inconsequential bollux.

physician heal thyself

News analysis: What is the Liverpool Care Pathway? - Health News - NHS Choices

[BlasterBates]

I remember about 15 years ago that most western countries were to hit a severe financial crisis because the baby boomers were to retire in droves starting 2010 or so.

What we're actually seeing is the population rebalancing.

i.e. we have a burgeoning retiree population but is being supported by immigrants.

It'll calm down as the demographic profile evens out.

If you have one working guy supporting three retirees the economy breaks down. Immigration corrects that problem, unless they begin a new baby boom.

....but we'll all be dead by the time that baby boom causes a problem.

[vetran]

I remember about 15 years ago that most western countries were to hit a severe financial crisis because the baby boomers were to retire in droves starting 2010 or so.

What we're actually seeing is the population rebalancing.

i.e. we have a burgeoning retiree population but is being supported by immigrants.

It'll calm down as the demographic profile evens out.

If you have one working guy supporting three retirees the economy breaks down. Immigration corrects that problem, unless they begin a new baby boom.

....but we'll all be dead by the time that baby boom causes a problem.

you know more retirees need to keep working as their pensions were raided so supplying cheap labour and driving down pay is not really helping.

[xoggoth]

a burgeoning retiree population but is being supported by immigrants

Not actually true. The majority of migrants in low paid positions will not even be paying for their own share of state provisions. When one can find any details, studies of the net "benefits" of migrants are biased studies that totally ignore many costs, like educating their children, remittances that are therefore not spent to benefit the UK economy or health problems because health is simplistically based on age. Any assessment of crime or terrorism? Of course not. Yet they still manage to come up with negligible figures. By far the highest I've seen is £22 bn. That's just over 3% of government expenditure in return for a 13% population increase (not counting kids born here).

It is a nonsense fix for the long term fix because immigrants get old too. Some minorities also have significantly worse health and are more likely to have to retire early. Because so many are in low paid jobs they will have paid less towards their own pensions than most British retirees, many of whom (like me) have plenty of their own savings and will not rely on state support at all. Mass immigration of the low paid is just storing up even bigger problems for the future.

Immigration is one solution to an ageing population bit it needs to be of high contributing individuals.

[BlasterBates]

Immigration does have a positive impact on the economy, there's no doubt about that:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-arti...EU-immigration

It's clear that they are enabling the UK to afford the buregeoning retiree population.

and quite obviously this will continue as the UK indigenous population ages.

[Flashman]

That UCL study was ripped apart by migrationwatch. But immigration might positive impact economically.

But what on earth will the quality of life be like if the population keeps growing at the same rate?

[BlasterBates]

That UCL study was ripped apart by migrationwatch. But immigration might positive impact economically.

But what on earth will the quality of life be like if the population keeps growing at the same rate?

Well in Dickens times they were also worried, but somehow in spite of the absolutely massive increase in population the quality of life has actually improved. I think we would all agree.

I doubt very much that population is rising so fast that we'll suddenly run out of land, sometimes it's more of "in the mind".

Immigration has phases, with the baby boomers going off into retirement it's clear there will be a surge. They're the ones creating a burden on the NHS, not young women popping in for four hours to have a baby.

A lot of immigrants these days are building lives back home, so many will return.

The other thing to bear in mind is the world is your oyster, these days you can go more or less where you want so if England were to "run out of land" you could go and live in France or Switzerland. Is the quality of life in remote parts of Russia, where the population is declining better or worse than in the UK? Would you really want to live in a place where everyone is just growing old, and there's no shops or restaurants any more?

I don't see a decline in living standards, I see the opposite, and the statistics bear it out. Per capita GDP is still rising. The budget deficit is dropping, so how could that happen if immigration is a burden, it should be rising. I've not heard a government minister say "we can't afford immigration any more".

[xoggoth]

Immigration does have a positive impact on the economy, there's no doubt about that

Take a look at your own link.

European immigrants who arrived in the UK since 2000 have contributed more than £20bn to UK public finances between 2001 and 2011. Moreover, they have endowed the country with productive human capital that would have cost the UK £6.8bn in spending on education.

So they have contributed/saved £27bn for public finances over 10 years???? Are you aware how very tiny that figure is? Government expenditure is £720bn per annum. Is there any calculation in there of the effect of remittances - money lost to the UK economy, cost of extra housing, school places, infrastructure like water, power and roads that we will need, extra costs of policing, schooling and dealing with health issues that poor English and cultural differences can cause?

A parliamentary committee looked at the issue a few years back and found no real evidence of any benefit to the UK population in terms of GDP per capita.

66. The overall conclusion from existing evidence is that immigration has very small impacts on GDP per capita, whether these impacts are positive or negative.

House of Lords - Economic Affairs - First Report

[Euler]

Here's an undisputable fact: if every foreign born employee of the NHS left the country tomorrow it would collapse.