The case that you have made seems to imply that diversity is a necessity not that it is good.

There are still 1.3m people unemployed and presumably claiming benefits so couldn't a case be made for some or all of the long term unemployed filling some of the positions currently being taken by immigrant labour?

Some of the more skilled jobs like nursing are only filled by immigrants because the UK Nursing Council make it so difficult for British people to get into the industry.

You need a university degree plus funding for your training to get into nursing in this country whereas in the Philippines one needs to do well at school before going to nursing college so the entry standards are much lower

The idea that it's easier in the Philippines is though very wrong. It's a 5 year course there, and not 3 as it is here, but the standards are not so high, hence the need for a 6 month adaptation if they join the NHS.

This is something I have direct, current and personal experience of. If anyone really wants to know how and why please PM me.

That the NMC (Nursing and Midwifery Council) have raised standards by making nursing a degree course is beyond doubt. That they have done so is, partly at least, to ease the pressures on doctors and prepare the NHS for it's future. That the move from bursary funding to student loans has reduced the numbers applying for the courses is true. Hence the £5000 per year grant announced by the Government in December which will probably be confirmed in today's budget. This should help encourage more to enter the profession, whose loans are very unlikely ever to be paid back in full anyway. Raising the status, and salaries, of graduate nurses is going to be the real answer though, in my own opinion.

The idea that it's easier in the Philippines is though very wrong. It's a 5 year course there, and not 3 as it is here, but the standards are not so high, hence the need for a 6 month adaptation if they join the NHS. The key sticking point though is money. Entry is easy. The nursing colleges are commercial enterprises and if you can pay their fees and meet the minimal entry requirements, then you are accepted. The fees though are very high for an average middle class Filipino family, who will often have to borrow heavily in the hope that their student will eventually repay them with enough extra for their older years. As the drop out rate is high you can imagine the consequences. If you are poor then you need a sponsor, often a family member who is themselves working abroad.

It's no wonder you don't see too many Filipino nurses in the UK in social situations, but only in hospitals. They are too busy working and then sending most of what they earn back home.

Even if every place on offer in the Universities for Nursing degrees was full (and there aren't so many vacancies now) we would still need to recruit overseas. If we doubled the number of our students I think we would still need to do so. How long though it would take us to double the number of training places, let alone for the NHS itself to cope with the extra demand to look after students on placements, are quite other questions.

So overseas recruitment of nurses is going to be necessary for the foreseeable future.

So if the arguments for mass immigration are purely either economic or practical (and not moral) then where does this end, obviously immigrants age the same as indigenous people. At what point would we be able to stop immigration following the current ponzi model?

Also if the arguments are mainly economic this means that the average person coming into the country needs to be a net benefit to the economy which means they need to earn in the range of £40k, not be playing benefit system, not having large numbers of kids and not committing any crime. If so, how does this justify immigration from violent tribal societies from the 3rd world that are clearly living completely separately from the indigenous people? (It's natural and I don't blame them for this btw).

Apart from all this it's telling how WE & Co completely ignore the more fundamental societal issues like why diversity is a good idea or is anything more then less white indigenous people.

Edited by W12 (11 Mar 2020 11.54am)

Bit of a random point, but I have been pondering, there are a only few black women/girls in my department, none of whom I think work in the same team, but who insist on all sitting together at lunch.

It's strange, as I do not know all of them well but a few I have regular dealings with and they are all lovely and sociable yet create quite a visible division with their eating habits, or when socialising/not working. Is there really such a cultural divide between them and the rest of the office and is this a microcosm of society as a whole?

Brings me back to Muhammed Ali's quote of 'Black birds like to fly with blackbirds, bluebirds fly with bludebirds etc.".

Edited by Nicholas91 (11 Mar 2020 9.51am)

The old baloney is entirely yours.

Who do you define as "the original population"? Beaker people? Anglo Saxons? Celts? Saxons? Vikings? Or is the real criteria that they must have "white" skins and be notional Christians? Actually the "original population" all had dark skins!

There is not the slightest chance of immigrants outnumbering the "original" population. They all died out thousands of years ago.

So is your real criteria those who are born here and aren't Muslim? People have arrived for centuries with different cultures and taken time to adjust and assimilate. New arrivals have usually faced racist attitudes and isolationism but eventually these have dissipated. Look at the waves of West Indians and then the Indians from Africa.

We now face a particular challenge which necessitates a particularly thoughtful response. As there is no other realistic option it's not just the best answer. It's the only answer.