You are assuming that the overstaying former students actually graduated, that they are employable, and able to find a job.

Sadly I interview many graduates who have somehow got a degree from a British university but are incapable of functioning in the workplace because they don’t speak English well enough.

Everyone I know that works for a local authority is on a 35 hour per week contract so you could probably reduce that to 4 x 8 hour days with no meaningful loss in actual work done. I expect that is what they will do.

It’s a shitrag with no actual value for the public so the only input the government should have is any article they publish is fiction.

You are correct in the sense that rules for non EU nationals were relaxed under the last government but you still need to be in the occupational shortlist to get in, find a sponsor etc. You also have to remember that being in the EU meant zero barrier to movement or working so in a sense we have replaced no rules for rules.

The current government has closed a lot of loopholes that made it easy to bring spouse or family members on the same visa and are clamping down on student visas generally (because they are being abused) and student visa overstay (because they kind of turned a blind eye to it if former students found a job that would sponsor a visa eventually, even if it took years).

…I also forgot to mention the circa 150000 Hong Kong born British Citizens who had to flee Hong Kong after the purges in 2022 who have settled here.

I work for developers from time to time and I absolutely agree!

There’s several factors:

It’s hard to tell from your link whether people from EU countries that applied for citizenship because Brexit changed their status counts in those figures. That would be a lot of people in 2021, 22 and 23 which iirc was the window to do that.

Similarly a lot of skilled workers from the EU left in that period and were replaced with non-eu workers. The EU leavers might not be counted in net migration.

Students sometimes are counted in migration figures and sometimes not. We have a lot of overseas students and obviously post COVID the figures surged.

A large proportion is healthcare, either in the NHS directly or in care homes for the elderly. Because of our ageing population the health system is expanding beyond the ability to train new care staff.

So… Many factors but definitely not “just letting anyone in”.

Lol, I’m from the UK and employ quite a few overseas people. Immigration requirements are categorically not ‘loose’.

A properly qualified social worker might actually have a chance of being on the occupational shortage list but I can’t think of any trades where and employer would be able to prove they need to hire from abroad and be willing to sponsor the employee.

Another baseless unresearched opinion piece from a partisan shitrag. I’ve tried blocking Novara media from my feed but it pops up everywhere.

Any suggestions on how I better filter out this rubbish?

Skin as thin as cigarette paper.

I think Fair phone with eos is the “least evil” option but you won’t be able to use most banking apps or contactless payment.

The $700 you give Google for a pixel is only going to erode your privacy further and personally I wouldn’t trust any device made by them, regardless of the OS.

Edit to say you are basically just rewarding their behaviour.

Iran launched drones at the UK bases on Cyprus and Riyadh long before any announcement that the UK would let the US use them.

I’m definitely opposed to the war with Iran but let’s put facts first; Iran through their proxies have been indiscriminately firing on ships in the gulf for nearly a decade and when the US and Israel attacked them they launched missiles and drones at pretty much every cluster of buildings near to the Gulf with no concern for what they might hit or any apparent strategy.

The fact is Iran are going to attack UK bases whether the UK is involved or not.

You correct lies with facts and evidence. Got any?

Yes there’s currently live updates on BBC and a couple of articles. Why would you ask?

You forgot finance, visa and MasterCard should not exist outside of the US.

I can see it and I’m not using VPN?

That’s all very well but 1) I’m reading this using firefox with clean cookies and.ublock origin and the block is still there. And 2) a cookie paywall is a defacto paywall.

For those of you wondering if you might have been affected but can’t find out because the article is paywalled: Lloyds, Bank of Scotland and Halifax are the ones affected.

Yep, I don’t have kids but my yearly isp change comes with the added joy of disabling the parental controls.

They have run out of money and apparently will now only build 550m of it!