Why do politicians want to pretend mass immigration isn't a problem?

The answer to the question is primarily to do with two things:

1) Immigration is an issue that Right-Wing people (or those deemed as such by the Left, which is usually anyone who doesn't share their views) are often concerned with. Any issue the Right is concerned with is a cause for Leftists to automatically and reflexively oppose in order to get the smarmy high they get from feeling morally and intellectually superior to those with opposing views. It's the just how the psychological make-up of the Leftist brain works. Many people are willing to overlook or ignore the most heinous evil to get that self-serving pay-off, the thrill of smug self-righteousness.

2) Leftists are very good at imposing and coercing others into Group-Think via a whole variety of dishonest smears, nefarious accusations and character assassination, and do so with anyone who dares talk about the facts and negative consequences of immigration.

Just the way they argue, and their belief that mentioning it means you've been 'reading the Mail too much' and or simply stupid and gullible, can be seen in this thread, showing they clearly do not know the facts. The media never really go into the full details nor really shine a spotlight on the negatives for the reasons above, so it's not all their fault. However, even if the media did, for those where the immigration offers them a chance to virtue signal and indulge their delusion of being a more broad-minded and morally superior human to others, it won't make an ounce of difference. It's not logical or rational. But here are the facts for those that care about them.

On the Housing Crisis:

https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/key-topics/housing


On mass immigration:

https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/what-is-the-problem

I do agree with this, however let's be careful with what we mean by 'left'.


Really it's the Blairite sect (in which I would include the self-proclaimed 'heir to Blair' David Cameron and Theresa May and most MPs), not traditional democray-respecting left-wingers.


If we think about it, mass immigration of workers means trade unions become redundant, since the employer can simply sack their workers and find others in the crowded pool.


Frank Field advocated cutting net migration to zero, and Kate Hoey is brave enough to speak out about it while being heckled from the Labour careerists.

It's so blindingly obvious for anyone in the real world and basic logic.


We are spending record amounts of money on education, housing, health but are all in trouble more than before.

The reason is because the population has increased (otherwise we wouldn't need new housing, pupil places at schools etc).

90% of that increase is from immigration where for years we have accepted 300,000 net immigrants (often young so will start families).


If we slow down to something sensible, like <30k net, we could give public services a chance to catch up.

You are being simplistic and misguided.

Depends what you mean by spending record amounts on housing. the housing problem has more to do with a north south imbalance, not building houses, greater number of smaller households due to divorce and people living longer.

Amount of immigrants is small beer. Carry on with the xenophobia and misinformation though.

Amount of immigrants is small beer. Carry on with the xenophobia and misinformation though.

The housing crisis goes way beyond simple supply and demand. By far the most important factors are government policy and public attitudes toward housing. Immigration plays a role, but only because of these two things. 150,000 homes is an entirely unimpressive figure; the lowest in the entire post-war era. Even in the 70s, when our population was virtually stagnant, and obviously much lower than it is now, we were building on average around 300,000 year - a huge chunk of which was council housing. What proportion of the 150,000 homes we build now are council houses? Zilch. Nada. You see, that number doesn't mean **** if the houses being build are neither affordable nor accessible to those who need them most. The state has effectively transferred its house building responsibilities to private developers who use borderline fraudulent accounting to keep the amount of affordable housing they are compelled to build as low as possible. Housing, an essential public good, is now entirely subject to the fluctuations of the free market, being built only when and where big developers see a profit, when in the past the entire point of housing policy was to pick up the slack when the private sector was failing to meet the needs of the people. What's more, 'affordable' new builds are extremely poor quality and smaller on average than those being built even in Japan.

We have long since abandoned a supply-side approach to housing, bricks and mortar have been replaced by ridiculous demand-side measures that keep demand artificially high and drive up house prices. Meanwhile, those lucky enough to have gotten on the ladder while supply was high and prices were low have seen massive windfall gains in their net wealth, allowing them to use their properties as leverage to buy more property for the sole purpose of extracting rent from those who can't afford to buy, again driving up prices and taking a huge chunk out of the disposable incomes of those who might otherwise save to buy a house. You see, the 'British dream' of becoming a country of home owners is nothing more than a national myth. The reality is that boomers were born at just the right time to benefit from what could be called a golden age of home ownership. Owner-occupancy overtook private renting as the majority tenure type only in the 50s, and as of the 90s the trend is reversing. In theory there is nothing wrong with this, but the fact is the younger generations now have to contend with an exceptionally poor private rental sector that has entirely failed to serve their needs. You will note that in Germany, where net migration is higher than it is here and 60% of the population rent their homes, we are not seeing the same affordability crisis that we are here - largely because their rental sector is well managed and heavily regulated.

We've also seen a paradigm shift in the way we think of housing - homes are now seen as an investment, rather than a public good. Any policy that results in a decrease in house prices is politically unacceptable to the boomer generation. Thus, house prices are deliberately kept high by government policy. Moreover, we've seen billions in foreign capital flooding into the London property market causing a chain reaction of displacement - billionaires now 'live' where millionaires once did, millionaires live where the upper middle class once lived, the middle classes are flooding into working class areas, and young would-be home owners go off to Bristol or the North - thus the affordability crisis spreads like a disease. Meanwhile the worst off see their estates demolished to make room for luxury developments and get shipped off to live in bedsits in Margate, away from their friends, families and support networks.

This country also suffers from an artificial scarcity of land and a defective planning system. The majority of land in Britain is still owned by an exceptionally tiny percentage of the population - many of whom trace their titles back to William the B*stard and his murderous cohort. This band of parasites, whose very existence is an affront to modern sensibilities, wield a grossly disproportionate amount of influence over the rate at which land is made available for development. What's more, when they do decide to sell up to developers, they are perversely entitled to not only the market value of their ill-gotten assets as it stands - but also to a chunk of the value added when planning permission is granted, despite zero effort on their own part. And, you guessed it, this drives up prices.

Ultimately, our housing woes can be put down to extremist, 'new normal' neo-liberal policy and the rampant financialisation of the housing sector. We are allowing the fruits of economic growth to accrue to an increasingly concentrated rentier class when we should be looking at ways to capture that unearned income for the public good. Placing the lions share of the blame on immigration is, to be blunt, egregiously and outrageously ignorant.