The general public are highly affected by immigration in positive and negative ways. An increase in highly skilled immigrant workers, for example doctors, can cause a positive effect for hospitals and the public as more staff are available with no training needed. However, an increase in less skilled workers could cause the public to become uneasy with the quality of the workforce as they are not familiar with British health and safety laws and quality controls. On the contrary, this will make costs cheaper as wages will decrease due to the lack of skill involved. Another advantage to the public is that new skills and processes may be bought in by immigrants which the public want or need. There are many examples of this in the food industry, e.g. Chinese, Indian and Thai food outlets.

It is often said that Britain has an aging population. As people get older they can no longer work and need support to live. It is suggested that an increase in young immigrants will help pay for these costs by taxation. To an extent this is true in the short term. However, as more and more young immigrant families start to form in Britain people will seek permanent immigration. In turn this will lead to another increase in aging population as the original immigrants grow old. Therefore, new immigrants would be needed to combat the aging population. This cycle would continue until it leads to a completely unsustainable population. In conclusion to this, immigration should not be sought after to deal with aging population as it has only short term relief.

C. Shaw , “United Kingdom Population Trends in the 21st Century”, Population Trends, no 103, Spring 2001.

A home office study in 2000 on the yearly contribution immigrants give to the economy showed they paid £31.2 billion in taxes and received £28.8 billion in government expenditure. Resulting in a contribution of £2.5 billion, it was then suggested that Britain benefits from large scale immigration. (The Migrant Population in the UK: fiscal effects, Ceri Gott and Karl Johnston, RDS Occasional Paper No 77, Home Office, 2002, p 11.)