The transcript for the video "Why Britain Can't Fix Immigration" is provided below:

0:00 This is the UK.

0:02 There's fresh violence on the streets of

0:04 Belfast this morning after a night of

0:06 terrifying riots.

0:07 And this all stemmed from one single

0:09 trigger.

0:10 The chaos was sparked after [music]

0:12 what's being called an attempted

0:13 beheading of a health worker.

0:15 And the main debate over all of this,

0:18 immigration. Immigration in the UK has

0:21 been the single most controversial issue

0:24 that no politician could adequately

0:26 solve. Hell, if anything, the problem

0:28 has only gotten worse with the most

0:31 recent attempted Belfast beheading and

0:33 subsequent grooming gang inquiry report

0:35 being published shedding light on how

0:38 thousands of British girls were sexually

0:39 assaulted by mainly Pakistani immigrants

0:42 over the past several decades. Every

0:44 couple of months, there are new mass

0:47 demonstrations against immigration in

0:49 the country, and racial tensions are at

0:51 an all-time high. But how did the UK get

0:54 to the brink of a race war? And how did

0:57 immigration become the UK's biggest

1:00 problem it can't solve? Well, to

1:02 understand that, we have to look back in

1:04 history where it all started. Chapter 1.

1:08 Immigration before immigration. It's

1:11 1945. After 6 years of fighting the

1:14 worst war in human history, Britain lies

1:16 in rubble. Ruins fill English streets

1:19 where proud Victorian era buildings used

1:21 to stand. One in three homes were

1:23 destroyed. 880,000 soldiers were killed

1:26 in the fighting. Roughly 6% of the

1:29 country's male population erased

1:31 overnight. Meanwhile, millions were left

1:33 homeless or displaced. Britain needed to

1:36 rebuild itself and fast. Lucky for them,

1:39 Britain was still an empire that

1:41 controlled one quarter of the world's

1:43 population. In 1948, in an effort to

1:45 mobilize its untapped manpower, the UK

1:48 passed the British Nationality Act that

1:50 granted equal citizenship to over 800

1:53 million people residing in its empire.

1:56 As such, hundreds of thousands of its

1:58 subjects from every corner of the globe

2:00 rushed to Britain. This first wave of

2:02 immigrants came to be known as the

2:04 Windrush generation. Over 910,000 people

2:08 from the Caribbeans, South Asia and

2:10 Africa came to Britain between 1948 and

2:13 1971. Although World War II ended, world

2:16 peace was far from being achieved. On

2:18 the contrary, the world was going

2:20 through a chaotic period. Ideologies

2:23 clashed for domination and new countries

2:26 declared independence from their

2:27 colonial overlords left and right. Even

2:30 though India and Pakistan fought hard

2:32 for its independence, upon getting it,

2:34 many of their citizens left for Britain

2:37 due to religious oppression in their new

2:39 countries and lack of economic

2:41 opportunities. Tensions in Europe still

2:43 persisted. The Soviet Union, now in

2:45 control of practically half of the

2:47 continent brutally oppressed its new

2:49 subjects. In the 1950s, the Polish

2:51 protests and Hungarian Revolution were

2:53 ruthlessly suppressed. Over 200,000 left

2:56 Hungary after the revolution, heading

2:58 west, 30,000 of which settled in

3:00 Britain. Initially in 1956, 72% of

3:04 Britain's were in favor of migration.

3:07 The country was rebuilding, business was

3:09 booming, and the number of immigrants

3:12 wasn't too great. But by the late60s,

3:15 things started to change. Britain became

3:18 one of the most attractive locations for

3:20 economic migrants and refugees. In 1953,

3:24 the country was getting 3,000 immigrants

3:26 annually, but by 1961, this number

3:29 jumped to over 136,000.

3:33 Naturally, the policy of allowing one

3:35 quarter of the world to settle in a tiny

3:37 island that lacked enough sunshine, even

3:39 for the local population started to

3:42 ruffle some feathers. As such,

3:44 immigration legislation was tightening,

3:46 requiring immigrants to have a job and

3:48 substantial connection with Britain to

3:50 be allowed to move in. The Windrush

3:52 immigration crisis peaked with

3:54 Conservative MP Edward Heath's rivers of

3:57 blood speech in which he called the

3:59 country mad as a nation to be permitting

4:01 large numbers of immigrants to enter. He

4:03 concluded his speech by warning of the

4:06 river Tibber foaming with much blood.

4:08 The elites of the country found the

4:10 speech racist and incendiary, but most

4:13 of the public was in support of it. In a

4:15 bit over a decade, public opinion of

4:17 immigration flipped with over 80% of

4:20 Britain's now feeling that there were

4:22 too many immigrants in the country. And

4:24 so in 1971, the immigration act was

4:27 passed, which further tightened rules

4:29 about who could move to Great Britain.

4:31 And the country never had an issue with

4:33 immigration ever again. Right.

4:39 For most of the 70s and 80s, immigration

4:41 to the British Isles was on a gradual

4:43 decline. The total number of yearly

4:45 immigrants from the Commonwealth more

4:47 than halfded by the late 80s with the

4:49 country approximately taking 54,000

4:52 people annually. Things seem to be

4:54 calming down despite the occasional

4:56 hiccup like when the Ugandan dictator

4:58 Idiamin expelled all Indians and

5:00 Pakistanis from his country only for

5:02 Britain to take them as its own

5:04 citizens. But then came the '9s and the

5:07 world was plunged into chaos. Communist

5:09 countries imploded. The Middle East and

5:11 the Balkans were engulfed in war.

5:13 Hundreds of thousands of Eastern

5:14 Europeans, Gypsies, Yugoslavs,

5:16 Somalians, and Iraqis fled, many of whom

5:19 set their sights on Britain as their new

5:21 home. Then in 1992 came a piece of

5:24 legislation that would forever change

5:26 Britain, the Mastri Treaty. This treaty

5:29 is arguably the piece of legislation

5:31 that founded the EU as we know it. To

5:33 not delve into too much detail about it,

5:36 amongst many other institutional changes

5:38 it brought, it also established the

5:40 right for all EU members to travel and

5:42 move freely to other countries within

5:44 the union. Originally, this didn't make

5:46 that big of an impact when the treaty

5:47 encompassed these countries as most of

5:50 them were on a high enough level of

5:52 development where mass economic

5:53 migration was unnecessary. But in 2004,

5:57 everything changed when the union

5:59 expanded and incorporated most of the

6:01 exe block. Due to decades of socialist

6:04 economic mismanagement, Eastern European

6:06 countries were left significantly poor

6:09 than their Western counterparts. As a

6:11 result, hundreds of thousands of Poles,

6:13 Hungarians, Slovaks, Balts, and later on

6:16 in 2007, Romanians and Bulgarians

6:19 flocked to more developed countries for

6:21 work. Britain in particular became a

6:23 favorite destination for many.

6:25 Initially, the government welcomed the

6:27 immigration wave as it saw it as a

6:29 potential for a new economic boom,

6:31 believing that only 13,000 immigrants

6:33 would come annually. Instead, over a

6:36 million came in the next decade, which

6:39 at the time was the biggest influx of

6:41 immigrants in the country's history. By

6:43 the mid2010s, Britain's demographic

6:45 picture was drastically changing and

6:47 anti-immigrant sentiment was on the rise

6:49 again. To give you a better picture, in

6:51 the 1991 census, white native Britain

6:54 made up 94.1% of the country, while

6:57 ethnic minority groups were around 5.9%.

7:00 In 2011, 20 years later, white Britains

7:03 were 80.5% of the population. Other

7:06 European immigrants making up 5.5% of

7:10 the population, Asians 7.5%, blacks

7:13 3.3%, and mixed people 2.2. In 1968,

7:18 when the Rivers of Blood speech was

7:19 held, the immigrant population was

7:21 nowhere near 6%. And the majority of

7:24 people were upset with the amount of

7:26 immigrants in the country. So, you can

7:28 imagine what the sentiments were half a

7:30 decade later when the number reached

7:32 nearly 20%. Things only got worse in

7:35 2015 with the rise of the Islamic State.

7:38 The Syrian civil war was drastically

7:40 escalating and millions of Syrians

7:41 abandoned their homes to seek refuge.

7:43 Although many settled in neighboring

7:45 countries like Jordan and Turkey, others

7:47 decided to flee westwards and tried

7:49 their luck in Europe. Considering the

7:51 Arab Spring destabilized the entirety of

7:53 the Middle East 5 years prior, others

7:56 from neighboring countries also joined

7:58 them. The EU at the time had a very

8:00 humanitarian-minded leadership that

8:02 opened its borders wide for this

8:04 upcoming migrant wave. Others from South

8:07 Asian countries far away from the

8:08 conflict in Syria like Afghanistan,

8:11 Pakistan and India also took advantage

8:13 of this open migration policy. Suddenly

8:16 this stopped being a caravan of asylum

8:18 seekers but a wave of economic

8:20 immigrants flocking to Europe and a good

8:23 chunk of them setting their sights on

8:24 Britain.

8:27 By 2016, the country had changed

8:30 drastically. London, its capital, ceased

8:32 being majority British. In 2011, violent

8:35 crime was on a rise. Social services

8:37 like the healthcare and education system

8:39 were overburdened with the influx of new

8:41 people. And although immigration wasn't

8:43 the primary culprit in the drastic rise

8:45 of housing prices, it certainly wasn't

8:48 helping. The country of many older

8:50 Britons, especially those that lived in

8:52 London, Birmingham, and Manchester, no

8:54 longer existed. As such, many became

8:56 frustrated and wished to stop this mass

8:58 migration hysteria. In the eyes of

9:00 Brits, the EU as a whole was seen as the

9:03 main perpetrator of this crisis with its

9:05 open border policy. And so in February

9:07 the same year, a referendum was held on

9:10 whether or not to leave the EU as a way

9:13 to curb migration amongst other

9:15 agreeances. In a tight race, 52% of the

9:18 people voted in favor of leaving.

9:20 Officially, the UK left the union in

9:22 2020. Migration into the country started

9:24 to decline. But in doing so, the country

9:27 started experiencing loads of economic

9:29 hardships now that it was outside of the

9:31 European single market. Prices of goods

9:34 continued to rise. Labor shortages in

9:36 key sectors like healthcare remained and

9:38 the nation's birth rate continued to

9:40 decline. So to solve this, the

9:42 government loosened the rules on

9:44 immigration. In 2019, Prime Minister

9:46 Boris Johnson pledged to reduce net

9:49 migration into the country below 250,000

9:52 per year. In 2021, net migration reached

9:56 488,000.

9:58 The same government under Boris Johnson,

10:00 who vowed to lower immigration and exit

10:02 the EU because of it, opened the doors

10:04 wide open for immigrants all across the

10:07 globe. By 2023, net migration reached a

10:10 record high of 944,000

10:14 new people entering the country. For

10:16 most of English history, more people

10:18 were leaving than coming in. But after

10:20 the UK left the EU annually, the country

10:22 was getting 1.25% of its population in

10:26 immigrants. And the situation today is

10:29 worse now than ever before. [music]

10:34 Researching this video, immigration to

10:36 UK started peing my interest. Surely if

10:39 the country is getting this many

10:40 migrants annually, I as a person with

10:43 three quite powerful passports and a

10:45 bachelor's degree could easily move

10:47 there as well, right? You'd think so,

10:50 but on paper, moving to the UK is quite

10:53 difficult. Since leaving the EU, your

10:55 ability to move and work in Britain is

10:57 dictated by its revised point-based

11:00 system. Basically, to be allowed into

11:02 the country, you must obtain a total of

11:04 70 points from this chart. 50 of which

11:06 are gained through three mandatory

11:08 terms, like getting a job offer from an

11:10 approved sponsor. That job being skill

11:12 demanding, and speaking English. The

11:15 other 20 can be substituted by having a

11:17 PhD, working in a sector with a

11:19 shortage, or earning a high salary. Now,

11:22 I possess a bachelor's in economics, and

11:25 68% of British citizens with such a

11:27 degree are able to find a job in their

11:29 field within 15 months of completing

11:31 their degree. If you're a citizen and

11:33 possess a masters, this number goes up

11:36 to 91%. However, if you're a foreigner

11:39 like me, then securing a job in the UK

11:42 becomes quite difficult. Due to the high

11:44 competition for an entry job in

11:46 economics, most employers in the field

11:48 are unwilling to sponsor foreigners.

11:50 Furthermore, these entry jobs would be

11:52 paid below the threshold for the point

11:55 system requirement. So despite being a

11:57 high-skll worker, the chances of me

12:00 moving to the UK anytime soon are quite

12:03 slim. Yet in 2023, the UK accepted

12:07 1,469,000

12:09 new immigrants. To put this into

12:11 perspective, the population of

12:13 Birmingham is 1.1 million. In one year,

12:16 the UK got the entirety of its second

12:19 biggest city worth of immigrants and

12:21 then some moving in. With that said,

12:24 London definitely by any means is not

12:26 full of doctors and engineers. So, how

12:29 the hell are so many people coming into

12:31 the country? Your first instinct might

12:33 be to say illegally via boats across the

12:35 English Channel, but this is not the

12:37 case. Boats are a form of legal

12:39 migration, which makes up less than 2%

12:42 of migration cases. but they look the

12:45 most shocking. So, of course,

12:46 politicians scapegoat them with the uh

12:49 Normandy landings of brown people. In

12:51 2025, illegal immigration only made up

12:54 4.8% of all immigration into the UK. The

12:57 vast majority of immigrants are coming

12:59 in via a plane and a visa in their

13:02 passport. Most new arrivals in Britain

13:04 come as either students or workers. And

13:07 this is where the problem lies. The vast

13:09 majority of these visas are issued under

13:12 false pretenses. During Boris Johnson's

13:14 tenure, the government has made it

13:16 easier for foreign students to come and

13:18 study. But those coming in aren't coming

13:20 to famous universities like Cambridge

13:22 and Oxford. Hell, they're not even

13:24 coming to regular universities. Instead,

13:27 they're heading to diploma mills. Over

13:29 the past several decades, hundreds of

13:31 fake universities have popped up all

13:33 over the country, offering no actual

13:35 courses or accredited diplomas. Instead,

13:38 they sponsor foreigners from abroad to

13:40 come into the UK. According to the Home

13:42 Office, 59% of non-EU foreign students

13:45 upon arrival for their studies get a new

13:47 visa. When it comes to those coming in

13:49 on a work visa, however, things aren't

13:52 any better. Hundreds, if not thousands

13:54 of fake companies have also popped up

13:56 throughout the country who register

13:58 themselves as care companies. Instead of

14:01 providing actual health care and care

14:03 services, these companies hire workers

14:05 from abroad whom they also charge for

14:08 sponsoring them. a highly illegal act.

14:11 Then once here, these immigrants realize

14:13 that the job they applied for does not

14:16 exist. Then they're forced to work for

14:18 another illegal company that

14:19 fraudulently hires illegal immigrants to

14:22 work in food delivery via a shared

14:24 account. A lot of immigrants take out

14:26 large loans at home from banks and their

14:28 families and friends so they can afford

14:30 to be sponsored by one of these

14:32 companies. A lot of families in South

14:34 Asia also see this as an investment to

14:36 send one of their family members abroad

14:38 to work as they'll be able to send

14:40 remittances back home. In Nepal's

14:42 economy, for example, remittances make

14:44 up one quarter of the GDP. And if they

14:47 can't find any agency to take them

14:49 across, then they resort to illegal

14:51 crossings via the English Channel. So,

14:53 it's safe to say that the immigration

14:55 the UK is big business.

14:59 Okay, that's a lot to take in and

15:02 certainly a lot of immigrants. But

15:04 there's one question we still didn't

15:06 answer. Why are so many going to the UK?

15:08 Out of 38 OECD members, the UK has the

15:12 second biggest amount of permanent

15:13 immigrants and the biggest amount of

15:16 student immigrants. Yet for two decades,

15:19 the British economy has been stagnating.

15:21 The country's wages have barely seen any

15:23 growth. Housing has exploded in price

15:26 and the health care system has been more

15:28 inefficient than ever with non-urgent

15:30 treatments having an average wait time

15:32 of around 3 months. Meanwhile, Britain's

15:35 poorest households are now technically

15:37 worse off than those in ex Yugoslav

15:40 Slovenia. By all accounts, the UK

15:43 doesn't seem like the ideal place to

15:45 immigrate to. So, what gives? Well, the

15:48 first factor that plays into this is, as

15:50 I mentioned before, immigration into the

15:52 country has turned into a business.

15:54 Thousands of fake companies and diploma

15:56 mills make false promises of economic

15:58 prosperity in less developed countries.

16:00 Their entire business model relies on

16:03 being paid by people to bring them in.

16:05 Those desperate to look for work

16:08 elsewhere are not the most educated in

16:10 Britain's economic standing and still

16:12 have this rosy picture of the British

16:14 economic tiger 50 years ago. Secondly,

16:17 the UK has very generous social

16:19 benefits. Immigrants coming into the

16:21 country applying for asylum are granted

16:23 shelter and food while they wait for

16:25 their status to be approved. Due to the

16:27 sheer amount of people coming into the

16:29 country, several tens of thousands are

16:31 now being housed in over 400 hotels

16:34 across the nation. A lot of conservative

16:36 politicians were found to have ties to

16:38 these hotels and have been benefiting

16:41 tremendously from continuously housing

16:43 them there as the public has been

16:45 spending over 17.6 billion euros on

16:49 contracts with these hotels. Major hotel

16:52 chains like the Britannia Hotels Group

16:55 have received hundreds of millions from

16:57 the home office to keep their properties

16:59 occupied by asylum seekers leading to

17:02 substantial revenue gain for their

17:03 owners. In addition to that, if an

17:06 asylum case is approved, which on

17:08 average happens 67% of the time, the

17:10 refugees become eligible to apply for

17:13 council housing due to being at risk of

17:15 homelessness. In recent years,

17:17 authorities have provided social housing

17:19 to approximately 21,400

17:22 refugee households annually. This all

17:25 has left people smugglers promoting the

17:26 UK as the ultimate asylum destination.

17:29 They market the UK as a place where the

17:31 government will give you a free hotel

17:33 room. A place where you can get rich

17:35 from just your mobile phone and riding a

17:37 bike. All the while making them take on

17:40 tremendous amounts of debt just to get

17:42 them across and put to work in another

17:44 illegal company as they have to pay them

17:47 to rent their bike and food delivery

17:49 account which in part is allowed to

17:51 continue due to lacks legislation when

17:53 it comes to identification and a

17:55 misrepresentation of asylum law.

17:58 Although food delivery apps require its

18:00 contractors to have legal status in the

18:02 country, many are able to circumn this

18:04 due to the UK not having any formal ID

18:07 system. To identify oneself, many Brits

18:10 need to use their birth certificate or

18:12 passport. But when dealing with

18:14 authorities, the system relies on high

18:15 trust society principles like just

18:17 saying your legal name and address as

18:19 there are no national ID cards, which

18:22 makes regulating abuse of the

18:23 immigration system much more difficult.

18:26 The NHS remains understaffed. Housing is

18:29 more expensive than ever. Productivity

18:31 growth has stagnated. The country's

18:33 birth rate continues to fall. And

18:35 government finances remain under

18:37 pressure. For decades, successive

18:39 governments argued that higher

18:40 immigration was necessary to fill labor

18:42 shortages, support economic growth, and

18:45 offset an aging population. Yet, despite

18:48 record levels of migration, many of

18:50 these shortages still exist. Some of the

18:53 doctors, engineers, and skilled workers

18:55 Britain needed certainly arrived, but so

18:58 did millions of other people with their

19:00 own needs for housing, healthcare,

19:02 schools, infrastructure, and public

19:04 services. As a result, Britain finds

19:07 itself trapped in a strange paradox. The

19:10 public consistently tells pollsters that

19:12 they want immigration reduced.

19:14 Politicians repeatedly campaign on

19:16 promises to lower migration. Brexit

19:18 itself was in large part driven by the

19:21 desire to regain control over the

19:23 country's borders. Yet, every government

19:25 that comes to power eventually reaches

19:27 the same conclusion. The economy has

19:29 become dependent on a constant inflow of

19:32 new workers, students, and migrants. And

19:34 so, immigration continues. At the same

19:37 time, rapid demographic change has

19:39 transformed many parts of the country.

19:41 In some communities, integration has

19:43 been relatively successful. In others,

19:46 not so much. As tensions emerged over

19:48 culture, identity, religion, and social

19:51 cohesion, debates that once sat at the

19:54 fringes of British politics now dominate

19:56 headlines, elections, and dinner table

19:59 conversations. Whether immigration has

20:01 ultimately helped or harmed Britain

20:02 depends largely on who you ask. But one

20:05 thing is difficult to deny. For over

20:07 half a century, immigration has been

20:09 Britain's most controversial political

20:11 issue. Governments have promised to

20:12 solve it. Voters have repeatedly

20:14 demanded change. entire elections

20:17 revolved around it. And yet here we are.

20:20 More people are arriving than ever

20:22 before. The arguments are louder than

20:24 ever. And Britain is still searching for

20:27 an answer that nobody seems capable of

20:29 finding.