I don't mind if carers are immigrants, and I don't think that those who are immigrants are 'taking jobs' from anyone - there is a recruitment crisis in social care.
The problem is that there is an ageing population, and too many people not working need to be supported by those in work. The sums don't add up, and I'm not just talking about those on unemployment benefits, but about people who work for employers who don't pay them enough to live on, people whose rents are paying someone else's mortgage and leaving them with so little they have to claim UC, those who are old and need care, those who have retired and are on public sector pensions, those who are working and paying into public sector pensions, the ill, the disabled, the young - all of those people have to be paid for - as do roads, defence, police, education, defence etc etc, and we don't have a big enough working population to do it. In many cases there is no incentive to work a full week - doctors rarely do, as their taxation and pension arrangements make it counter-productive, and at the other end of the pay scale people are no better off in full-time work than in part-time with a top-up benefit.
It makes sense to persuade people who aren't working to do all jobs, whether they like them or not, before passing them on to people from other countries so that they can boost their own economies by sending money home. In most workplaces temps and people doing external consultancy are paid off if permanent salaried staff don't have enough work - this is much the same.
Jobs that can't be filled by UK workers are likely to be highly specialised, so the government wants to encourage them. Again, that makes sense - to me, anyway.
My concern is that care work needs to be done by people who are suitable. People who care about their patients/clients and who don't see the job as beneath them. Coercing the unwilling into care jobs can never be a good idea, IMO, but other unskilled work that doesn't involve working with the vulnerable should be filled by the UK unemployed before going to immigrants. I would love to see care work much better rewarded, and competition for the jobs made tighter. Putting care homes into public ownership might be a way to do that - there does seem to be anomalies in the relationship between workers' pay, home owners' profits and residents' fees.
For avoidance of doubt, when I say 'UK unemployed' I am talking about people who are claiming unemployment benefits, wherever their country of origin, and by 'immigrants' I mean people who are not here yet but could apply for non-specialist roles.
I think the government is trying to reshape the workforce so that those who can work have more incentive to do so (as benefits are reducing) rather than importing people who then need housing/put pressure on the NHS etc and simultaneously paying benefits to those who are capable of doing low-skilled jobs but don't want to take them. That seems fair enough, really.
The next stage needs to be stopping top-up benefits and raising minimum wages, so that people can afford to live an average lifestyle on an average wage, and nobody working a full week needs to use a food bank. I realise that that is challenging, but in the 50s and 60s it was the case that publicly owned housing at reasonable rents meant that a working family could have a decent life with one person working, and there was no such thing as food banks. Admittedly, there were fewer expensive treatments available on the NHS, and most people left education at 15 or 16, so these days it takes both parts of a couple to pay for those things, but it shouldn't be a pipe dream.
If we reach that state - whether the housing is council, owned but genuinely affordable' or privately but fairly rented - there will be less social unrest (and probably less crime), and children will get a better start in life.
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