Harry, Luca, and Elizabeth Hevren dissect Japan's LDP landslide under Sana Takaichi, analyzing her immigration rhetoric against economic stagnation and the 4 million foreign residents. They critique the EU's new deportation rules involving Palantir and Spain's controversial plan to regularize 500,000 migrants, arguing it is a cynical political maneuver lacking infrastructure. The discussion extends to the UK's "Boris wave," where international student visas generated £35 billion but flooded cities with dependents driving housing inflation. Ultimately, the hosts contend that neoliberal migration policies prioritize profit over demographic stability, creating unsustainable financial burdens for nations already facing low birth rates. [Automatically generated summary]
Good afternoon and welcome to the podcast of the Loth Eaters episode 1372.
I'm your host Harry joined today by Luca.
Hi.
And returning guest, Elizabeth Hevren.
Hi, it's good to be here.
Thank you for joining us again today.
My pleasure.
And today we're going to be talking about potentially Japan being betrayed, which should be very interesting because I'd be sad to hear it, but it would be another case of Populist Party betrayal, which really does start to show a pattern has formed with this, that you can't really trust these people, which might be relevant to British politics.
We're also going to be talking about Spain amnestying half a million illegals by the end of June.
And Liz is going to take us through the British university problem, and that is the problem of British university student visas and how they are a backdoor to mass migration.
Before we get into that news, though, first we'd like to advertise some things that are on the website for all of our beautiful, handsome, charming, and odorous premium subscribers.
In a good way.
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Yes, in a good way.
And that is that we have the most recent episode of Chronicles, William Shakespeare's Macbeth.
This is part one.
Luca and I recorded it the other day, and we're doing the second half of the recording later on.
Macbeth's a really fantastic play, a really interesting sort of fictional history play, which I've enjoyed speaking about so far.
I will be bringing some more analysis of the adaptations to the second part of the discussion.
My documentary, The Stonewall Myth, which OGs out there might have remembered of being talked about for over two years at this point, it feels that long at least, is finally out.
It is finally out.
It's had some very positive responses.
A lot of work and effort has been put into it.
And that is on my part, but also on the part of Jack, our editor.
So a big thank you to him and congratulations on the work that he's done.
It looks like it's been positively received.
Please give it a watch.
It's a really in-depth documentary.
So give that a watch.
And also, we do have a live event coming up on the 11th of April.
It'll be held at the Mecca in Swindon between 7 and 10 o'clock.
So tickets are still available.
Get them whilst you still can.
All right, then.
So let's begin by talking about Japan, shall we?
Because now I was actually away when the Liberal Democrat Party, Sane Takaichi's party, won this massive majority.
But they did, and it was pretty staggering.
Now, we covered the fact that really, now this has not aged particularly well in the way that it's framed in terms of their own Trump, because I've become beyond disenchanted with Trump at this point.
I find analysis of pop well, positive analysis of populist parties across the world now, seemingly, not just the West and Europe, but Japan as well.
Never ages particularly well.
think it fits it quite well because this party supports as well well the point was that um well the the thing was though that um obviously it is a center-right party It's not innately nationalist in its principles or in its core.
And, you know, to invoke AA's very sensible position, the centre-right are your absolute enemy.
This seems to have been the case in Europe.
seems to have been the case in america and so i was explain to us what's going on with with japan then because uh Because obviously a lot of people will be familiar with our coverage and they'll be expecting that this was supposed to be a good thing.
Well, okay.
So first of all, as Sid points out here, the right-wing in Japan has a large enough supermajority that they can amend the constitution that was forced on them at gunpoint by the American Liberals back in 1945.
So for the first time in nearly a century, the soul of Japan can actually be reclaimed.
Now, this, for me, smacks a lot of back when Boris Johnson had the supermajority in the United Kingdom back in 2019.
And we were in a position where he could have done absolutely anything.
And he decided that top of his list of things to do was more betrayal.
So it's always something to be cautious of.
And especially now, because the other thing as well was that actually Senator Kaiichi's party was struggling a lot.
It had broken a lot of trust with the public over recent years.
And it was beginning to stall.
And it seemed like for the first time in the history of Japanese democracy, which is not so extensive.
I was going to say a very long history.
But it did seem like actually another party would begin to create inroads and actually would be a threat to the established party.
And so Takaichi comes in and she offers some very firm rhetoric on questions of immigration.
She comes in and offers, you know, very strong stances on China and, you know, just certainly gives lip service to a lot of the anxieties amongst the Japanese population about stagnation of the economy, birth rates, all the things that Japanese voters are obviously very concerned about, which is why they rewarded her with a landslide.
However, these same concerns and these same problems that pop up all across modern countries and modern democracies are the same problems that are used to justify mass migration, especially birth rates.
Yeah, and I was going to say with the last slide, when he says the soul of Japan can be reclaimed, if the soul of Japan was going to be reclaimed, it would be going back to the emperor system, the true essence of the Japanese nation.
And Yuki Mishima, really the last example of a man that embodied the Japanese spirit.
He committed seppuku, which was suicide, which was a window dressing for the fact he wanted to die.
You know, he said, he had this quote, and he said, Japan has lost its spiritual tradition and instead has become infested with materialism.
And Japan is under the curse of a green snake.
There is a green snake in the bossom of Japan.
There is no way to escape the curse.
And what he was talking about was the legacy of American imperialism.
Japan will always be democratic now.
And that sort of nationalist spirit that Japan had is now lost.
And you see this with this new party that could bring back the old ways and bring back the Japanese spirit, but they never will.
Online Popularity vs Real Life00:05:07
Well, this is really the thing, though, isn't it?
That all a country should aspire to is to be the most authentic version of itself.
It shouldn't, you know, the success of a country or the prosperity of the country or the value of a country should never be measured along the lines of just presupposed liberal priors that have been thrust on them, you know, by an outside power.
So as we go through here and talk about this article, it says that Prime Minister Sana Takaichi won overwhelmingly in the number of social media videos views during the recent lower house election campaign, which may have contributed to a party's landslide win.
Now, one of the things that I want to point out about this is the fact that this goes a long way into what we're seeing becoming more and more where people talk about, they say this about us in the United Kingdom, don't they?
About the fact that we're terminally online and that, you know, restore only appealed to terminally online people.
Well, you know, the distinction between online and offline is only diminishing as, you know, newer and newer generations come along.
They grow up with the technology.
They're not actually having to adapt it to, you know, older ways of thinking and older ways.
I've got to say, I do think that that's a tragedy.
Because I think that online social media addiction is one of the great curses.
It's absolutely of today.
But you are right that this idea that simply by being popular online that you're kind of appealing to an ephemeral trend that won't translate into real life, behind, hopefully, dead internet theory notwithstanding, behind most accounts there will be a real person.
Absolutely.
It's not all bots.
Everybody who's unpopular or has a bad reaction to something at any one time wants to claim bots.
That's not always the case.
We need evidence for that.
And this has translated into real life results.
And when you're on the screen, you forget that, you know, the people you're engaging with online, the people you're getting likes with, the likes on your tweets from online are real people.
And there seems to be a tendency when we look at a screen, we sort of take the humanity away.
And we pretend it's not real life when, in fact, it is a representation of what people hold.
Absolutely.
Opinions.
Well, whether they're voicing it from, you know, having a chat with a neighbor or voicing it online, the concern is still the concern, right?
Irrespective of how it's being aired.
And as it points out here, a study from GoToSenko, Senkyo.com political information website found that about 90,000 videos had been posted during the lower house election campaign to YouTube and were viewed to a total of 2.8 billion times, which was a tenfold increase over 2024 when a similar election was held.
It also goes on to say that among individual politicians, the study found that the videos of Takaichi were watched a total of about 450 million times, which was by far the largest number.
And only about 20% of those videos were posted by the political parties or individual candidates, with the remainder being from so-called third parties.
And so one of the trappings that comes with this is, of course, the fact that if a lot of this video material that is coming online via, you know, Zoomer edits and just little infographics and things being mocked up by third parties, then this can have quite a dramatic effect on changing the strength of the discourse and the strength of the messaging.
And so you might portray them as more radical than they actually are in order to attract votes to them.
And so it's constantly this thing, the actual campaigning is being done online and not necessarily by the parties themselves.
And so there will naturally be a bit of a difference between the messaging of the party and the messaging of the supporters.
And I think this is one of the things that we've seen here where actually Takaichi, and I'm not saying she's a terrible politician or anything of the kind.
What I am saying is that I think that a lot of the videos and things that get put about on X have made her sound a lot more radical than she has actually portrayed herself as being.
Of course.
One of the other points to take from what you were saying there is just to acknowledge that what that means is that the social media companies have an insane amount of power and influence over elections.
And when a lot of these videos are being produced by third-party sources, the question becomes, are these independent sources or are they more organized?
And if they are more organized, the question has to be, what benefit do they get from portraying these people in such a way?
Is their financial interests backing this?
Is there an interest in appealing to a more radical section of the voting population where you're not intending on following through on how you're portraying it?
Absolutely.
And photos, they tend to be far more radical than the parties themselves.
I mean, you see that in Britain with Reform, for example, spaces.
It's far radical.
A Cautionary Tale of Isolationism00:08:49
They want re-migration.
But the party will never deliver on that.
And they're far tame.
So you get the photos hyping the party up.
Same with Trump saying, oh, if Trump's in power, he'll do this, he'll do that.
He's got a secret plan, you've got to trust the plan.
In fact, that's not the reality.
And what's more as well, invariably, those politicians are in the political arena in the first place in order that that option is simply taken off the table to make sure that that's not something that voters can actually get.
But we can see here from Satsuki Katayama, who's Japan's finance minister, she said, We're not imagining a situation where our society will be like European countries, but that Japan is open to welcoming a few good people.
And she also spoke about her two years living in France, saying that even though immigrants from former French colonies speak French, there was still a feeling among French people that they were from a different culture and that Japanese people feel similarly about people who've come from them.
And so there is right from the top of the ruling Japanese party an understanding that the plight of Europe is a cautionary tale.
And they are, I mean, this is one of the other things as well, isn't it?
It could only be done by a truly malicious party that would claim ignorance of the damages that mass immigration can cause when we have extensive, you know, an entire half a century of evidence right now to point to the fact that actually it's not going to go the way you think.
But the numbers are getting pretty scary, to be honest with you.
You can see from this article here, it says that the number of foreigners residing in Japan as of the end of 2025 reached a record of about 4.13 million, reaching the 4 million level for the first time.
And according to data submitted to the cabinet by the Immigration Services Agency on the 10th, so just yesterday, according to the Immigration Agency, there were about 2.78, sorry, 2.76 million people at the end of the third year of the Emperor 2022.
And by the end of the fourth year, it was 3.7.
And it just keeps going and going.
And so actually, they've been taking in about 350,000 foreigners every year.
And now they've crossed a threshold of over 4 million.
My question is: you know, if you're a Briton, you want to work in Japan, your only route for working in Japan is to teach English.
That's the only way, as a European, you can really do that.
There are entire sectors of the workforce.
You simply don't have access.
You don't have the right to access.
Yeah, and they have extremely strict immigration.
So how on earth are those numbers so high?
Yes.
And the other question that I have is: this new government, have they had a chance to implement any policies regarding this yet?
And whatever policies they have implemented or may be about to implement, hopefully, how long would you expect to see any sort of change in those numbers or reverse?
What you want to see in those kinds of numbers is a reversal.
Absolutely.
Yes, you want to see people being incentivized to leave, absolutely.
And so, as it currently stands, the ethnic minority bloc in Japan is at about 3%.
And further down the article in this one here, it points out that according to the result of the latest Asahi Shimbam telephone survey published, this was towards the end of last year.
66% of respondents viewed Takauchi's tougher immigration policies as promising, while 24% expressed concern about them.
And 56% said that Japan needed fewer visitors and immigrants, compared to 26% who said that the country needed more.
And several studies have shown.
Now, this is an interesting point as well.
I do want to actually say this entire article is basically saying, oh, but we shouldn't take those statistics.
We shouldn't be too concerned with them.
We should naturally just carry on with immigration.
It's quite a subversive article.
But one of the things it is saying is that several studies have shown that anti-prejudice norms prevail in North America and Western Europe.
And that in these democracies, people have often had to hide their negative attitudes towards immigration and ethnic minorities because expressing them could lead to formal and informal repercussions against them as private citizens.
whereas it's saying that the actual thing is inverted in Japan.
But I will just dismiss that on the fact that, because basically it's trying to contain it and saying, well, yeah, we've had this from a poll, but, you know, the figures don't really bear it out and people are just not being on this.
They're actually pro-migration, you see.
It's like, okay, why did San Takaichi just win in the landslide then?
Riddle me that.
And they can't really seem to do that.
One thing people forget to mention in relation to Japan is that they're spiritually isolationist.
Like throughout most of their history, they've not interacted with barely anyone outside of Japan.
I mean, when Christianity came to Japan, the Protestants came over and they said, you know, be wary of those Catholics.
They believe in the Pope.
And once they had that, the Emperor freaked out and just killed all the Christians and then just kicked out all the Europeans, basically.
So throughout their history, they've been completely anti-alien.
And that doesn't magically change when the American Empire introduces democracy to Japan.
The isolationist spirit still lies within them.
Yeah, I think so.
But I think that the Japanese history proves that actually homogeneity is good.
You know, when Japan did close itself to the rest of the world for 300 years, it had basically 300 years of unbroken peace.
And how many other countries?
I thought there were a number of civil wars during that period.
Well, I might be wrong.
From what I understand, all of the, there were 150 years of civil wars leading up to that event.
But then once it had all been put to rest with Tokugawi Iasu, I think it was, I think that dynasty endured right up until the Americans arrived in the 1860s.
From what I understand, I'm sure.
The main thing is that.
Samson's thumbs up.
Samson.
I am right.
Yeah, the main civil war that they had, I think it was in the 1800s, was, and this was the biggest civil war that Japan had, when Matthew Perry came along, he was this American sailor and said, you should open up your country.
So the war happened.
It was a war between those who wanted to open up the country and those who wanted to be isolationist.
So the civil war happened, or happened in protecting Japan.
Having said that, the people who wanted to open it up were right about one thing, which is that it is going to be opened up.
Powers far more powerful than us, i.e. the Americans, have already decided that this is to be our fate, that we are going to modernise, that we are going to do all these things.
And so there is a cautionary tale against absolute isolationism in there as well, in that it does leave you weak to the force of the outside world.
And, you know, you can't just exist within a vacuum.
And then following that, I mean, Japan very quickly centralised following the Meiji Restoration and all of the expansionism and imperialism following that was essentially, it was one...
an attempt to claim what they saw as their right to be the hegemon of East Asia.
They wanted Manchuria, they wanted Korea, they wanted China.
They also were trying to follow in the footsteps of these great civilizations that had forced them to open up that they saw as great empires, the European empires, America, which was slowly beginning to expand into a quasi-empire at the time.
And particularly Britain as well.
Yeah, and Britain.
They saw all of that as being admirable.
And so they wanted to emulate that as well.
And of course, they were bombed out of that during the Second World War.
But it shows that they are also quite influenceable in that sense.
Yes, we have the words of some of their politicians saying that Europe is a cautionary tale.
But at the same time, different factions within Japan are probably going to see what they see as the benefits of migration on GDP and the fact that we're very modern countries and Japan wants to be a very modern country.
They see the same problems over here as they're facing there, that being declining birth rates, worries about benefits and dependencies when people get old because of their massively aging population.
And they see that and go, well, I guess, I mean, if that's what the West is doing and we've always been able to follow the West and their example, then maybe we should do that as well.
Denmark and Japanese Integration00:10:12
Yeah.
Yeah, and that does seem to have been one of the threats that was arising among the consensus of Japanese politics for quite a long time.
That seemed to be the trajectory where things are going.
However, in answer to your question, Harry, about what, since winning that election, what gestures, what direction does it seem like this particular government are going to make?
Well, it says here that as of simply yesterday, the government have approved a bill to significantly raise immigration fees, effectively increasing the cost to renew our change resident status by more than tenfold and the fee for permanent residency by 20fold.
As well as the fact that it seems like there's a Japanese electronic system for travel authorization, which is something that's also going to basically work as a bit of a tariff on foreign tourists as well.
And also one thing as well is that there will be a pre vetting of people before they come into the country.
Basically criminal background checks, all these sorts of things.
And they are going to try and tighten those sorts of things up.
Now, am I suggesting for a second that this is enough?
Of course.
Yeah, I mean, just looking at the figures here on the screen in front of me, under the proposal, fees for visa status changes would jump from 6,000 yen, the equivalent of $38, to as much as 70,000 yen, which would be what, like $450?
I suppose.
Cost for applying for permanent residence would climb from 10,000 yen to around 200,000 yen.
So that's still, what, just over $1,000?
That's like $450-ish and $1,000.
That's not high enough if you want to really start.
Although it will be a barrier for the absolute lowest dredges, you would hope.
Yeah, you would think so, that a lot of the Kurdish migrants who are causing trouble in Tokyo would be, you know, held back by this.
Yeah.
However, there is also this philosophy that seems to be going through Takaichi's government of well-ordered coexistence as well.
It's basically a policy of integration and not, you know, trying to, as we said, provide incentives for people to leave, but rather to make sure that the integration of those who are already there is more tightly done.
It's similar to what you see in Denmark with the Danish, is it the Social Democrats who are in power in Denmark right now, where they've got these policies to try and break down the ethnic enclaves.
But what that actually means and results in, practically, is a dispersal of those communities into the wider Danish community to force a coexistence, to force an integration, which, as we see, anytime forced integration is attempted, unless those cultures are already incredibly similar with one another.
Imagine the European cultures all going to America, and even then it was quite difficult.
You see a huge communal breakdown.
And the other thing, as well, just to add to this, is the fact that with the foreign population of Japan still being in the single digits, right, they're not like we are, where it's about 27%, probably higher, at this point, higher than the official statistics are actually telling us.
You still have time, Japan, to decouple yourself from the path ahead.
Because the thing is, if you go down this route of trying to assimilate people into your culture, it won't work.
And I'd say this purely out of experience here, where in fact, it is the second and third generation immigrants who are by far the most radicalized against your civilization.
And if anything, kind of have a grudge against their parents for bringing them and raising them in the foreign environment away from their homeland anyway.
You will always feel that ancestral route back to where you come from.
And you innately know that Japan will not be it, no matter how much welfare or government spending you throw at the question of assimilation.
And the other thing as well is that though immigration is being used right now from what the Japanese government see as a very pragmatic angle of basically offsetting the labor shortages and all these sorts of things, the problem is, of course, that we've had that excuse here in Europe for many, many decades now.
And actually, the source of that and the way that you do it, to bring in immigrants to look after the elderly, well, then they stay and then they grow old and people have to come and look after them as well.
And on and on it goes.
So actually, in going in this path, you set yourself down, committing yourself to it and tying your economy to it so inexorably that it becomes this thing where you kind of immobilize yourself.
I will say with all of this, with the evidence that you provided me so far, I don't see enough to say that there's any kind of betrayal happening yet.
Obviously, she was sold on very big promises on social media.
I still don't see anything remotely resembling the kind of massive policy betrayal that we had under somebody like Boris Johnson.
No.
Or that Italy is experiencing under Maloney, who had a similar policy as Boris Johnson to just over the next three years in Italy bring in half a million legal migrants, mainly from India and Africa.
And since 2023, has already issued almost half a million visas for people from that same level.
And this doesn't seem to be anywhere near that same level.
Honestly, I don't really see that much evidence as of yet.
Anyway, and I will also say, you know, it makes complete sense why Japan is introducing these reforms in relation to emigration.
Because the foreigners that are coming over, even European foreigners, don't speak like a word of Japanese.
And Japanese being able to speak English is extremely, extremely low.
So when you have two people that can't communicate to each other, it's going to cause major problems.
So it makes sense why they're putting taxes basically on tourists and putting these reforms forward.
Yes.
It seems that this article that we have here is basically saying that, you know, her rise reflects a party still guided by short-term electoral calculations rather than the vision Japan needs.
Until that changes, the debate over foreign resident policy will remain reactive, divisive, and ultimately inadequate.
And what this sounds like is it's saying that she's not yet put a pin on the question.
She's not yet solved the question for all time within Japan.
And as wary as I am of populist parties these days, and as As much as I'm aware of populist parties betraying Western countries, I'd still say there needs to be time given to Takichi, Takachi, Takai Chi, I think.
Before we can say for definite, like, what effect she's going to have on Japan going forward?
I absolutely agree with that verdict.
I think thus far there's no significant signals of betrayal.
I think it's simply a difference of expectation.
you know, from viral voters versus what was promised in the campaigning.
I do think obviously things will be done to get rid of the worst foreigners and the people.
There is going to be crackdowns on those particular delinquents.
But I will just say as well, and there's a reason I've got this final piece up, which is from the Australian National University.
It's from the Crawford.
Sorry, just scroll to the top again for me.
Oh, yes, sorry.
Sorry.
The Crawford School of Public Policy, which is obviously an Australian university that puts forward public policy.
Now, this entire article is basically pleading for Japan to open itself up and say to ignore the fear-mongering, let more people in.
In fact, it goes on to say here, Japan's future cannot be secured through cultural defensiveness alone.
True coexistence means treating foreigners as community members and equal stakeholders, not merely as disposable labor.
It requires investment in language and skills programmes, rights protections, and civic participation.
So what it's basically saying is Japan needs to erect an entire apparatus of legislation and welfare to bind these foreigners to Japan and give them an equal stake and therefore an equal voice as a Japanese citizen whose family has lived there for thousands and thousands of years.
And so the only reason I bring this article up is not just to say it's not just to your own politicians that you need to look to, but it's also to the fact that we do live in a global world and they will look at the homogeneity of Japan.
They will look towards its cultural confidence and they will seek to take that from you, give it to other people who aren't worthy of it and whose birthright it isn't, and they will make things much more miserable for you.
So do continue to hold the government to account where you can, obviously.
And best of luck with you.
All right, then.
That's by Yasuo Takao.
Or how have you pronounced that?
I'm sorry, I'm bad.
I'm bad with this.
It's always distressing and depressing when you see people of the Japanese, like actual Japanese people, begging.
What are you begging for?
The complete sublimation and destruction of your own country.
Mishima was white when he said the Japanese spirit died when America nuked Japan.
It's very true.
The fact that they gave into unconditional surrender, which was such a foreign concept to the Japanese for basically their entire history.
Hard Line on Illegal Migration00:15:51
Yes.
Up until that point, they considered themselves the nation, the people that had never lost the war.
Even when they'd had to pull back from some conflicts, it would always been framed in the way that, no, we're making this decision for our own reasons.
We've not been forced into doing this.
The fact that they were forced into unconditional surrender at the behest of a foreign power when they also didn't know what was going to happen to the imperial and emperor system at the time as well, must have been such a national humiliation to be traumatizing for generations to come.
Has the spirit of the samurai gone?
And so from Rumble, Okador says, a tale of two extremes, true.
And Sigilstone, this is a funny one.
Why does today's panel look like that you're all about to jump in the coal-powered dirigible and try to go around the world in 80 days?
Because we are, Sir Killstone, because we are.
Yes, that's what all of your subscriptions are going to our dirigible funds.
Our new documentary where we go and point at foreigners across the world over 80 days.
Carl Pilkington style.
Just like the novel.
And I just say, no, I'm not a fan of that.
Don't like that.
Not one bit.
Anyway, let's go to the next segment, please.
I've got my box.
Thank you very much.
So looking at EU, looking at the EU recently, there are a few developments.
Some of them good with a lot of potential for the future.
And some of them very, very bad with potentially long-term consequences for the future as well.
Now, go through the good news first, and then I will take us on to the bad news and what it might mean.
So the good news is that, shockingly, EU lawmakers, this is people within the European Parliament, have backed tougher deportation rules for illegal migrants.
These are reforms which have been voted on by the Council, I forget the name of the particular council in here.
One of the councils within the European Parliament.
Apologies, friends, the Parliament Civil Liberties Committee, that's it.
They passed a proposal on Monday by 41 votes to 32 with one abstention, reflecting a growing shift in Brussels towards stricter migration enforcement.
And this would be for the proposal to have tougher rules to deport illegal migrants and would approve reforms aimed at enforcing return orders that have often gone ignored.
Now, this is not a cure rule.
This does not do anything to solve the problem of legal migration into European countries.
But of course, when you have a huge body of water like the Mediterranean, where people just cross every single day and then use the Shenzhen Jones zone to try and jump from one country to another, take advantage of each system until they can find the one that suits them best, this is a step in the right direction.
And as they say here, also does reflect something of a change in views for some parts of the European Parliament.
Because the coalitions that have existed within the European Parliament for a long time, where it's been the centre in coalition with the left, seem to be shifting more to the centre in coalition with the centre-right and the people who exist in that sphere in the European Parliament.
So Swedish MEP Charles Wymers, who has been pushing for this, has said that the vote sends a clear signal that attitudes in Parliament are changing.
He gave a little speech, which if you go to the link below the podcast, you can find here.
He's speaking to journalists and explaining the whole thing.
So what does this do?
What would these proposals do if they were put into European legislation?
Well, it would allow for longer detention for migrants who refuse to cooperate with return procedures and introduce deportation orders recognized across the Shenzhen area.
Now, that would be a change from the current system where they are unique to each nation.
So people can go apply for asylum in one country, it gets rejected, so they just go to the next country over, apply for asylum there, and keep going and being rejected.
And they prolong their time within Europe in that way.
This means that they're universal.
So you can't just apply for, you can't just go into Italy and apply for asylum.
And if they reject it, you catch the next boat over to Greece.
No.
That means that in Greece, in Germany, in France, anywhere you go, those orders will still apply.
So you can't just try and get out of it that way.
And the longer detention period would be up to 24 months.
And they're trying to organise a similar kind of thing that we saw with Britain, with the Rwanda agreement.
So we'll see how that ends up going.
But I know that Italy has their own agreement with Albania, which is supposedly going a bit better than the Rwanda agreement was.
Making deals with Albanians can only ever end well.
Hey, all the worst ones moved here, so it can't be that bad, right?
So there are new plans for that, and it would be a 24-month detention period, which could really incentivize people to leave.
Reading through some of the rest of this, according to WIMERS, the majority that backed the proposal, including groups such as the ECR, PPE, Patriots, and ESN, reflects a change from the Parliament's traditionally more lenient stance on migration issues.
That's saying something.
The measure is part of wider changes to EU migration policy under the Pact on Migration and Asylum, but focuses more on one of the system's biggest problems, deportation orders that just aren't enforced, which kind of negates the point of deportation orders in the first place.
For years, thousands of migrants who asylum requests have been rejected have remained in Europe because authorities struggled to carry out return decision.
The reform is meant to tackle this by speeding up the procedures and increasing pressure to ensure expulsion orders are actually enforced.
One of the key changes is the introduction of a legal duty for migrants who receive a return order to cooperate with authorities.
Those ordered to leave the EU will be required to assist officials in arranging their own departure.
And one of the ways that they will enforce that is if you don't cooperate with them, then they will just put you in detention.
That is what the extended detention period is for, supposedly.
And EU countries will be able to detain illegal migrants for up to 24 months if there's a risk they may disappear before deportation or refuse to cooperate with the authorities or pose a security risk.
So you would hope that European departments and agencies around the entire continent who all have their own intelligence agencies like we have in Prevent that mark out people as potential terror threats that they would immediately be picked up.
You would hope that that was what would happen under this.
The text also allows alternatives to detention including regular reporting to authorities, residents in a designated location, financial guarantees or electronic monitoring.
The reform would also introduce a European return order, again recognized across the entire European zone.
Deportation issues by one EU country would be entered into the Shenzhen information system and recognized by other member states.
They say the reform, they say in this article, the reforms approved in committee are intended to close the gaps on the amount of deportation issues ordered versus people actually sent, though whether it will significantly increase deportations remains to be seen.
Now, one thing that they don't mention is this is still up for a vote.
This is the committee's proposal, but the actual legislation being put forward is still up for a vote by MEPs.
There are also some additions that they want to add to it, but interestingly, some of the additions are actually slightly more hard line.
So we'll see where this goes within the European Parliament, because it could be a good disincentive to illegal migration into the European zone itself, if they know that if they get here and they get caught and their asylums rejected, that they're just going to be treated rather brutally.
Of course, people are already complaining about this.
There's this article from the EU Observer saying that the EU is building a dystopian surveillance-driven deportation machine.
Now, there is some...
I was against it till the penultimate word.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, there is some concern, to be fair, about the involvement, as they mention down here, of organisations like Palantir and other big tech industries like Clearview AI and Geo Group.
There is always the concern that a system that gets built to deliver this kind of deportation system will then be turned back around on the populace and turned into a surveillance state for the native citizens of whichever EU country.
It's interesting that, you know, the literally 1984 argument is applied here when it works for them.
When you want to keep your country safe from people, you have no idea where they come from, who they are, what their past is, then you're a tyrannical government for wanting to keep your people safe.
Well, that's the thing, is that the surveillance machine, sadly, has already been built.
Palantir are already involved in European politics.
In fact, Alex Karp, their CEO, says that Palantir is the only reason that European far-right parties haven't already taken power in most European countries.
The meaning behind that was left very ambiguous in the statement.
It was kind of an offhand remark.
But if you're worried about the surveillance-driven tech state, then where were you for the past 10 years?
It's only all of a sudden when it's going to be deporting people that you show some kind of concern.
This kind of criticism in this regard is always bad faith, as seen as well by this Guardian article saying the EU's deportation plans risk ICE-style enforcement according to rights groups.
Now, this was an open letter signed by 75 organizations at the time that the article was written.
Checking it this morning in preparation for this segment, I believe the number had risen to about 111.
Despite that, I don't believe that unaccountable, unelectable, NGO human rights organizations should be determining local or national or international policy.
Especially when their work contributes to people being kept in the country who go on to commit the most heinous crimes.
Of course, this is always the question of like you care about the human rights of brown people, where is your concern for the human rights of European people?
These organizations typically don't actually care all of that much.
Therefore, it's fair enough to dismiss it and say this is bad faith as well.
So this is the good news that Europe might be going a bit more hard line on illegal migration.
This is probably due to a number of factors, including the rise of right-wing parties across European countries, either the ones that have already been voted in or pressure from the ones that are looking to take the place of incumbent centrist and left-wing parties in their countries and people changing their policy and rhetoric to kind of keep those parties out.
So that's the good news.
What is the bad news?
Well, Spain didn't get the memo.
Spain really didn't get the memo.
So there is a plan that is going forward to regularize, that is, make legitimate 500,000, half a million undocumented migrants illegal invaders in Spain.
This article states that as anti-migration policies sweep the continent, the Spanish Prime Minister is going against the tide.
How brave, stunning even, by announcing plans to legalize the status of undocumented migrants.
Now, there is quite a bit to this story, and it takes a few twists and turns, so I'll go through it with you now.
So, given the European Centre's rightward drift, according to this article, what was Spain's Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, who is the leader of the Spanish Socialist Party, up to last week when his socialist-led government announced the regularization of 500,000 undocumented migrants and asylum seekers.
Under the time limited plan, successful applicants will be given a legal residence permit in Spain with an initial validity of one year.
Now, that is one thing that I've not heard many people speak about: the fact that these plans are only to give validity for one year.
Now, of course, if they're already undocumented in the country, this will just give them an extra year without being harassed or pressured to leave the country where they don't have to worry about it.
And it will, of course, as we see with any kind of amnesty of illegal immigrants, only encourage more people to come in.
The most pressing, the most obvious example of this was Ronald Reagan's amnesty in the 1980s in the 1986 immigration bill, I believe it was in America.
Which basically turned California into a Democrat state.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
Which was sold to the American people as solving the problem right now.
And once we've done this, we'll never have to worry about illegal immigrants ever again.
Of course, that turned out to be a lie as well.
So this is being sold to people as a way of solving the problem of illegal immigration in Spain.
It never is.
That is a blatant lie.
There's always more illegals to come.
Yes, they've always got more cousins.
Some say, Sanchez said in a video posted on social media, that we've gone too far, that we're going against the current.
But I would like to ask you: when did recognizing rights become something radical?
When did empathy become something exceptional?
When it led to the death of Europe, Sanchez.
I mean, this is the thing with the left.
They're deluded with this idea that illegals are coming here as asylum seekers.
That's their impression of what illegals are: are people who are fleeing war, who are fleeing poverty.
They don't realize that the reason these people are coming here is because Europe offers so much compared to their home countries.
And they're coming here to work.
And also because some countries are sold this idea that women in Europe are extremely beautiful.
You can have access to all these easy women and then they come and flood European places.
They're here for what we have built our countries into.
They're not fleeing asylum whatsoever.
Well, fleeing.
Well, they're coming to take advantage of our benefit systems.
They're coming to take advantage of our people.
A lot of them are also brought over by NGOs.
A lot of them are not only brought over as in physically, but also European countries are promoted as destinations where these people can build better lives by NGOs and even in fact occasionally by European governments themselves.
That was an interesting thing when the Polish, what was it, the PIS party, the PIS party, which was supposedly the incredibly radical anti-immigration party, was found to have corruption embedded so deep into it that elements of that party had gone to North Africa and were selling passports to North Africans as long as they didn't go to Poland.
That was quite a scandal that I didn't see too much reporting on.
But carrying on with this, it was far from the first time that Sanchez had broken ranks with his political peers when it comes to migration.
One of his first high-profile acts after becoming prime minister in June 2018 was to announce that Spain would welcome the 630 migrants and asylum seekers on board the rescue boat Aquarius who had been refused entry to Italy and Malta.
Now, is this exceptional empathy?
Is this a radical recognition of rights?
Or is this simply suicidal?
Welfare State Logistics Fail00:15:25
I'll let you make your own mind up.
All three.
Speaking to Spain's parliament in 2024, he said the country had to choose between being an open and prosperous country or a closed-off poor country.
As if we haven't had endless studies at this point showing how not only illegal but legal migration of any population other than European or Far East Asian populations into your country isn't a massive drain on public services and tax money.
Taking in migrants, he added, was not just a question of human decency.
It was the only realistic means of growing the economy and maintaining the welfare state in a country with one of the lowest birth rates in the EU.
Now, here we get the neoliberal economic reasoning again as well.
The argument is made that literally only bringing in, I think it's 2.4 million migrants at the least is the only thing that is going to prop up the pensions welfare state for an aging population that aren't having children.
That's always an argument there.
And it is a difficult argument to try to reconcile.
But destroying your country's demographics is not the answer to it, I can't remember.
In relation to that, it's also, you know, what's wrong with a population getting smaller?
I mean, our population of Europeans has never been this large as it is now.
The financialized debt system, that's what we're saying.
Yeah.
But it really, like, the biggest factor to why it's a threat is when you import loads and loads of foreigners to the point where your people will become demographically replaced because they're not having children.
And you're also replacing them with people who are more likely going to be economic dependents in the first place.
So you've negated your solution to begin with.
It's pathetic.
Yes, bringing them all in creates material and financial circumstances in which it's going to provide disincentives for the native population to have children as well.
And so you never fix the birth rates.
Yeah, but obviously it got some responses from the other parties.
The Conservative People's Party, PP, the PP party, so in Poland they have the PIS party, in Spain they have the PPE party, that actually kind of fits, said that the plan would attract more migrants, obviously, and thereby overwhelm Spain's public services, obviously true, while the who scare quotes everybody far-right Vox party once again peddled the idea that Sanchez was trying to replace the Spanish population and quote accelerate the invasion.
Which is correct framing.
Where's the lie there?
The move, which was agreed to at the behest of the left-wing Podemos party, so this is a far-left Spanish party, after years of civil society campaigning comes at a tricky time for Sanchez and his Spanish Socialist Workers' Party.
And this is where some of the reasons for doing something like this right now may come in.
Recent opinion polls are putting Vox's share of the vote at almost 18%.
Members of the Prime Minister's inner circle, including his wife and brother, have been accused of corruption.
And I know.
Corruption in Spanish politics.
What a shock.
What a surprise.
While his party has been enveloped in allegations of graft and failing to take sexual assault cases seriously in a Mediterranean country, never.
Not once.
As commentators have pointed out, the regularization decree offers Sanchez an opportunity to differentiate himself from his opponents and show his allies that his beliefs align with theirs and with those of their voters.
So it seems, according to this kind of analysis, that the calculation is we want to siphon the far-left voters so that we as the centre-left socialist party can maintain power so that we're not overwhelmed by parties like Vox growing in the same way that the AFD is growing in Germany, for instance.
So this could be seen as a rather cynical ploy to try and win over far-left votes who are going to be really, really incentivized by going like, oh my God, they want to destroy Spain.
I also want to destroy Spain.
I'm going to vote for them.
But there are problems with this as well, which is if that is the calculation, it's been made rather hastily because there seems to have been no preparation for this at all, despite the fact that these plans have been discussed for at least quite a few months.
The first big problem being that there is no money to process all of these new potential applications.
Now, there are some strings attached to these applications for the people who are going to be legalized through this process, which I believe they are that you need to either have been undocumented in the country and have proof of such for the past five months, or have applied for asylum before November 2025.
I might be getting some of the details of that wrong, but there are still conditions attached to this.
The problem is, again, there is no extra money been set aside for the departments that are going to be processing this massive surge of asylum applications and visa applications that are going to be coming through as a result of this.
The Spanish government has said that the drive will run from early April through June, but has provided few details on the application process or documentation required.
The Migration Ministry said on its website in January that no additional budget or staffing had been earmarked for the expected surge in applications.
So it might just collapse the government entirely by accident.
Or at least the migration ministry might just completely collapse by accident because they've got no ability to actually do this.
Which is a very Spanish way of going about it, actually.
Previous governments, including those led by Conservatives, have offered multiple mass amnesty drives in recent decades.
The largest was in 2005 when 570,000 people who could show that they had formal work contracts were granted legal status.
Now, I do find that interesting that they make sure to point out here that conservative governments in Spain have done this as well.
And this is where the uniparty and the problem of either centre-right parties, which are just liberals, or occasionally, as we've seen many times here as well, populist right parties who are fundamentally driven by foreign policy concerns and economic policies will, if they see it's in their benefit, still adopt the same policy of amnesty.
We saw it with Boris Johnson.
He didn't get to amnesty people in this country, but since at least 2008, he had been arguing that London should have a mass amnesty of all of the illegal immigrants who live there.
So this is a concern that if you're still voting within an establishment, no matter which part of the establishment you're voting for, you're going to get establishment policies.
Now, where have I seen that before?
Very recently, in my own country.
Nope.
Nothing to come into mind.
There is, it says, an incentive for regularization.
Spain needs approximately 2.4 million people paying into Social Security over the next decade to sustain its welfare state, according to official estimates.
This is just another mass brabe of the welfare state.
You can't have welfare.
You can't have welfare and mass migration.
You can't have welfare and a certain kind of modernizing technological morality, which disincentivizes people from having families who will then grow up to pay back into the system.
That is a big problem.
You can't have a welfare state that is entirely built off of the back of the baby boom, which was a kind of once-in-a-lifetime event, which created a huge mass of future dependents when they all eventually grew old.
These are lots of problems that people don't like to consider.
A lack of additional state funds for the 2026 drive would mark a policy departure from previous mass legalizations.
In 2005, an extra 1,700 employees were hired and 742 new information points established to help the existing system cope, according to a study by a researcher.
Of course, this time, with no plan and no extra funds allocated, I guess you've just got to, the Spanish, the new Spanish, have to learn to be British.
That is, they need to learn to cue.
Or else, you know.
They might just want to get out of the country.
Maybe this is 4D chess.
Maybe they're trying to make it such a pain-in-the-ass hassle for these people that they just decide to leave anyway.
You know, if so, bravo.
Bravo.
Of course, these new developments have come with all of these different articles from the BBC.
Spain's migrants welcome amnesty.
It will help us in every way.
Look at these wholesome chungus.
See us in that state.
Yeah, well, not the Spanish people.
No.
Modern Spanish man.
Yeah, yeah.
Look at these wholesome chungus foreigners.
Here's the woman who is the head of the migration ministry.
Yep.
I'll save the comments.
You can leave your comments below.
Look at these wholesome chungus migrants who are going to be so happy now that they've broken into your country and can stay there for an extra year legally.
This will have no adverse effects.
Look at Francesca Melendez, who in this article admits that she moved over to Spain with her boyfriend and let herself just easily settle into undocumented status once her tourist visa expired.
So this was just malicious.
She knew what she was doing.
This wasn't, this literally, like, this was not some woman who was coming over because, oh my God, I was escaping persecution.
The warrant.
The horror.
I came from New York with my boyfriend and just stuck around.
That is a place to escape from.
New York.
I'm not going to.
As bad as New York is, I'm not going to say it's an active war zone.
But yeah, look at this wholesome chungus black woman who like maliciously moved to your country from New York and just decided, oh, I'm just going to live here now.
Do I need a visa?
No.
No, it's fine.
She can get away with it as well.
The Guardian will let you write up about it.
The Guardian's chuffed about it.
The Guardian is thrilled that this woman did this because then they can plaster her smug, stupid face on their article here, like rubbing it in your face.
She got away with it.
She got away with it.
Now, I don't know if they paid her for this article, but she's getting benefits from it still to this day, which is ridiculous.
So this is just the exceptional empathy that Spain needs to display to these malicious freeloaders.
And God, they are going really over the board with this radical rights and empathy right now.
Because on top of this, they have also decided that they are going to renew an old policy.
Same woman, by the way, same thing.
That it will grant undocumented migrants access to the public healthcare system nationwide.
Suicide.
Absolute suicide.
Now, if you think that amnestying half a million people with no extra money and no infrastructure to do so is a bad idea on just pure, just from a pure logistical standpoint, imagine all of those people then telling their family members, Spain's great.
They will give you anything that you want and then they will let you stay there legally.
By the royal decree of the king himself.
Yep.
You get a lot of British people, don't you, who move to Spain, who buy houses there.
Yep.
And they get visas, but now they can just go over there.
Yeah.
Unchecked.
I can go over there next week if I want.
Yeah, we could have a British invasion of Spain.
I can just get healthcare.
I can just get healthcare.
But of course, like all of the weird Spanish separatists will be furious about me doing that as an Englishman.
But if like Moses or Abdu Bru comes over and does the same thing, or if he does it, then that's fine, that's great.
Wholesome Chungus, come here, please.
Let me give you a big hug.
How earth did you pronounce those names?
I'm a man of the world.
I'm a very worldly man.
Yeah, so just like some developments on that, yeah, they're just lifting, they're changing the healthcare rules.
This was the rules up until about 2012, and then seemingly the only sane man in Spanish politics came in and said, no, you can't just come in here and immediately get free health care.
And then these guys have gone, well, actually, we're mad, so you can get free health care.
And the interesting thing with all of this as well is all of this, when the Vox party is already becoming very popular, or at least is increasing in popularity, along with a broader trend of European politics, as we saw at the beginning, becoming more hardline on immigration, becoming tougher on deportations, becoming more right-wing in general.
This should be really unpopular in Spain, right?
But one thing might be helping Sanchez, which is that he is standing up and taking quite a hard line against American action in Iran and saying that Spain will not have anything to do with it, including not allowing America and Trump to use two of its bases that otherwise America would be able to stage some of its operations from.
Now, the interesting thing here is that this is going to play quite well in Spain, I would imagine, because a recent poll by the CIS Research Institute found that 77% of Spaniards had a bad or very bad opinion of Trump, suggesting that even many right-wingers may back Sanchez on this issue.
At the same time, the Conservative People's Party has a track record with assisting America in Middle Eastern adventures.
The People's Party backed the Iraq invasion.
The People's Party right now is backing America's adventures in Iran and their war in Iran.
The Vox Party is not only backing America and saying that Spain needs to jump in, but if you look into it, they back in 2013 and 2014 received around a million euros from affiliates of a group backing regime change in Iran.
So this is what I say when I'm talking about these populist parties.
They have strong immigration stances, but often it seems that they are financially more interested in pushing a foreign policy agenda.
And when they are pushing a foreign policy agenda that backs America, much to the disagreement of their own voters, as you can see from polls like this, if they are to be taken as being accurate according to the larger Spanish population, this means that insane politicians like Sanchez, who are awful on everything but say no to Trump and say no to American adventures in the Middle East, it gives them a much better leg to stand on.
And some voters in Spain may find themselves saying, well, I disagree with him on everything here, but at the very least, he's taking a stand against Trump.
Student Migration Changes Cities00:15:29
It does create a wedge issue for these parties, which is something that you always have to be very wary of.
And be aware as well.
Foreign policy directly interacts with and influences domestic policy.
It's an equation of get sent off to war at the behest of the Americans and die in the Middle East, or stay here and let the left flood our homelands with illegals until they kill us here.
And the thing is, in a situation like that, a lot of people switch off.
A lot of people just say, nope, I'm not going to take it.
I'm not going to partake in this at all.
But I hope the best for Spain in the future, but with politicians like you've got at the moment, it's not looking great.
So we've spoken about illegal migration now, and now we're going to talk about legal migration.
So parties like We Form, they say, our only concern is that of illegals.
The only people were concerned with mass deporting.
Legal migration doesn't concern us.
But illegal immigration only makes up a tiny portion of net migration.
And nearly half of net migration, particularly in 2024 when it reached nearly a million, half of it is student visas.
I've got a photo here.
I think the photo speaks for itself.
This should be a meme, really.
It reminds me of one of those photos of a politician going into a school and it's full of foreign children.
A picture of Roger Scruton in the school.
Yeah, precisely.
You can see the guy.
He's literally doing the, you know, at least, you know, it's happening legally.
Yeah, you know, it's one of those poetic pictures that really speaks for itself.
You have this English guy at Chester University, which is like a very predominantly English town, but it used to be.
Close to home for myself, being a Cheshire boy.
And this, well, it was the city I was born in and grew up next to, so it is home to me.
When I left for university in 2020, I studied at Aberdeen.
When I came back, the city had just drastically changed.
And you'll see in a minute why it drastically changed.
When you go down streets in Chester now, there's just litter everywhere.
And you can tell which street belongs to international students, particularly from India, because it has litter in an inner country.
That's a norm.
You just throw litter onto the street.
And so when you bring people who are straight off the plane, they don't know you're supposed to put litter in the bin.
They don't know you're supposed to dispose of it.
So they just throw it away.
And there's also the city isn't, it stinks of sewage now.
And that's because Chester, yeah, Chester's a medieval city, and now it's overpopulated because a lot of these students, they stay after they graduate, and they stay in Chester.
I'm sure they wouldn't be overstaying a student visa, would they?
Well, you'll see a lot of them.
The Guardian will let them write up admissions about it.
A lot of them go on to work.
And when I was growing up in Chester, the only demographic there was Polish people.
And they stood out because they had a funny language.
So they looked, I suppose, they looked like an English person, but they had this peculiar language.
And they were also quite cold, which was very peculiar for the people of Chastrook, so very frankly.
And they also, they had...
About 10 years ago, it was voted happiest place to live in England.
Yeah.
Yeah, it once was a very happy place to live in England.
But you go down certain, you used to go down certain streets in Chester and they would have Polish shops.
And that was the most exotic Chester would get was these Polish shops which sell these really strange drinks from the mainland Europe which you never heard of because the French to you were aliens and now you sort of see them as brothers because the whole city is filled with international students like this.
Now if we go on to the next slide.
Oh yeah you need a mouse don't you?
Yeah please that would be useful.
How do I scroll?
Yeah, just like that.
You know how to use a mouse surely.
Yes.
The screen's too big.
So here, here's a graph of student migration into the UK.
And now you see, although it's very high even in 2005, it gradually goes up and it peaks.
It peaks after 2020 when Polytech universities start to rely on international students due to COVID.
And what's that we get that line in 2021, graduate visa route introduced?
It would have been under the drum roll please.
May government.
The May government.
Yeah, that's under the May government.
So what happened, I was going to talk about this a bit later, but I'll bring it up now.
The May government came up with an edge.
Thought it would have been introduced under, was it proposed under the May government and then put into place under Laura?
Yeah, exactly.
And I think that's what's contributed to the Boris Wave actually coming here is through 2022 figures.
Precisely.
So the May government came up with an education strategy which set out to increase the number of international students in the UK.
And their goal was to get 600,000 students into the UK by 2030 in order to generate education exports to 35 billion.
So it was all to do with self-interest of making money and for universities to gain in profit.
Well, because the foreign students, of course, have to pay more than the domestic students.
And so the universities are naturally incentivized to take, and there's no cap, like, you know, oh, you can only take so many.
It's just fill your boots.
And when they introduced this, they also said, and we're also going to allow students to work up to two years after they graduate.
Yeah.
And I have a quote here.
Actually, I'll bring it up later because I've got an article.
So I'll come back to that in a moment of what these politicians were saying when they put forward this policy.
But this is fascinating.
So you see here, 2022, nearly half a million students come into this country.
And that's like, again, half of net migration.
The net migration was significantly high for that year.
I think it was the highest it's ever been.
And you can see that 50% of that is to do with students.
And sorry, just to say as well, you know, when you add 2020 to 2021, the fact that that's over half a million in a period when we were all locked in our homes, not allowed out.
Yeah.
You know, yeah, I mean, you can also see why throughout the 2010s, Chester was okay.
Chester was English because student migration wasn't as significantly high as it was until after COVID, which explains why when I went to university in 2020 and came back, the city had become an alien place to me, which is heartbreaking, really.
Because to me, it was like the last beacon of an English city.
Well, the only diversity you used to see in Chester back in the day, and I'm talking about going back 14 years ago at this point, is there used to be that mad black preacher who would stand on the middle of the street near the near the clock tower.
Do you know what I remember?
Me and my friends used to see him there all the time.
He would be stood in the middle of the street preaching fire and brimstone.
And you know what?
Even though we still had major problems with diversity going back to then, it was not on the same scale as it is right now.
It felt like a quaint little bit of eccentricity in the city.
It's a completely different character to what we have now.
Video, and I was trying to find it for this for this podcast, but I couldn't find it for the life of me.
It's like one of those videos that get shared online and completely just lost in.
Yeah.
And it was this Indian student at Chester bragging that when he goes into his class, it's like he's home because he's just surrounded by Indian students.
I believe him.
Brilliant.
And my friend who studies at Chester says, whilst international students at Chester make up 20% of the student population, he says, the humanities are dominated by English students, but once you go into STEM, engineering, computer science, it's overwhelming.
I've got all the vibe codes.
Yeah, exactly.
It's overwhelming.
Well, it's overwhelmingly Indian and Nigerian.
So between, so as you can see, it increased by 66%, which is a huge number.
And the majority of these students were not from the EU because we had Brexit in 2020.
A majority of these students came from outside of the EU.
And they came primarily from India, which is why you see so many Indians around at the moment.
And they also came primarily from Nigeria.
From the Commonwealth, just as Nigel Farage hoped they would.
So in terms of all the universities across Britain, international students make up 14%, but they make up 51% of all postgraduate students.
I saw that at my own university up in Aberdeen where postgraduate students were just overwhelmingly Indian, which was very strange because the majority of the campus was Scottish people.
There was this one university called RGU, which I would say a lot of the student population were Nigerians, so much so that Aberdeen has the largest Nigerian community within Scotland.
And I'm thinking, how on earth are Nigerians finding out where Aberdeen is?
It's in the middle of nowhere.
It's like two hours away from Infines.
It's even fair for to get to Edinburgh and Glasgow.
I didn't even know what Aberdeen was as a city before I went to study there.
My question as well would be that how are so many Nigerians qualifying for courses in STEM?
Yeah.
Well, they qualify for courses in STEM because of Polytech's universities, which I just call stupid universities for people who didn't get any good qualifications, just accept anybody.
They're desperate for the money.
They don't care if you're well-educated or not.
As long as you come here, study in all in their classes and give them money, you can stay.
And that's why a lot of these Indian students and a lot of these Nigerian students who barely speak English, by the way, are able to come to these universities and study there.
And I've got some more statistics here.
Since 2022, half of international students who come here remain after they graduate.
So they're working here, they're residents here.
And 65% of Nigerian students stay in Britain.
And 45% of Indian students also stay in Britain, which basically explains exactly what's going on with the Boris wave.
The number of individuals transferring directly from study visas to healthcare, to health and care work, rose to 560% between 2022 and 2023.
That's why when you see care homes, it's just overwhelmingly Nigerian.
Now, a lot of these old people, and bless their hearts, they're going crazy because they can't speak to these Nigerian people.
They have dementia, they're ill, they're in these care homes because they need to be looked after and they can't communicate to the people who's supposed to look after them because there's a language barrier and also because these people are just low-skilled workers who've come here on student visas just to work because they earn more money here than they would in their home country.
And this explains the recent Centre for Migration Studies announcement of the 800,000 visas that were issued last year, of which only 20% of them were for work, were for work visas.
Obviously, there'll be people coming over on all sorts of visas.
The vast majority of them, looking at that, you can see 2024, if we say that 2025 is going to follow the same trend, would probably be at least half of them being student visas.
And those people, like you've just said, it's not that they're not coming to work.
They are still going to take work placements.
They're still going to be affecting the labour market by driving down wages by applying for all of these places.
And then they're likely going to stick around afterwards as well, as we're hearing.
Well, yeah, I mean, unemployment amongst young people is 16% and over 1 million young people are unemployed.
I wonder why that is.
I wonder why people, young people who want to work, who've come out of university, worked hard for a degree, can't find work.
It's not just because everyone's going to university nowadays, it's because you're competing with India and Nigeria who are coming over here and will work any sort of job.
And have an inexhaustible supply of people.
And it is also that a lot of these people are going into jobs that previously were the reserve of new starters to the workplace.
The people starting their employment journeys, especially young women, would go into care work jobs.
A lot of young women could work at corner shops, for instance.
But now the corner shops have been monopolised by Pakistanis and Indians, and all of the care work jobs are going to Nigerians who don't even really know what they're doing.
There are more statistics here.
54% of Nigerians, 27% of Pakistanis, and 27% of Indians are working here whilst they study as well.
And the majority of the work they go into is hospitality, so bar jobs, retail, health and social care.
They love to go into that because they're always hiring.
So jobs that should be reserved for teenagers.
That's why.
Also, when young people are graduating, they can't just get graduate jobs.
They can't even work at a pub.
They can't even find work at low-skilled positions because it's being overwhelmingly flooded with people who will work longer hours, who will work for extremely low pay because it benefits them in the countries they've come from.
And not even to mention the fact that all of these extra people obviously contribute to the inflation of the housing market as well.
So you're not able to work in these low-end, you know, sort of like gateway jobs.
And then because you're not able to work, you're not able to, you know, escalate into getting a good job and you're not able to buy a home.
And then even worse, the high streets that normally would have had a lot of these jobs for people to work in retail are no longer no longer have any of those shops that they could work at because they've all been replaced by phone shops.
They've all been replaced by Turkish barbers who will only hire their own kind or vape shops.
Half the time, as we saw with Glasgow, aren't even licensed.
And they explode and burn down beautiful historical buildings.
Yes.
That whole building in Glasgow is just full of foreign shops as well.
So it's a tragedy.
You know, when you let your beautiful buildings become owned by foreigners, you know, this is what happens to them.
They blow up in flames.
I think that building in Glasgow should be is a bad omen.
Just like when the temples in Rome burnt down mysteriously.
We had Notre Dame burning down in a completely accident years ago now.
We've got some more statistics here.
So 16,000 of those who claimed asylum in 2024 had arrived in the UK as students and make up 15% of all asylum claims.
Isn't that interesting?
So they finish their education and then immediately claim asylum.
Yeah, so they can stay here.
And they'll say, oh, I'm from Nigeria.
You know, things aren't so good in Nigeria.
Our government.
Get me in touch with Kemi.
My family knows hers.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm from Pakistan, but I'm a Christian and they oppress us in Pakistan.
You know, they'll say anything, basically.
How many of these people are bringing over dependents as well?
Well, that's exactly what is about to go on.
How many family members?
Now, this is insane.
This part of this study by Migration Observatory is exactly what I wanted to talk about.
So I want to start off with, or we'll look at how many people came over in 2023 who brought dependents.
Education Ends, Asylum Begins00:10:41
So the amount of dependents was 143,000, right?
I wonder how many of those were from America because you get a lot.
Oh, there you go.
There you go.
It was just a bit of a glitch there.
The United States.
Let me click.
There you go.
So, you know, the United States, there's a lot of American professors, a lot of American PhD students.
They love this country because of its history.
So they go on here and go to Britain and they study postgraduates and history.
You might even have ancestry here.
Yeah.
And return to the homeland because I think St Andrews, 40% of St Andrews is international, but it's not international in terms of Indians.
And Nigerians, because Americans just go there, they go there and study and then go back.
What's more as well, though we know better and we know that the actual prestige of places like Oxford and Cambridge and St Andrews and all these venerable British universities are not what they once used to be, that perception hasn't entirely caught up the rest of the world yet either.
And so they still think so.
So how many were American?
900.
That's not so bad.
You know, in 2022.
Let's see.
Let's cheat.
2023 is what we were comparing against with a high of 140.
600.
669.
2024.
2024 is when the government introduced restrictions less.
Let's see China.
China, they tend to study at like Edinburgh University because they like the prestige of a British university.
Let's see how many dependents that Chinese people bought over.
Only 800, even less than America.
If you look at 2023, 800 again.
Now, I wonder how many dependents is India bringing over?
Let's see here.
By 59, sorry, 59.
No, sorry, 39,000.
39,000 people.
Compare that to America, where it's 900, and compare that to China, where it's 800.
39,000.
So they're bringing over not just their wives, their family.
Their cousins.
And it's even worse for.
Just tell me the Nigerian number.
Just get it over with.
They can't give us.
Oh, Jesus.
60,000.
2022, 53,000, 2023.
So, like, the whole argument for this is that by having these people come over, patronize our university systems, that they are an economic boon to the country.
They are going to add value to our university system.
And then if they stay, they're going to be fully qualified and they're going to add value to our economy.
They're going to boost GDP, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But they're bringing over 100,000.
And that's why family members to scrounge off of the state system in 2023.
Oh, while it's contributing to our alienation around towns and cities.
I mean, also look at this again.
Look how low these numbers are until again when this was passed by the main government.
Completely goes completely.
Boris just goes.
This is exactly why we're seeing such changes in our cities completely overnight is because of this, is because of student visas and them bringing their dependents over.
I've got some statistics here about how many the portion of international students in British universities.
Whereas it should be Elizabeth, sorry, just to say as well.
It's coming towards, we've got about 10 minutes left.
That's all right.
Yeah, so it's okay.
So here, look at this.
University College of London, 61%.
University of Hertfordshire, I've not even heard of.
I mean, I've heard of Herbertshire.
I've heard of that place, but I haven't heard of this university because it's a polytech, basically.
62%.
Even like the Russell Group university is a significantly high now.
I've got a statistic here, which isn't on here, from a university that I've never heard of, which is apparently in London called University of Woehampton.
43% of students at that university are international.
So I decided I'm going to look up to see what they're doing.
How are half the students in Edinburgh?
I think that's Chinese students.
Chinese students love Edinburgh.
So they make up a significant portion.
But they go home.
That's the thing.
They're just here for the prestige.
Alster University, the second university in Northern Ireland outside of Belfast, 43%.
Like the whole of London, Derry, all Derry.
Okay, if you're an Irish Fenian in the chat.
Or London Derry is becoming like Indian overnight, basically.
Maybe that will wake up the IRA.
Who knows?
But this is a photo of a graduation at the University of Roehampton.
I can't even spot an English person in here.
I can't even spot an East Asian.
Never mind an English person.
I think there might be one.
I'd say one blonde head.
Maybe that's, I don't know.
That might be a hijab.
The stoic face on this lady as well.
It's like, what the hell?
That's what universities I graduated from.
The feeling of a person who's gone through university and desperately trying not to come out racist.
Yeah.
Now, I will say the situation is so bad at these universities that several universities, such as Chester, have had to halt immigration from areas such as Bangladesh and Pakistan due to language barriers and them being the students being denied visas despite being accepted into the university, which shows how low the university standards are and students going on to enroll, not enroll in courses once they arrive in Britain.
And back in 2024, the Daily Mail estimated that some of 100,000 foreign students were gone, missing, and every year.
The majority, can you guess?
Can you guess what country the majority came from that just went missing when they got here?
I don't know.
I think it's like America or China.
Maybe even Australia.
Is it India or Nigeria?
It's India.
It's India.
Imagine my shock.
39% of universities record that students have failed to attend classes, while there's 18% of recorded students violating the working conditions of their visas, so going on to have longer hours.
Folks, this is a call right now.
You need to stop ordering through Deliveroo, right?
You need to stop it.
If you're going to get takeaway, pick it up yourself.
Make it.
Even better.
Stop being lazy.
If you like foreign food, fine, buy a cookbook.
We have the recipe.
Buy a cookbook.
Do it yourself.
Stop patronising these services that exist to give benefit employees to employ illegal foreigners.
Yeah.
Who are mostly students, as we've discovered.
Now, here is the May government's plan on boosting international students that was published in 2019.
I talked about it at the start of the podcast, but there's a really interesting quote in here that I like to talk about.
I mean, what they're saying here is it's basically like what I call Fortiganism, named after Fortigan, the supremeist tyrannius of the Britons himself, where he sells out the Britons to Hengis and Horsa, to foreigners because he fell in love with Hengis' daughter and led to his people becoming a minority because he was so self-interested.
And this is basically what this is a great example of Fortiganism.
You know, selling out your whole country so universities can gain the money and you can look good on an international stage, spreading education to all these foreign places.
Now, when she was challenged on the Boris wave, I believe was it Preeti Patel basically used the NHS and universities as the excuse?
She tried to turn it back on the interviewer who was asking her about this.
I forget who the interviewer was, sorry.
But she was saying, what, would you have rather the NHS and the universities collapsed?
Yeah.
I mean, I mean, yeah, the universities should collapse.
There should be fewer universities and polytechs should completely disappear.
The only universities we should be protecting are ancient universities, so universities that have been historically here in the medieval times, like Aberdeen, for example, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and also leading universities where their output is actually good rather than these polytechs, which are just designed for people who've not done well in school to get a qualification.
Now, there's a quote here that I'd like to read out by the former vice-chancellor of Liverpool University and the president of Universities UK.
I mean, it doesn't surprise me, she comes from Liverpool, although I love Liverpool very much.
But the people who go to that, who go to Liverpool University, tend to be extremely woke because they think Liverpool is like the Bristol of the North, which it isn't to me.
I strongly.
There's so much cope in those.
Anyway.
Admire your optimism.
I strongly welcome the publication of this strategy as a signal of a change in direction.
I particularly welcome the ambitious target to grow the numbers of international students to 600,000 by 2030, which sends a strong message of welcome.
International students contribute a huge amount to the UK, not only economically, but also by enriching the international education environment in our universities for all students.
While their presence in the UK is worth an estimated 26 billion in direct knock-on effects, sustaining over 200,000 jobs in all parts of the UK, they bring much wider benefit to our academic and civic communities.
Yeah, they bring so much value to our academic communities that they're literally disappearing when they get to Britain so they can go so they can work and gain residence here.
Residency here.
This is our highly intelligent academics that we're bringing.
Well, I mean, if you're existing in a business model for your university in which you're having to employ seven, you know, to sorry, not employed, but you know, to bring in 70 to 50% foreign students to prop it up, that is a failed model.
Yeah, maybe your university shouldn't exist.
Yes.
Yeah.
It should go.
Or should be massively downsized at the very least.
If there are so few people to fill up those courses, maybe those courses, you just shouldn't run them.
This is what I'll end on.
Imagine how beautiful Chester could still be if Chester University didn't exist.
You know?
And they're expanding too.
They've got campuses in Shrewsbury, in Birkenhead.
So goodbye to the county, the beautiful county city of Shrewsbury, thanks to Chester University.
We can fit so many more Nigerians in here.
Quick.
We need as many Nigerians.
We need to import northern and southern Nigerians and then put them on the same campus and recreate Nigeria there and then.
The file then we don't have to travel.
We'll have the whole world on our doorstep.
Rants on Foreign Influence00:04:36
Well, Elizabeth, thank you for crafting such a perfectly blackpilling load seater segment.
Welcome.
Yeah, you've really got the mission.
Yeah, you've really got the mission.
You've really got a chance.
Can I have the mouse, please?
So we've got two more Rumble rants, one from Sigilstone, both from Sigil Stone, in fact, saying you're going to want to get on Rumble's ass because the rants payment system isn't working except through the Rumble app, which uses Google's payment system.
That sounds really annoying.
Thank you for sending in the rants anyway.
I know we've only been getting rants from Sigilstone and Okigdor.
Ochigdor, I never know how to say it properly.
Either way, so thank you both for going through the hassle if that's what you're having to go through today.
And Sigilstone again says, imagine being a migrant, could never, moving to England for the promise of beautiful women and meeting a British tooth cockney bar slag instead.
Hey, O Darwin Hansen, fancy you go at me, cash.
That's what they're into.
This is slander.
This is slander against English women.
They're not all crooked teeth cockney bar slags.
There are plenty of those, but they don't even live in London anymore, frankly.
They've all been replaced, and it breaks my heart.
Do we have any video comments, Samson?
I can't hear you, Samson.
No, sorry, Samson.
Not today.
All right, let's go through like two or three for each of the segments.
So from mine, California Refugee says, the difference between Japan and England is Japan had Otoya Yamaki and you Britain had the Fabian Society.
I think I know who you're referring to there.
And also from my segment, Lord and Quizda Hector X says, samurai Maxing is back on the menu, boys.
Never left, mate.
Never left.
Okay.
Yeah, I also like his Japan saying it shows it's easier to survive two nukes than Democrat policy.
Reminds me of that meme.
Have you seen that meme of the fat weaboo holding the samurai sword?
I have.
That's the revival of the Japanese.
So Zesty King is not fat.
Glad to hear it, bro.
Considering Spain has a 101.6% debt-to-GDP ratio, at minimum, brilliant, that's, that's an amazing, I don't normally believe, like, GDP is a great measure of societal success, but debt-to-GDP can be a good indicator, and that's bad.
That's really bad.
They can't really afford to be doing this.
Looks like they're trying to compete with France and Britain to see who can go bankrupt first.
Well, that is the problem.
And I think that's a big disincentive as well for European countries to get involved in the war in Iran right now if it carries on.
If it carries on.
Because the figures that I've heard is that it's currently costing America a billion dollars a day.
Frankly, European countries just cannot afford that.
They cannot.
So that's going to be a huge disincentive for them.
Michael Troy Berblis.
Sounds like the EU just blinked.
Too many countries now voting for EU skeptic parties.
I hope these countries that decide to leave, they're under no obligation to pay any fines to the EU because what does the EU plan to do to enforce it?
And I will read one more from Fen Scotty of Swindon.
I love how much we're told that foreign influence and democracy is bad until it becomes about stopping the quote-unquote far right.
At which point, wealthy and powerful people who were told are bad until they start funding anti-right-wing initiatives get really smug about their participation.
Very true.
I would not trust Alex Cott.
If people wonder why myself and many people are very skeptical of Palantir, it's not just the misuse of Lord of the Rings terms.
It's not just the surveillance state aspect of it.
It's also the fact that literally one of the weirdest and most unhinged seeming guys in politics is at the head of it.
And that some people on the online right seem to just be won over by the fact that he can do a handstand live on stage.
It's like, brilliant politics, guys.
You are literally fucking pigeons looking at shiny objects.
The masses.
And I'm not saying that's any of you guys, but I've seen a few people who I would contend are paid shills on social media doing that sort of thing.
Oh my god, so based.
These are my comments.
Yes.
As Cesti King is not fat said, when I was at university a few years ago, some Hong Kong students put up their flag in their windows to show solidarity with the protests happening then.
The Chinese students got mad and the university banned all displays of the Hong Kong flag on campus.
I wonder what university that is.
That's really interesting.
Maybe it was Edinburgh.
Spies Watching Chinese Students00:02:55
I wouldn't be surprised.
Yeah, I mean, China's got to be a huge patron of British universities.
I will say with China, they have these institutions called Confucius Institute, where they put them on university campuses.
So there was one at Aberdeen.
And they're not there to sort of show British students, like, oh, look how great China is.
Engage in our culture.
We can celebrate Chinese New Year.
No, they're there to make sure that the Chinese students are in check, is what I've heard.
So we kind of still need to be cautious of East Asian student visas because they come here and set up these institutes.
I mean, one of the big problems with China that everybody should be worried about is just like general international subversion and stealing of our secrets.
A lot of them might just be spies.
Well, that's what people are saying with these institutes.
They're saying a lot of them are actually spies.
Wushingarbatuma says here, 95% of universities deserve closure.
They are battery farming international students for profit, keeping the whistle group red bricks, but that's about it.
Don't get me started on the propaganda outlets for the natives.
They have become petrified.
Petrol dishes of petrol.
What the hell is that like an Indian dish?
No, it's like a science.
Did you never do that?
Did you never do like biology when you were in school?
Petri dish is like the experimental dish that has the that you can put substances in.
See how they react.
The humanities were my strongest topic.
Dishes of Marxist.
Yeah, effective.
I think that's all that we've got time for.
I will just read the honorable mention from Michael Dre Belbis.
Well, listening to today's podcast makes me want to watch something less of a downer, like Harry's Stonewall documentary.
That's right.
Watch it now, folks.
Oh no, Jesus Christ.
Yeah, like I've said before, I completely forgot most of the research that I'd done for it.
Obviously, it exists in the back of my mind to an extent.
But re-watching it before we released it, I was like, God, this is messed up.
This is really messed up.
And what better reason for you at home to watch it?
Please go to the website.
Remember, we've got chronicles for our premium subscribers.
Premium subscribers can watch The Stonewall Myth, my documentary.
And you can also go back and find Carl's documentary, The Death of Man, which is also done very well on the website.
That's a kind of examination and investigation into modernity.
And you can also, if you're subscribed, get tickets for Lotus Eaters Live 11th of April this year in Swindon.