When I think about the UK

I think there is a wider picture. Immigration has always been exploited by the wealthy. Immigrants have always been a source of cheap labour and can also be weaponized to push down the wages of the indigenous workforce. Cheap labour in the form of migrant workers has always been encouraged in an unmanaged fashion leading to resentment between indigenous communities and the immigrant community. When immigration then becomes a problem the people who encouraged mass immigration then hold up their hands and say not our fault, blame the government (even though they are sometimes the same people). For those who exploit immigrant labour there is always a fear that tightening up controls may cut off the source of cheap labour so they are wary and unsupportive of such measures. 

All very objective Peter1970 but can you say how the issue affects you?  For me it's about competition for resources: housing, jobs, public services. Always remembering of course that land is the most important resource that was stolen from the English people hundreds of years ago.

Stolen land is very objective too depending on how far back you want to go. But it has the same negative affects on me as everyone else with regard to competition for resources. My point is that over the centuries the Irish were the scourge, the West Indians, then the Indians and Pakistanis and now the latest wave. Some of these were before the NHS or the welfare state existed so earlier waves of immigrants can't be blamed for competing for those resources. It is a long running issue that governments and leaders could have dealt with if they had the will to but they didn't because immigrants were for them a resource to be exploited. The hostility always seems to directed at the result instead of the cause 

Stolen land is very objective too depending on how far back you want to go. But it has the same negative affects on me as everyone else with regard to competition for resources. My point is that over the centuries the Irish were the scourge, the West Indians, then the Indians and Pakistanis and now the latest wave. Some of these were before the NHS or the welfare state existed so earlier waves of immigrants can't be blamed for competing for those resources. It is a long running issue that governments and leaders could have dealt with if they had the will to but they didn't because immigrants were for them a resource to be exploited. The hostility always seems to directed at the result instead of the cause