Is an extra 2 million people arriving each year in Britain wise from a cultural and/or demographic view?
Well, whether it's wise culturally is probably a subjective thing. Depends what kind of culture you want, i guess. And it depends on how much those arriving are willing to adapt to the local culture, and how much the local culture is willing to adapt to meet their needs, and whether that process can be done peacefully and amicably.
Certainly i don't personally see any reason why people from whatever cultural background can't coexist harmoniously... finding strength in the things they share, and gaining wisdom from their differences. i've encountered Irish communities in North Africa, South America, Southern Europe and the United States. In all cases there's a willing embrace of the local culture, a desire to feel at home in this new venue, but without any necessity of loss of identity.
So my personal experience of living overseas has been a generally positive one from the aspect of dealing with the local culture. Now, i'm just not nationalistic enough to believe that this ability to peacefully coexist with other cultures is unique to the Irish. i like to believe it's a human thing. People, when allowed to acknowledge their shared humanity, will generally get on with one another. And my subjective belief is that this cultural exchange is indeed a positive and wise thing for us to be doing.
That you can point to myriad examples of cultural / ethnic / religious intolerance around the world and within the UK is - i believe - just what happens when people cease acknowledging their shared humanity. Without empathy people are liable to get vindictive, and to lash out at those they perceive as different. They do this rather than deal with the emotional problem / blockage that is denying them the empathy to see beauty in, and learn from, those differences.
Whether the influx of immigrants is wise from a demographic point of view can be answered with less florid psychobabble thankfully.
Fact is, the population of the UK is getting older. The postwar baby-boomers didn't have nearly as many kids as their parents, and the generation they spawned are having even less. Coupled with significant increases in average lifespan, this means that the demographic balance is tipping sharply.
Retired people who use the NHS or get a pension aren't drawing on the taxes they themselves paid as workers; they are drawing on the taxes being paid by current workers. As the proportion of retired people to workers rises, so the economics of the welfare state start to break down. This is just statistics; it makes no odds if you're a libertarian capitalist or a red-leaning socialist; fact is an ageing population is difficult to sustain economically (unless you ask people to work longer; which i'm totally opposed to... people should be retiring earlier, not later!)
The solution is - of course - to import labour. The United States is further along this road than we are in Europe, and it's funny to watch the Republicans on the one hand vent spleen against those shiftless illegal immigrants, and on the other quietly up the number of "migrant workers" to deal with this demographic imbalance.
That said, 2 million extra people (anyone know how many people leave annually? What is the actual *net* influx?), many of whom will be from the 'developing world' and will therefore be taking a step up the global-resource-usage ladder (see my previous post regarding that), does seem like an awfully high number. It's the population of London every four years. Jeez! A new London every 4 years? That just can't be sustainable.
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