Kenny

First of all I want to make it clear that it's illegal immigration I have a problem with, not immigration in general.

Illegal immigration is a serious problem for a variety of reasons. The reason KaneED gave (sarcasm aside) is but one of them.

It's not just that when an immigrant enters our country, he steals jobs. Because he's willing to work for less money, should the employer feel like risking his liscence to run a business (under the assumption he thinks he can get away with it), he will often give work to the illegal over somebody who's a citizen of the UK and thus entitled to minimum wage and will be protected by employee law.

And you'd be wrong to assume that it doesn't affect those people with jobs already. Because i.i's are taking these low-end jobs, it means that UK Citizen's unemployment rate goes up. This means that more people register for unemployment benefit and this comes straight out of the taxpayer's pocket.

The taxpayer doesn't stop paying there, either. Once an i.i is found and detained, it costs the taxpayer £500 to keep 1 immigrant in a celll per night. While they're detained, they're entitled to free legal advice. Only it isn't free, the taxpayer foots the bill for this too. And when the lawyers get involved, it means that people can be detained either at a police station or detention center for sometimes months. So the money starts to add up.

The cost of 'sending people home' varies of course, depending on where the person is from. It's not just the price of the flight you have to consider either, as then we have the cost of -x- number of return flights to the same destination for any escorts that may be required to ensure the person arrives at the desired location. Then of course you have the costs of the contracts with security companies, like G4S (Group 4 Securities). Such security companies are paid large amounts (though I don't have the figures for this) to transport prisoners and illegal immigrants in between police stations, detention centers, court and ultimately the airport (most immigrants are sent home on flights).

Something that people will probably be a bit more aware of due to recent~ media coverage is the 'go home bonus', or it's actual name "voluntary return scheme", whereby an illegal immigrant can be given anything from £3000, to £5000 to return to their country of origin. I'll give you three guesses where that money comes from, but I'm sure you'll only need one. While it's true that the taxpayers would end up paying more to actually keep the i.i's in detention in the UK, since the introduction of this scheme attempted breach of port has actually increased.

The other down side to the VRS is the fact that anyone is entitled to it. Even people that have committed crimes in the UK, and have been prosecuted for them, are also eligible. Which brings me on to my next point - crime rate. With the number of illegal immigrants in this country (and I'm more than willing to use the firgure of 500,000) that's an awful lot of people that aren't on any police databases in the UK. These are people that we know are there, but have no documentation for. This leads to the (realistic) possibility of organised crime within the UK, i.e. drug trafficking, people trafficking, passport forgery (see: here) without even beginning to mention terrorism. Still, we have to try and police these people, so that costs money too.

On a larger scale these crimes will have an impact on our (the UK's) level of respect in the international community. This in turn effects our trade relations which then in turn affects our entire economy.

There are many many genuine cases of legal immigration. I mean if I moved to Canada or Australia to live/work out there, I'd be a legal immigrant (for 5 years until I can claim citizenship). And the same with the Polish people in the UK now, they are here legally - rights granted to them by membership of the European Union. But because the Polish are (particularly at the moment) high-profile group of immigrants, a lot of negativity and resentment is focused on them. So the illegal immigrants are creating a lot of racial tension between biggots and often the wrong people. Again, this will affect international relations and of course our nation's image/reputation.

So yes, I think illegal immigration is a big problem in the UK. At the moment I'm a university student so I'm not paying taxes, so I'm perhaps less affected by it all than say my parents (for example), who are middle-class, tax-paying citizens. To be completely honest, I can't see how people don't see illegal immigration as a serious problem.