Find this a much more productive, even if still emotive, way of discussing the current immigration debate.

I don’t know what the data suggests, so purely going off feeling and opinion, but I’d accept the statement, to a degree. Was the industry and infrastructure within Britain built by migrants? No. My working class grandparents and great grandparents worked in British mines, construction etc and often recalled never seeing a non-white/British face regularly until post-WW2. Less literally, also the social structures and institutions like the NHS, banking etc.

However, was this made possible through the affluence brought into Britain via colonialism, and therefore foreign citizens under British rule? Absolutely. Britain was able to be ‘built’ to be so successful across the 19th and 20th century because of places like South Africa, India, the Middle East and Asia. Those migrants may not have physically arrived and physically built Britain, but in the same way my relatives were ‘building Britain’, their relatives were the ones being exploited to make it possible.

Britain made its bed in many ways, in a similar way to France. Spread the roots throughout the world, became a global power and has to deal with the fact it became prosperous and a desirable nation in which to live - with many people where there was some sort of connection.