This is totally separate from your main line of argument, but it does seem plausible that, ex post, Nigrerian nurse emigration might actually significantly undermine AI Xrisk mitigation efforts:
The UK government accepted a lot of Nigerian immigration (and from other countries) in an attempt to address NHS labour shortages.
Elevated levels of immigration are very unpopular, and one of the main reasons for the unpopularity of the prime minister Rishi Sunak.
Rishi Sunak also seems to be, completely unrelated to the above, the world leader most concerned about AI Xrisk. His rival, Kier Starmer, who will probably replace him in the General Election, has given few signs of interest in the topic.
To be clear I don’t think this was particularly forseeable in advance, and it’s not a general problem with nurse emigration. It’s just that in this one specific case it seems to have happened to had a very bad effect.
Ha I love this thought and tangent, so will weigh in for the good times with my limited knowlege. I don’t think I really buy it for a few reasons
1) (High confidence) Sunak is going to lose (98%ish chance according to markets) and I don’t think anything can stop that now, or even could have a year ago.
2) (Low confidence) I don’t think think elevated levels of immigration is necessarily “very unpopular”, or necessarily “one of the main reasons” for Sunak’s unpopularity. Won’t get into the nuance.
3) (Very Low confidence) I don’t really think Nigerian nurse immigration in particular is a big driver of the anti-immigration sentiment that is there. The undocumented economic migrant/refugee situation is more what people are concerned about I think. People know the NHS is under stress so I think medical immigration might be better understood?
This is irrelevant given that we can’t do anything about it now.
” Elevated levels of immigration are very unpopular, and one of the main reasons for the unpopularity of the prime minister Rishi Sunak.”
I’m mildly skeptical of it being a “main reason” I feel. It is true that (roughly) 52% of people in the UK would like less immigration and only 14% want more, and perhaps therefore on the margin lower immigration would have helped Sunak, although the public usually don’t have a great sense of what the official stats on a topic are anyway*: https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/. But there are some other extremely salient reasons for Sunak’s extreme unpopularity: high inflation until recently (which as Matt Yglesias keeps pointing out seems to be making all Western incumbents unpopular, whether on the right like Sunak, or the left like the current German government), a disastrous economic period under his predecessor where she literally instantly crashed the economy by changing policy and raised people’s mortgage payments, and which meant she had to resign almost instantly, lingering anger about the partying during covid scandal that did for Johnson, sky-high energy bills because of the war in Ukraine (not the government’s fault but people are often irrational about this sort of thing) and just the fact that the public are sick of the same party being in government for so long (just like in the US the president’s party usually does badly in the midterms.) Of these, I’d say the crash under Truss is likely THE most important driver, and Boris’ covid scandal the next most important. The Truss dip is extremely visible in the polls: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2024_United_Kingdom_general_election
In turn, I think the influence of decision-making about immigrants from one country, coming here to do something that everyone agrees is good, on Sunak’s popularity is incredibly small.
*The rest say about the same or the always respectable “don’t know”.
EDIT to add: And when the Tory vote first started declining under Johnson, Reform was pretty static, so that part of the decline was likely nothing to do with immigration. No one switches from Tory to Labour because they want less immigration(!). (Though plenty people with anti-immigration but economically left-leaning viewpoints are more likely to vote Labour if Labour promises less immigration.)
This is totally separate from your main line of argument, but it does seem plausible that, ex post, Nigrerian nurse emigration might actually significantly undermine AI Xrisk mitigation efforts:
The UK government accepted a lot of Nigerian immigration (and from other countries) in an attempt to address NHS labour shortages.
Elevated levels of immigration are very unpopular, and one of the main reasons for the unpopularity of the prime minister Rishi Sunak.
Rishi Sunak also seems to be, completely unrelated to the above, the world leader most concerned about AI Xrisk. His rival, Kier Starmer, who will probably replace him in the General Election, has given few signs of interest in the topic.
To be clear I don’t think this was particularly forseeable in advance, and it’s not a general problem with nurse emigration. It’s just that in this one specific case it seems to have happened to had a very bad effect.
Ha I love this thought and tangent, so will weigh in for the good times with my limited knowlege. I don’t think I really buy it for a few reasons
1) (High confidence) Sunak is going to lose (98%ish chance according to markets) and I don’t think anything can stop that now, or even could have a year ago.
2) (Low confidence) I don’t think think elevated levels of immigration is necessarily “very unpopular”, or necessarily “one of the main reasons” for Sunak’s unpopularity. Won’t get into the nuance.
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/
3) (Very Low confidence) I don’t really think Nigerian nurse immigration in particular is a big driver of the anti-immigration sentiment that is there. The undocumented economic migrant/refugee situation is more what people are concerned about I think. People know the NHS is under stress so I think medical immigration might be better understood?
This is irrelevant given that we can’t do anything about it now.
” Elevated levels of immigration are very unpopular, and one of the main reasons for the unpopularity of the prime minister Rishi Sunak.”
I’m mildly skeptical of it being a “main reason” I feel. It is true that (roughly) 52% of people in the UK would like less immigration and only 14% want more, and perhaps therefore on the margin lower immigration would have helped Sunak, although the public usually don’t have a great sense of what the official stats on a topic are anyway*: https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/. But there are some other extremely salient reasons for Sunak’s extreme unpopularity: high inflation until recently (which as Matt Yglesias keeps pointing out seems to be making all Western incumbents unpopular, whether on the right like Sunak, or the left like the current German government), a disastrous economic period under his predecessor where she literally instantly crashed the economy by changing policy and raised people’s mortgage payments, and which meant she had to resign almost instantly, lingering anger about the partying during covid scandal that did for Johnson, sky-high energy bills because of the war in Ukraine (not the government’s fault but people are often irrational about this sort of thing) and just the fact that the public are sick of the same party being in government for so long (just like in the US the president’s party usually does badly in the midterms.) Of these, I’d say the crash under Truss is likely THE most important driver, and Boris’ covid scandal the next most important. The Truss dip is extremely visible in the polls: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2024_United_Kingdom_general_election
In turn, I think the influence of decision-making about immigrants from one country, coming here to do something that everyone agrees is good, on Sunak’s popularity is incredibly small.
*The rest say about the same or the always respectable “don’t know”.
EDIT to add: And when the Tory vote first started declining under Johnson, Reform was pretty static, so that part of the decline was likely nothing to do with immigration. No one switches from Tory to Labour because they want less immigration(!). (Though plenty people with anti-immigration but economically left-leaning viewpoints are more likely to vote Labour if Labour promises less immigration.)