Pratica di Shadowing: Why Britain Can't Fix Immigration - Impara a parlare inglese con i video

This is the UK

There's fresh violence on the streets of Belfast this morning after a night of terrifying riots

And this all stemmed from one single trigger The chaos was

sparked after what's being called an attempted beheading of a health worker And the main debate over all of this?

Immigration Immigration in the UK has been the single most controversial issue that no politician could adequately solve Hell,

if anything, the problem has only gotten worse with the most recent attempted Belfast beheading

and subsequent grooming gang inquiry report being published shedding light on

how thousands of British girls were sexually assaulted by mainly Pakistani immigrants over the past several decades.

Every couple of months, there are new mass demonstrations against immigration in the country and racial tensions are at an all-time high.

But how did the UK get to the brink of a race war, and how did immigration become the UK's biggest problem it can't solve?

Well, to understand that, we have to look back in history where it all started.

Chapter 1 Immigration before Immigration It's 1945.

After six years of fighting the worst war in human history, Britain lies in rubble.

Ruins fill English streets where proud Victorian era buildings used to stand.

One in three homes were destroyed.

880,000 soldiers were killed in the fighting.

Roughly 6% of the country's male population erased overnight.

Meanwhile, millions were left homeless or displaced.

Britain needed to rebuild itself and fast.

Lucky for them, Britain was still an empire that controlled one quarter of the world's population.

In 1948, in an effort to mobilize its untapped manpower,

the UK passed the British Nationality Act that granted equal citizenship to over 800 million people residing in its empire.

As such, hundreds of thousands of its subjects from every corner of the globe rushed to Britain.

This first wave of immigrants came to be known as the Windrush generation.

Over 910,000 people from the Caribbean, South Asia and Africa came to Britain between 1948 and 1971.

Although World War II ended, world peace was far from being achieved.

On the contrary, the world was going through a chaotic period.

Ideologies clashed for domination and new countries declared independence from their colonial overlords, left and right.

Even though India and Pakistan fought hard for its independence, upon getting it, many of their citizens left for Britain due to religious oppression in their new countries

and lack of economic opportunities.

Tensions in Europe still persisted.

The Soviet Union, now in control of practically half of the continent, brutally oppressed its new subjects.

In the 1950s, the Polish protests and Hungarian revolution were ruthlessly suppressed.

Over 200,000 left Hungary after the revolution, heading west, 30,000 of which settled in Britain.

Initially, in 1956, 72% of Britons were in favor of migration.

The country was rebuilding, business was booming, and the number of immigrants wasn't too great.

But by the late 60s, things started to change.

Britain became one of the most attractive locations for economic migrants and refugees.

In 1953, the country was getting 3,000 immigrants annually,

but by 1961, this number jumped to over 136,000.

Naturally, the policy of allowing one quarter of the world to settle in a tiny island

that lacked enough sunshine even for the local population started to ruffle some feathers.

As such, immigration legislation was tightening, requiring immigrants to have a job and substantial connection with Britain to be allowed to move in.

The Windrush immigration crisis peaked with conservative MP Edward Heath's Rivers of Blood speech, in which he called the country,

mad as a nation to be permitting large numbers of immigrants to enter.

He concluded his speech by warning of the River Tibur foaming with much blood.

The elites of the country found the speech racist and incendiary, but most of the public was in support of it.

In a bit over a decade, public opinion of immigration flipped, with over 80% of Britons now feeling that there were too many immigrants in the country.

And so, in 1971, the Immigration Act was passed, which further tightened rules about who could move to Great Britain,

and the country never had an issue with immigration ever again.

Right?

For most of the 70s and 80s, immigration to the British Isles was on a gradual decline.

The total number of yearly immigrants from the Commonwealth more than halved by the late 80s, with the country approximately taking 54,000 people annually.

Things seemed to be calming down, despite the occasional hiccup like when the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin expelled all Indians

and Pakistanis from his country only for Britain to take them as its own citizens.

But then came the 90s and the world was plunged into chaos.

Communist countries imploded.

The Middle East and the Balkans were engulfed in war.

Hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans, Gypsies, Yugoslavs, Somalians and Iraqis fled, many of whom set their sights on Britain as their new home.

Then in 1992 came a piece of legislation that would forever change Britain, the Maastricht Treaty.

This treaty is arguably the piece of legislation that founded the EU as we know it.

To not delve into too much detail about it, amongst many other institutional changes it brought,

it also established the right for all EU members to travel and move freely to other countries within the Union.

Originally, this didn't make that big of an impact when the treaty encompassed these countries,

as most of them were on a high enough level of development where mass economic migration was unnecessary.

But in 2004, everything changed when the Union expanded and incorporated most of the ex-Eastern bloc.

Due to decades of socialist economic mismanagement, Eastern European countries were left significantly poorer than their Western counterparts.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of Poles, Hungarians, Slovaks, Balts, and later on in 2007,

Romanians and Bulgarians flocked to more developed countries for work.

Britain in particular became a favored destination for many.

Initially, the government welcomed the immigration wave as it saw it as a potential for a new economic boom, believing that only 13,000 immigrants would come annually.

Instead, over a million came in the next decade, which at the time was the biggest influx of immigrants in the country's history.

By the mid-2010s, Britain's demographic picture was drastically changing and anti-immigrant sentiment was on the rise again.

To give you a better picture, in the 1991 census, white native Britons made up 94.1% of the country,

while ethnic minority groups were around 5.9%.

In 2011, 20 years later, white Britons were 80.5% of the population,

other European immigrants making up 5.5% of the population,

Asians 7.5%, blacks 3.3%, and mixed people 2.2%.

In 1968, when the Rivers of Blood speech was held, the immigrant population was nowhere near 6%,

and the majority of people were upset with the amount of immigrants in the country.

So you can imagine what the sentiments were half a decade later when the number reached nearly 20%.

Things only got worse in 2015 with the rise of the Islamic State.

The Syrian civil war was drastically escalating and millions of Syrians abandoned their homes to seek refuge.

Although many settled in neighboring countries like Jordan and Turkey, others decided to flee westwards and try their luck in Europe.

Considering the Arab Spring destabilized the entirety of the Middle East five years prior, Others from neighboring countries also joined them.

The EU at the time had a very humanitarian-minded leadership that opened its borders wide for this upcoming migrant wave.

Others from South Asian countries far away from the conflict in Syria, like Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, also took advantage of this open migration policy.

Suddenly this stopped being a caravan of asylum seekers, but a wave of economic immigrants flocking to Europe and a good chunk of them setting their sights on Britain.

By 2016, the country had changed drastically.

London, its capital, ceased being majority British.

In 2011, violent crime was on the rise.

Social services, like the healthcare and education system, were overburdened with the influx of new people.

And although immigration wasn't the primary culprit in the drastic rise of housing prices, it certainly wasn't helping.

The country of many older Britons, especially those that lived in London, Birmingham, Manchester no longer existed.

As such, many became frustrated and wished to stop this mass migration hysteria.

In the eyes of Brits, the EU as a whole was seen as the main perpetrator of this crisis with its open border policy.

And so in February, the same year, a referendum was held on whether or not to leave the EU, as a way to curb migration, amongst other agreements.

In a tight race, 52% of the people voted in favor of leaving.

Officially, the The UK left the union in 2020.

100

Migration into the country started to decline, but in doing so, the country started experiencing loads of economic hardships,

101

now that it was outside of the European single market.

102

Prices of goods continued to rise, labor shortages in key sectors like healthcare remained, and the nation's birth rate continued to decline.

103

So to solve this, the government loosened the rules on immigration.

104

In 2019, Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to reduce net migration into the country below 250,000 per year.

105

In 2021, net migration reached 488,000.

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The same government under Boris Johnson, who vowed to lower immigration and exit the EU because of it, opened the doors wide open for immigrants all across the globe.

107

By 2023, net migration reached a record high of 944,000 new people entering the country.

108

For most of English history, more people were leaving than coming in.

109

But after the UK left the EU, annually the country was getting 1.25% of its population in immigrants.

110

And the situation today is worse now than ever before.

111

Researching this video, immigration to UK started piquing my interest.

112

Surely, if the country is getting this many migrants annually,

113

I, as a person with three quite powerful passports and a bachelor's degree could easily move there as well, right?

114

You'd think so, but on paper, moving to the UK is quite difficult.

115

Since leaving the EU, your ability to move and work in Britain is dictated by its revised points-based system.

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Basically, to be allowed into the country, you must obtain a total of 70 points from this chart, 50 of which are gained through three mandatory terms,

117

like getting a job offer from an approved sponsor, that job being skill demanding, and speaking English.

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The other 20 can be substituted by having a PhD, working in a sector with a shortage, or earning a high salary.

119

Now, I possess a bachelor's in economics, and 68% of British citizens with such a degree are able

120

to find a job in their field within 15 months of completing their degree.

121

If you're a citizen and possess a masters, this number goes up to 91%.

122

However, if you're a foreigner like me, then securing a job in the UK becomes quite difficult.

123

Due to the high competition for an entry job in economics, most employers in the field are unwilling to sponsor foreigners.

124

Furthermore, these entry jobs would be paid below the threshold for the point system requirement.

125

So, despite being a high-skilled worker, the chances of me moving to the UK anytime soon are quite slim.

126

Yet, in 2023, the UK accepted 1,469,000 new immigrants.

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To put this into perspective, the population of Birmingham is 1.1 million.

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In one year, the UK got the entirety of its second biggest city worth of immigrants, and then some, moving in.

129

With that said, London definitely by any means is not full of doctors and engineers.

130

So, how the hell are so many people coming into the country.

131

Your first instinct might be to say illegally, via boats across the English Channel, but this is not the case.

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Boats are a form of legal migration, which makes up less than 2% of migration cases.

133

But they look the most shocking, so of course politicians scapegoat them with the Normandy landings of brown people.

134

In 2025, illegal immigration only made up 4.8% of all immigration into the UK.

135

The vast majority of immigrants are coming in via a plane and a visa in their passport.

136

Most new arrivals in Britain come as either students or workers, and this is where the problem lies.

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The vast majority of these visas are issued under false pretenses.

138

During Boris Johnson's tenure, the government has made it easier for foreign students to come and study.

139

But those coming in aren't coming to famous universities like Cambridge and Oxford.

140

Hell, they're not even coming to regular universities.

141

Instead, they're heading to diploma mills.

142

Over the past several decades, hundreds of fake universities have popped up all over the country, offering no actual courses or accredited diplomas.

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Instead, they sponsor foreigners from abroad to come into the UK.

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According to the Home Office, 59% of non-EU foreign students upon arrival for their studies get a new visa.

145

When it comes to those coming in on a work visa, however, things aren't any better.

146

Hundreds, if not thousands, of fake companies have also popped up throughout the country who registered themselves as care companies.

147

Instead of providing actual healthcare and care services, these companies hire workers from abroad, whom they also charge for sponsoring them.

148

A highly illegal act.

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Then, once here, these immigrants realize that the job they applied for does not exist.

150

Then, they're forced to work for another illegal company

151

that fraudulently hires illegal immigrants to work in food delivery via a shared account.

152

A lot of immigrants take out large loans at home from banks

153

and their families and friends so they can afford to be sponsored by one of these companies.

154

A lot of families in South Asia also see this as

155

an investment to send one of their family members abroad to work as they'll be able to send remittances back home.

156

In Nepal's economy, for example, remittances make up one quarter of the GDP and if they can't find any agency to take them across,

157

then they resort to illegal crossings via the English Channel.

158

So, it's safe to say that immigration to the UK is big business.

159

Okay, that's a lot to take in, and certainly a lot of immigrants.

160

But there's one question we still didn't answer.

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Why are so many going to the UK?

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Out of 38 OECD members, the UK has the second biggest amount of permanent immigrants and the biggest amount of student immigrants.

163

Yet, for For two decades, the British economy has been stagnating.

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The country's wages have barely seen any growth, housing has exploded in price, and the healthcare system has been more inefficient than ever,

165

with non-urgent treatments having an average wait time of around three months.

166

Meanwhile, Britain's poorest households are now technically worse off than those in ex-Yugoslav Slovenia.

167

By all accounts, the UK doesn't seem like the ideal place to immigrate to, so what gives?

168

Well, the first factor that plays into this is, as I mentioned before, immigration into the country has turned into a business.

169

Thousands of fake companies and diploma mills make false promises of economic prosperity in less developed countries.

170

Their entire business model relies on being paid by people to bring them in.

171

Those desperate to look for work elsewhere are not the most educated in Britain's economic standing

172

and still have this rosy picture of the British economic tiger 50 years ago.

173

Secondly, the UK has very generous social benefits.

174

People coming into the country applying for asylum are granted shelter and food while they wait for their status to be approved.

175

Due to the sheer amount of people coming into the country, several tens of thousands are now being housed in over 400 hotels across the nation.

176

A lot of conservative politicians were found to have ties to these hotels

177

and have been benefiting tremendously from continuously housing them there as

178

the public has been spending over 17.6 billion euros on contracts with these hotels.

179

Major hotel chains like the Britannia Hotels Group have received hundreds

180

of millions from the Home Office to keep their properties occupied by asylum seekers, leading to substantial revenue gain for their owners.

181

In addition to that, if an asylum case is approved, which on average happens 67% of the time,

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the refugees become eligible to apply for council housing due to being at risk of homelessness.

183

In recent years, authorities have provided social housing to approximately 21,400 refugee households annually.

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This all has left people smugglers promoting the UK as the ultimate asylum destination.

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They market the UK as a place where the government will give you a free hotel room, a place where you can get rich from just your mobile phone and riding a bike,

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all the while making them take on tremendous amounts of debt just to get them across

187

and put to work in another illegal company as they have to pay them to rent their bike and food delivery account,

188

which in part is allowed to continue due to lax legislation when it comes to identification and the misrepresentation of asylum law.

189

Although food delivery apps require its contractors to have legal status in the country,

190

many are able to circumnavigate this due to the UK not having any formal ID system.

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To identify oneself, many Brits need to use their birth certificate or passport.

192

But when dealing with authorities, the system relies on high-trust society principles like just saying your legal name and address as there are no national ID cards,

193

which makes regulating abuse of the immigration system much more difficult.

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The NHS remains understaffed.

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Housing is more expensive than ever, productivity growth has stagnated, the country's birth rate continues to fall, and government finances remain under pressure.

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For decades, successive governments argued that higher immigration was necessary to fill labor shortages, support economic growth, and offset an aging population.

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Yet, despite record levels of migration, many of these shortages still exist.

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Some of the doctors, engineers, and skilled workers Britain needed certainly arrived, but so did millions of other people with their own needs for housing,

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healthcare, schools, infrastructure, and public services.

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As a result, Britain finds itself trapped in a strange paradox.

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The public consistently tells pollsters that they want immigration reduced.

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Politicians repeatedly campaign on promises to lower migration.

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Brexit itself was in large part driven by the desire to regain control over the country's borders.

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Yet, every government that comes to power eventually reaches the same conclusion.

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The economy has become dependent on a constant inflow of new workers, students, and migrants.

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And so, immigration continues.

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At the same time, rapid demographic change has transformed many parts of the country.

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In some communities, integration has been relatively successful.

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In others, not so much, as tensions emerged over culture, identity, religion, and social cohesion.

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Debates that once sat at the fringes of British politics now dominate headlines, elections, and dinner table conversations.

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Whether immigration Immigration has ultimately helped or harmed Britain depends largely on who you ask.

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But one thing is difficult to deny.

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For over half a century, immigration has been Britain's most controversial political issue.

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Governments have promised to solve it, voters have repeatedly demanded change, entire elections revolved around it, and yet here we are.

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More people are arriving than ever before, the arguments are louder than ever, and Britain is still searching for an answer that nobody seems capable of finding.

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Vocabolario e note di pronuncia per questa lezione

Questa lezione di conversazione di livello C1 si basa sul video “Why Britain Can't Fix Immigration”. Le parole che ritornano più spesso: immigration, immigrant, Britain, migration, economic. Questo video contiene 216 frasi e 3217 parole da ripetere con lo shadowing. Il parlato dura 20:32. Chi parla ha un ritmo naturale di circa 157 parole al minuto, vicino a una conversazione quotidiana. Solo il 81% delle parole rientra nelle 3.000 più comuni dell’inglese, quindi il lessico è impegnativo.

Vocaboli chiave di questo video

Le 15 parole più avanzate del video, con pronuncia e significato:

Parola	Pronuncia	Significato
immigrant sostantivo	/ˈɪmɪɡɹənt/	immigrante
asylum sostantivo	/əˈsaɪləm/	asilo
shortage sostantivo	/ˈʃɔː(ɹ)tɪd͡ʒ/	scarsità, mancanza
sponsor sostantivo	/ˈspɒn.səː/	sponsor
migrant sostantivo	/ˈmaɪɡɹənt/	migratore, migratrice
behead verbo	/bɪˈhɛd/	decapitare
foreigner sostantivo	/ˈfɔɹ.ɪ.nɚ/	straniero, straniera
remittance sostantivo	/ɹɪˈmɪtəns/	rimessa
influx sostantivo	/ˈɪnˌflʌks/	influsso
entirety sostantivo	/ɪnˈtaɪ.əɹ(ə)ti/	interezza
diploma sostantivo	/dɪˈploʊmə/	diploma
neighboring aggettivo	/ˈneɪbəɹɪŋ/	confinante, contiguo
demographic aggettivo	/ˌdɛm.əˈɡɹæf.ɪk/	demografico
possess verbo	/pəˈzɛs/	possedere, avere
passport sostantivo	/ˈpæspɔɹt/	passaporto

I phrasal verb che sentirai

Parola	Pronuncia	Significato
make up verbo	/ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/	comporsi
pop up verbo		spuntare, saltare fuori
calm down verbo		calmarsi, tranquillizzarsi
go through verbo		attraversare
take out verbo		cavare, cacciare

La grammatica di questo video

Le strutture che chi parla usa di più, con le parole esatte del video:

Struttura	Nel video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — un’azione iniziata prima e ancora in corso	has been stagnating · have been benefiting · has been spending
Present perfect have/has + participio passato — un’azione passata che conta ancora adesso	has been · has only gotten · has made
Forma passiva be + participio passato — conta ciò che accade, non chi lo fa	being called · being published · were destroyed

Pronuncia a cui fare attenzione

Chi parla usa 17 contrazioni e forme ridotte, come they're, wasn't, aren't. Pronunciale nella forma breve, così come le senti.

I suoni “sh” e “zh”: shortage /ˈʃɔː(ɹ)tɪd͡ʒ/, institutional /ˌɪn.stɪˈtju.ʃə.nəl/, sheer /ʃɪɚ/, threshold /ˈθɹɛʃ(h)oʊld/
Parole lunghe — attenzione all’accento: entirety /ɪnˈtaɪ.əɹ(ə)ti/, demographic /ˌdɛm.əˈɡɹæf.ɪk/, incorporate /ɪŋˈkɔɹ.pɚ.eɪt/, prosperity /pɹɑˈspɛɹ.ɪ.ti/, humanitarian /hjuˌmæ.nəˈtɛ.ɹi.ən/

I suoni difficili per chi parla italiano:

/h/ — va soffiata, non è muta: behead /bɪˈhɛd/, humanitarian /hjuˌmæ.nəˈtɛ.ɹi.ən/, threshold /ˈθɹɛʃ(h)oʊld/, headline /ˈhɛd.laɪn/
Consonante finale — senza aggiungere una vocale dopo: immigrant /ˈɪmɪɡɹənt/, shortage /ˈʃɔː(ɹ)tɪd͡ʒ/, migrant /ˈmaɪɡɹənt/, behead /bɪˈhɛd/, remittance /ɹɪˈmɪtəns/
/æ/ — più aperta della “e”: demographic /ˌdɛm.əˈɡɹæf.ɪk/, passport /ˈpæspɔɹt/, humanitarian /hjuˌmæ.nəˈtɛ.ɹi.ən/, abandon /əˈbæn.dən/, transform /tɹænsˈfɔɹm/

Come esercitarsi con questo video

Ascolta tutto il video una volta senza parlare e annota le parole che non conosci.
Inizia a velocità 0,75×, fai shadowing frase per frase e torna alla velocità normale quando diventa facile.
Registrati e confronta con l’originale, facendo attenzione a parole come immigrant, asylum, shortage.

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?

Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.

Tecnica dello shadowing: leggi la guida completa passo dopo passo →

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