Ask Lemmy

Where are you getting your news? Wherever it is you should stop, you're being fed (and spreading) misinformation.

In the UK, wages and salaries are notoriously low

About 12-14th place worldwide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage https://www.worlddata.info/average-income.php https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings?itemId=105

Im a lot of cases the salary allows employers to pay less because it’s considered different to a wage.

This is untrue. Minimum wage for salaried workers is calculated by average hours worked per pay period, if after dividing your pay by your average hours you are making less than minimum wage and your employer doesn't fix this you should report them immediately.

The reason our salaries are this low is not just because of funding the NHS,

This obviously doesn't make sense on the surface since NHS is paid for through taxes and not salary deductions so you seem to be making a tax argument instead (?), but regardless while per capita spending on health services in the UK is high compared to some other countries, it is far from the highest.

but because we have a huge portion of our population unemployed and thus needing welfare support

At ~4.2% it's middling by most measures, but I'd definitely prefer lower. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_unemployment_rate https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/unemployment-by-country

which comes straight out of the money businesses have to pay people with

I don't even know how to respond to that. You are aware that this is handled by the government and not private business, right? Is this just another roundabout way to complain about being taxed?

the government spends a huge amount on processing asylum and immigration claims (of which there’s an extraordinary amount given the size of the country)

Are you aware that support for refugees in the UK comes out of the aid budget which has been reduced from 0.7% of gross national income in 2021 to 0.5%, and further decreased to 0.3% by 2027? Less of your taxes are being spent on this category now.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9663/

Regardless, number of refugees is high but not extraordinarily so for the region. Speculation, but that's likely due to English being the de-facto lingua franca for international communication so asylum seekers are more likely to speak the local language.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM.POP.ASYS.EA?contextual=region&end=2024&locations=GB&start=2000

The issue here is mismanagement more than number of refugees, the UK government reportedly managed to spend $26,000 per person compared to most countries spend under $10,000. As mentioned above though, this is from the aid budget which has already been reduced, this mismanagement prevents foreign aid but does not decrease your salary.
https://www.cgdev.org/blog/costs-hosting-refugees-oecd-countries-and-why-uk-outlier

Barely two paragraphs in and this is already too long, if you want the rest of your comment to be taken remotely seriously you should at least add some sources.