Will Hutton sets out a stark choice in the Observer this morning:
Politicians and their electorates now have to make a choice. There is no middle way. The choice is between building walls and electrified fences, creating mass detention centres, organising mass repatriation and conceding to the fear of the other or it is to find a way of sustaining openness while doing the very best that can be done to allay the natural fears and apprehensions of host populations.
I think he is right to be stark.
Except I think there is no choice. Maybe that is because I consider significant parts of my extended family to have come to the UK as economic and political migrants, and I can see all the benefits that have resulted for the country as a result. And maybe it is because I am a Quaker. And maybe it is just because I, in a Rawlsian sense, wonder what would happen if an accident of birth (and it would be no more) had put me in the migrants position. But I do consider we really have only one choice: we have to accept that in the rapidly changing world in which we live migration will be a part.
And that is a positive choice, for three reasons. This country has always benefitted culturally from migration.
This country has always benefited economically from migration.
And let's also be clear: if the fundamental pension contract that the working generation will look after the old is to be be fulfilled then we need more people who can work, pay tax and care in this country. We simply do not have enough now. We can have migration or we can have social collapse in the UK in years to come. That's the actual stark choice. We're already seeing this reality in many of our caring professions. We will witness to ever greater extent over time.
I am wholly aware of the risks and threats. Most especially I am aware that some feel economically left out. So we must make sure they have the skills they need and the opportunities to use them, and are failing to do that.
And some feel left out of housing. So we must address that.
And some feel culturally challenged. I am no expert on this one but I can still recall the days of anti-Irish prejudice that were, thankfully, dying as I grew up. I do not have the expertise to offer on how to resolve new waves of the same sentiment. I think there are those who do possess it.
What I am sure if is that we have to make clear that we need migration, as a matter of fact. That's the starting point for embracing its realities. And that is not said enough.
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http://www.3spoken.co.uk/2014/06/how-immigration-affects-uk-economy.html?m=1
Good neutral take on this.
Ed note: comment included personal abuse
Over recent history population expansion has been a major (I’d say the principal) cause of economic prosperity and, given that the resident UK population is currently probably not reproducing itself, the prosperous economy may well now rely on immigration.
But if Britain — and in particular, for it is mostly, England, which is so small and is already the most densely populated country in Europe, is to absorb immigrants on the scale of a new Birmingham once a year, this is bound to be more and more challenging. So the problem is not so much that we shouldn’t welcome immigrants or recognise their past and present contributions but that England is getting more and more crowded and so certainly needs entry and exit controls.
As immigration seems just to keep a cap on wages for much of the workforce, a training levy on companies that is refunded when you recruit a local/college leaver or something similar to try to encourage home trained talent would help.
The housing issue is one that PQE would address but I think PQE will also be required to provide money to train more housebuilders in the first place. Improving transport connections to spread the population more evenly is also something that PQE can help with. Or could it be that, with a National Investment/Infrastructure Bank regularly spending either ‘printed money’ or pension money, population expansion will no longer be required for a prosperous future? Could this be another game that it changes? Because as an already crowded country immigration has physical limits…
The country isn’t crowded, although London can seem so. That’s deliberate.
Immigration doesn’t keep a cap on wages – employers do that.
Population expansion being required for a prosperous future isn’t a choice we can make. Global Warming made that decision long ago. Northern Europe will be one of the refuges for the western world’s migrant populations, just as the Basque country, Italy and the Ukraine were for the western world’s migrants at the Last Glacial Maximum. And “we” simply won’t be able to stop it, should we try. You ain’t seen nothing yet. Our ancestors came here with an empty wilderness to overcome. We should provide a more welcoming environment to our successors. In a couple of hundred years, being a national citizen needs to be as forgotten and irrelevant as being a Mercian is today.
I’m more concerned that the proposed PQE would mostly be spent on the “blessed” of the south-east of England, where most subsidy resides today.
On the argument that we need immigration so that young people can support old people,there is one problem with this. Immigrants also become old. So this means you need an ever increasing number of immigrants to offset the previous ones grown old. So this doesn’t offer a solution. Also, it moves the problem if considered from a european perspective. Young people coming from eastern europe has made their demographic challenges even worse.
Respectfully, I think that massively misses many points, including the fact that some migrants do move to other countries in older age
And many are temporary to start
I totally agree with this – that economic migration can benefit us in many ways.
But this – as I’m sure your know – is a very complex issue.
For example, if the business world wants to use migrants as cheap labour and under-employ the population already here then that is bound to cause tensions. The work the migrants do is in my opinion often under-valued pay wise (poorly paid). Politics has failed to deal with this – as it failed to deal with the exporting of jobs to other countries.
There is also the case that migrants bring skills with them that the existing population do not have. Well – should not our education and training systems not be responding to that? Again, a cause of possible tension and surely another failure of politics?
Economic migrants propably help to address workforce supply in certain areas of the country – established workers cannot always move where the work is due to lots of issues (lack of money, losing established support networks etc). Also, with an ageing workforce, how will the West continue to fund pensions and man services?
In the context of current migratory drivers, there is another type of migrant increasingly being seen on our television screens: people who are simply trying to escape death and destruction. This group were recently over-looked and just woven into the broader economic migrant category. Thank goodness the media has now focussed in on this.
Considering the fear-based migration, this group to me is the most tragic – worthy of help but not just from providing jobs and a safe haven. More longer term means need to be found to prevent this in the first place.
When I see people fleeing conflict I realise that I am seeing the results of political failure and I spend time wondering why with so many politicians around the world we still have conflict on such a huge scale that makes fear-migration possible.
It all points to one thing for me – that politics now seems to want to create problems (look at austerity – a man-made choice if ever there was one) rather than solve them.
I agree with the above but I can see a dilemma:-
With the free movement of labour within Europe, the more progressive and liberal a country becomes the more it will attract migrants from other European countries.
When Jeremy becomes Prime Minister, the UK will become the most attractive country in Europe to live and work. How will it cope with the demand?
Richard, what is your view on Neil Wilson’s proposal?http://www.3spoken.co.uk/2014/10/how-labour-can-solve-immigration.html?m=1
Interesting
Does not work in the EU
We’re a long way from creating the basis for a JG here as yet
You should really read more of the Neil Wilson posts on it. He has written a lot.
“The existing unemployment or pension payment systems can be used to pay the wages. In the UK they are all part of the Department of Work and Pensions structure. Starting and stopping jobs is the same as starting and stopping unemployment benefit with the same PAYE implications and National Insurance registration requirements. HMRC is already into a pilot programme collecting ‘Real Time information’ about PAYE records to support the new Universal Credit. So those systems are there already, pay millions of people and can be adapted relatively quickly given that they are already half way through the process.
Minimum wage is already enforced by HMRC, so they would get the job of dealing with the ‘Mr Donald Duck’ applications. That may involve a slight increase in expenditure on rubber gloves and Vaseline admittedly.”
As to the EU just derogate from EU law and repeal the European Communities act. See if they kick us out.
I have written on minimum income here http://classonline.org.uk/docs/2013_Policy_Paper_-_Richard_Murphy__Howard_Reed_(Social_State_-_Idleness.pdf
Richard, I doubt the electorate will accept BIG. They want people to be seen as pulling their own weight if they are to receive money.
An open door immigration policy cannot be justified however I can see a more humane approach to immigration working in the following contexts.
– Full employment being the Government’s social policy priority plus a minimum wage that equals a realistic living wage with rigorous enforcement to match.
– An economic policy priority that spreads prosperity much more evenly across the UK [using PQE] financed by a crackdown on abuse of the tax system.
– A foreign policy priority of conflict resolution plus punishment for those responsible for conflict and people displacement.
That was a good comment, Belgraviadave. I thoroughly agree with the last of your 3 points although it is also worth remembering that refugees represent a very small proportion of migrant numbers (which is all the more reason not to fear them and to treat them charitably I suppose).
While I do not condone prejudice or discrimination against migrants and recognise all the good that they have done, there is also a limit to ecologically sustainable population and that is a point must be addressed in some way, it cannot be avoided indefinitely.
The points that May P raised about overcrowding and wages are also perfectly valid. An ongoing increase in population displaces the poorer people and pushes them from their traditional communities to the least desirable locations. Corporate employer groups love migration because it continually increases the supply of labour relative to demand.
Some people speak of skills shortages or labour shortages as if they indicated a form of social or political failure. Those shortages are the source of wage rises and they strengthen the hand of trade unions.
Having said all that I do not disagree with Richard’s post, at least not for the most part. But the issues he raised were mostly qualitative, social and agreeable. The issues that I have alluded to here are quantitative, difficult and frequently unwelcome. So be it.
Marco, thanks. Ultimately a government that practices immoral social, economic and foreign policies will have no right to practice an immigration policy that separates and treats differently, and in some cases harshly, refugees and economic migrants.
Thanks, I’ll pass that on to the Australian government, they are serious transgressors and they can’t be told often enough.