immigration « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘immigration’

Our politicians should tell the truth about immigration: it’s good for Britain

28/03/2013, 07:00:01 AM

by Peter Watt

The immigration debate is very much alive again. UKIP in particular have attempted to tap into the rise in concern amongst some of the issues. Lurid headlines warn of hordes of Bulgarians and Romanians about to pour across the sea, hot on the heels of the Poles and the Lithuanians. And in response the three main party leaders have followed suit as they all seek to be tough on the issue. The result is a lot of heat and not a lot of light.

The debate focuses on a number of key themes:

Does immigration benefit or costs the economy?
Do immigrants get preferential treatment?
The extent to which we can “control” our borders as members of the EU.
Is there an increase in pressure on public services?
The alleged abuse of asylum status.
The extent to which immigration changes communities and people’s attitudes to this change.

The answers are complex and much debated in homes, streets and indeed by our politicians. The truth is that of course we are economically benefitting from immigration. On the whole those arriving are younger and are employed. They pay taxes and don’t really need to access health services and rarely claim benefits. But also that there are some areas where there has been pressure on local services that were initially ill prepared like GPs and schools. The impact of “changing communities” is however harder to gauge.

Personally I am completely unconcerned that the number of accents that I hear in shops or on the bus has increased massively. I like the fact that my children have friends from a huge variety of different backgrounds – certainly they aren’t worried! And I am very proud of our history of welcoming those fleeing persecution. I suspect that many people feel the same as me.

But I also know that there are plenty of people who are increasingly wary of the changes that they see. They worry about losing control of their way of life and feel that their area is being “taken over”.

They are nostalgic about the good old days and feel strongly that someone is to blame for letting this happen because they sure as hell weren’t asked. For them, the proliferation of eastern European accents is a manifestation of their worries and reinforces a sense of powerlessness in the face of change.

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Yes they’re right wing, but UKIP is not fascist

14/03/2013, 02:48:43 PM

by Kevin Meagher

David Cameron famously described UKIP members as a collection of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”. But are they fascist too? This is the question being posed by campaign group Hope Not Hate.

It is asking its supporters whether their successful efforts at taking on the far right in the shape of the BNP and English Defence League since 2004 should now extend to UKIP ahead of next year’s European elections.

“Should we begin to oppose them or should we stick to extremist groups like the BNP?’ they ask on their website:

‘The case for opposing UKIP:

‘UKIP is increasingly taking an anti-immigrant tone and as anti-racists we cannot ignore that. They are whipping up fears over new immigration and as we approach next year’s European Elections this will even get worse.

“The growing support for UKIP is scaring the mainstream parties and it will push them to adopt more hard line policies on immigration and multiculturalism. We need to prevent this and offer a positive alternative to the politics of hate and division.

‘The case against opposing UKIP:

‘We might not like some of UKIP’s policies but they are not a fascist or far right party. They are embedded to the democratic system and have more in common with the right wing of the Conservative Party than the fascists of the BNP. And, despite their current anti-immigrant rhetoric, they are still basically a single issue party.”

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For Labour, the hard work on immigration starts now

11/03/2013, 08:12:28 AM

by Anthony Painter

Why is Labour obsessing about immigration? Try the fact that – according to a recent Lord Ashcroft poll – two of the top three most salient issues are welfare dependency and controlling immigration. 32% and 20% of Labour supporters respectively favour the Conservative positions on these issues. No party that seriously expects to compete for office can fail to respond to public anxiety on these issues. Welfare and immigration are tightly linked in concern about the failures of the modern state.

Reponses to this have fallen into two camps: there’s not really a problem and there is problem and it requires a response. Ed Miliband falls into the latter camp.

The mistake the former camp makes is that it thinks that it can win the argument with numbers when this is an instinctive, cultural and emotional set of issues. So the fact that there is a net contribution by migrants to the public purse or that few migrants come here with the purpose of claiming benefits or free-riding on the NHS simply doesn’t cut through. Nor will it. The issue is not the quantum of free-riding but that the system allows it. There is also a broader sense that welfare has become simultaneously marginal so it benefits the few, out of control in terms of cost and fosters dependency. It is about fundamental institutional logic and many people see the welfare state – with the exception of child benefit and pensions – as something for other people at an exorbitant cost which we collectively shoulder.

More specifically on immigration, trust has broken down in our ability to control the flow of migration – particularly at the lower skill level. The fact that this may be to our broad economic benefit, improve public services, or better finance an ageing society or the national debt do not seem to counter-balance the anxiety over loss of control.

If your immigration and welfare systems do not have wide public legitimacy then you have a problem. That is the situation.

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One Nation Labour has to be tough on immigration and tough on its causes

06/03/2013, 11:21:34 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Tonight Ed Miliband will use a party election broadcast to set out a subtly new approach on immigration after apparently being stung by how resonant the issue has now become following Labour’s poor showing at the Eastleigh by-election.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper will follow up with a speech tomorrow setting out how Labour will get tough on so-called gangmasters, ending their practice of cramming immigrant workers into unsuitable accommodation while forcing them to pay extortionate rents for the privilege. There will also be a symbolic shift towards the police rather than HM Revenue and Customs taking the lead on enforcement of the national minimum wage.

“There must be a level playing field so domestic workers are not disadvantaged and employers shouldn’t be allowed to use migration in the wrong way,” says a Labour source.

This is all to the good. To be sure, Ed is making this intervention from the safe distance of critiquing labour market abuses rather than engaging, it seems, in the bigger discussion about culture, population and national identity. That may come another day, but at least the issue of immigration is now framed by an acceptance that it comes with costs for many people, particularly those at the bottom of the pile who are effectively priced out of jobs by migrant workers.

I’ve written before that Labour politicians – and many on the left – can’t seem to bring themselves to discuss downsides to immigration. (Indeed, the term ‘inward migration’ has crept into popular usage, as if eschewing the very mention of ‘immigration’ will nullify public concern). Like actors refusing to refer to “the Scottish play”, the subject is deemed to be taboo, inherently right-wing and the precursor to a more toxic discussion about race.

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Finally, Labour seems to be getting it on immigration

26/06/2012, 12:30:05 PM

by Kevin Meagher

My dad’s just turned 67. Like many people these days, he’s still working. But he’s not sat in a cushy office hunched over a laptop; he’s up on a scaffold, or knee-deep in mud and clay in the footings of a house.

He’s a bricklayer; and still finds himself out in all-weather doing the job he’s been doing for 50 years. He can’t afford to retire. When you work in a speculative industry your pay goes down as well as up. In a non-unionised industry, the rate is under constant negotiation. In the 1960’s and 70s it was a good job – paying well above average earnings.

During the 1980s, two biting Tory recessions wiped out construction. Try saving for retirement when you’re not earning enough; keeping the wolf from the door is the name of the game. So work on he must.

That’s partly because the past decade hasn’t been much better for construction workers either. Even during Labour’s boom, the wealth didn’t trickle down to people like him. There were two crushing forces at work: the Labour government’s general failure to build enough homes and the impact of low-cost immigrant labour, following the accession of the Visegrad countries to the EU in 2004.

The first issue is well chronicled – and indeed championed by the Left. Construction of new homes dropped to a post-war low under Labour. Having fallen by two thirds since the heyday of the 1960s, just 156,170 houses were built in 1997-8. By 2009-10, this had nearly halved to just 88,690. Not enough houses mean not enough jobs and flat pay.

Of the second issue – immigration – you will hear ne’er a squeak.

There’s been a self-denying ordinance in even talking about the issue for as long as I can remember. Like actors who won’t say the name of “the Scottish play” for fear of bad luck, the centre-left has been utterly mute on the subject of immigration for years.

Of course there is a familiar form of words about ‘valuing the contribution immigrants make’ but no discourse on the other impacts. The downsides must remain unspoken; such is the paranoia about feeding the far right.

So Ed Miliband’s speech was hugely significant, if only for its topic. Stacked full of caveats and careful formulations, he did, however, manage to throw off the veil that “worrying about immigration, talking about immigration, thinking about immigration” does not make people bigoted (“not in any way”). People are simply “anxious about the future” he said.

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The dalits of poor Britain hate immigration, not immigrants. When will we get that?

28/11/2011, 09:08:01 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Teachers at my school used to try and gee-up indolent pupils by telling them they would end up picking-out burnt cornflakes on the Kellogg’s production line if they didn’t get their acts together.

This warning often fell on deaf ears, and a strong back or willingness to work unsocial hours still pretty much guaranteed you a job anyway. Okay, not a great job, but you could stand there all day, bent over a factory conveyor-belt scouring for errant pieces of breakfast cereal, or lump heavy goods around a dockside or building site. Or perhaps join-up and see the world. You could, in short, earn a living, with or without qualifications.

There was a level of total educational failure we could tolerate as a country and still mop-up the consequences in the foothills of the labour market afterwards. And for those fulfilling these unfulfilling roles, the reward of hard, grinding work was the promise of a job that at least allowed you to secure basic frugal comforts.

The world looks a lot bleaker from those same foothills today. This month’s unemployment figures were especially wintry, indicating, as they do, that at least a million young would-be workers are left without the prospect of any kind of job whatsoever. Not even low-status conflake-picking roles. They simply don’t exist any longer, certainly not on the scale that will soak up the current need. Back in 2006, Lord Sandy Leitch’s landmark report into skills policy warned that by 2020 there will only be 600,000 jobs in our economy requiring no formal skills, down from around 3.5 million today. Some dispute that the numbers are quite that pessimistic, but the broad trend remains correct.

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If you’re not rich, you’re not coming in

11/10/2011, 04:11:28 PM

by Matt Cavanagh

For a man whose avowed aim is to reduce the salience of immigration as a political issue, David Cameron spends a lot of time talking about it. Yesterday’s speech was light on new policy, so we must assume the point was to send a message: that despite growing public scepticism – a recent YouGov poll found 78% of people thinking it “unlikely Cameron will deliver his immigration promises” – he remains personally committed to doing so. The strategic judgment must be, that while he is unlikely to hit his chosen target of reducing net migration levels to “tens of thousands” by 2015, his policies will have made enough of a dent that voters will feel that, in contrast to the other two parties, at least the Conservatives tried. For now, the coalition has settled into a pattern, where it suits both parties to pretend that it is the Liberal Democrats that have prevented greater progress, rather than the deeper structural problems with their approach – though this is unlikely to fool voters for long, and there are signs that the commentariat have rumbled it too.

Turning to the detail of the speech, there were some good things; some misleading claims and unanswered questions; and a reminder of two big underlying problems.

The good things included a careful, incremental approach to the complex issue of forced marriage (though it will be interesting to see how the planned consultation differs from previous ones on the same subject); and a greater emphasis on British history and culture in the “Life in the UK” citizenship test which Labour introduced in 2005. Another proposal, to stop people bringing in more than one spouse or partner in quick succession, is an example of a policy which in an ideal world would seem unnecessary and invasive, but in the real world is sadly necessary. Finally, there was the resonant line that “immigration can hurt the low paid and the low skilled, while the better off reap many of the benefits”. This contains enough truth to hurt, and is a line which Labour really only has itself to blame for allowing the Conservatives to own.

But alongside these good things, there were plenty of misleading claims. The first was on overall numbers, where Cameron said that; “There are early signs in the most recent figures that the reforms this government has brought in are beginning to reduce the overall figure.”

Well, it is true – as I noted in my analysis of the most recent immigration statistics for Labour Uncut – that “the latest quarterly figures to June 2011 [show] a slight fall in people coming from outside the EU for work, down 2.7% compared to the year ending April 2011”. Most of this is from the closure of the Tier 1 General route, designed for highly skilled migrants who are not tied to a particular job, but qualify on their individual merits (on which more below). But this is less than 1% of total immigration. Cameron would be better advised to wait until next year, by when the changes to the student visa system, however ill-advised in other respects, might have made a more serious impression on overall numbers.

The second misleading claim concerned the skill-level of migrants coming under the previous system. In his determination to present that system as a “complete failure”, Cameron said that:

“One study showed that about a third of those sampled only found low skilled roles working as shop assistants, in takeaways, and as security guards. When this government came into office, we ignored the rhetoric, looked hard at the reality and simply closed down the whole of the Tier 1 General route.”

At best, this is a highly selective use of the available evidence. The independent Migration Advisory Committee, a Labour innovation which the new government has sensibly retained and praised, said in its comprehensive report in November 2010, that in the Tier 1 General route – the route which Cameron is talking about here – over 90% were working in highly-skilled work (see para 3.68, p.88).

Turning to the unanswered questions, the first concerns the detail of the proposal that people wishing to sponsor a foreign national to come here as a spouse or partner should be required to put up a financial “bond”. This idea has been around for years: it was in Labour’s 2005 manifesto, but was shelved in 2008. One of the problems was that it is tricky to set the bond at the right level. If you set it too low, it looks like a gimmick. But if you set it at a level that would credibly offset the costs to the public purse of a migrant who does end up being a “significant burden on the taxpayer”, that would mean a bond of tens of thousands of pounds. Requiring that upfront raises very significant issues of fairness (on which more below). (more…)

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Don’t promise what you can’t deliver on immigration

26/08/2011, 11:21:00 AM

by Matt Cavanagh

Yesterday’s ONS figures are a reminder of the risks of politicians promising what they can’t deliver, particularly on an issue as emotive as immigration.

Before the election, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats said immigration was out of control; afterwards, they said they would cut it dramatically. Neither was true.

The figures reinforce how stable immigration has been in recent years: non-British immigration is estimated at 455,000 in 2010, compared to 437,000 in 2009 – and broadly stable since 2006:

Long term immigration, emigration, and net migration of non-British nationals

Source: IPS, ONS Migration statistics quarterly report, August 25 2011

The Government’s chosen target is not non-British immigration, but ‘net inward migration’: total (British and non-British) immigration, less total (British and non-British) emigration. As the above graph shows, non-British emigration is falling, and while British emigration has risen slightly over the last year, overall emigration remains down – with the result that the Government’s target of reducing net migration below 100,000 has moved further from their grasp since the election:

Long term immigration, emigration, and net migration of all nationals

Source: LTIM, ONS Migration statistics quarterly report, August 25 2011

Yesterday’s figures suggest the interim immigration ‘cap’ on working migrants from outside the EU had negligible effect in 2010. The Government has made further changes since relating to non-EU migrants, including closing Tier 1 (highly skilled) to all but the wealthiest migrants in December 2010; a number of changes to Tier 4 (students) in March 2011; and a permanent ‘cap’ on ‘Tier 2’ (skilled) workers in April.

The latest quarterly figures to June 2011, published by the Home Office yesterday, should show these changes starting to have an effect, and indeed there is a slight fall in people coming from outside the EU for work (down 2.7% compared to the year ending April 2011), almost all in Tier 1 rather than Tier 2. This fall is offset, however, by a rise in those coming from outside the EU to study (up 3.5% compared to year ending April 2011).

More significantly, any reduction in numbers coming from outside the EU is likely to be offset by the continuing rise in those coming from inside the EU, particularly from Eastern Europe – a category of immigration which the Government cannot control.

Yesterday’s figures show that immigration from Eastern Europe rose from 52,000 to 71,000 in 2010 – and emigration back to Eastern Europe fell from 47,000 to 31,000, adding further to overall net migration.

In terms of the number of Eastern Europeans in work – as opposed to new arrivals – recent Labour Force Survey figures confirm that, after being stable between 2008 and the first quarter of 2010, numbers have been rising steadily since the election:

The changes the Government has made to immigration from outside the EU may well have more effect in the year to come – particularly on students and highly-skilled migrants.

But the rising trend in immigration from the EU looks set to continue. More recent figures from the Department of Work and Pensions, included in yesterday’s ONS report, show that for the year to March 2011, over 187,000 National Insurance numbers were allocated to Eastern European nationals, an increase of 24% on the previous 12 months.

In terms of employers’ future plans, a survey this week from the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development suggests that the number of private sector employers intending to hire migrant workers in the next quarter continues to rise. The CIPD survey also suggests that, if the ‘cap’ has any effect in future months, it is unlikely to deter employers from hiring migrant workers – it is more likely to make them switch to hiring migrants from inside the EU.

Ministers need to be more honest with the public about how far overall immigration numbers are really determined by government policy, rather than economic factors, and employer preferences. Ministers also need to avoid reacting to their difficulties with the net migration target by trying to clamp down further on those categories of migration which are the most economically valuable – and instead, start thinking about how to harness immigration to promote employment and growth. Conservative ministers in particular have consistently argued that welfare reform and immigration control are the answer to youth unemployment and worklessness. But with youth unemployment back over 20%, and NEETs at a record high, they need to look towards other policies if they are to prevent the creation of another ‘lost generation’.

Matt Cavanagh is Associate Director at the IPPR

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Reframing immigration: Ed’s clause four moment?

15/08/2011, 01:31:58 PM

by Kevin Meagher

I had never heard of Maurice Glasman until a year ago. Now this “radical traditionalist” frontman for the blue Labour movement seems to be everywhere.

To his friends, he is the exponent of a viable new politics for Labour, drawing on earlier, non-statist traditions of social solidarity and reciprocity and rejecting New Labour’s fetish for market solutions and, most controversially, the commodification of labour through a decade’s worth of mass immigration.

To his opponents, however, he is a nostalgic blowhard peddling a backwards-looking Labourist version of the big society to a party desperate for any crumbs of intellectual coherence.

Friend or foe alike can agree, however, that Glasman does not mince his words, particularly about immigration. Accordingly, he reckons Labour “lied” to the public about the scale of immigration that the party presided over in government. He warns that Britain must not become an “outpost of the UN”, instead focusing on the welfare of its own workers first, revising the EU’s free transfer of people to that effect. (more…)

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The next Tory U-turn: immigration

17/06/2011, 08:09:09 AM

by Atul Hatwal

There it is again.

That faint squeal of tyres and slight waft of burning rubber – the hallmarks of a minister struggling to keep their policy on the road.

And now we wait for the noise to get louder, the smell more pungent, until the minister gives-in to the sliding chaos of another U-turn.

The latest threat to political pedestrians maybe a little while before it careens across the news pages, but it’s only a matter of time.

The Tory migration cap might get re-branded, re-engineered into a broad range of metrics and turned into an elasticated party hat, but the target of net migration in “the tens of thousands”, will ultimately go the same way as the NHS reforms, forest privatisation and weekly bin collections.

So far, Theresa May has been one of the quiet successes in the government, escaping relatively lightly in the gaffe stakes. She’s remained safe largely by moving slowly and not trying to reform every single piece of departmental policy within 10 minutes of arriving.

But with the migration cap, May has one of those too-good-to-be-true policies. A Jimmy Choo initiative that looked so alluring in the manifesto shop window that the Tories had to have it. But now, in government, somehow the shoe doesn’t fit, no matter what May does.

This week saw the first signs of the U-turn to come.

On Tuesday, the home secretary announced that the net numbers of foreign students in the UK would be reduced by 52,000 per year. On the face of it a major cut and a big step towards achieving the government’s target.

Except that in March, the reduction was going to be 100,000 per year.

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