No matter how we try and fool ourselves, migration issues played a substantial part in the Leave vote, and many Remain voters, myself included, voted to remain despite reservations about immigration levels. Doubtless racism played a part, perhaps 2 million of those Leave votes representing the percentage that the BNP received in 2009. The racists didn’t stop being racist, they simply moved to a new home. But over 90% of the 33 million voters were not racists.
When you dig down further as to why people are concerned about migration there is a common theme. As a country we have hugely expensive housing whether buying or renting. We have a creaking and overcrowded public transport infrastructure that is painful to negotiate and roads with commuter jams at 6:00am. We have a healthcare system that cannot cope with the demand yet struggles to pay off PFI stupidity promoted by Brown. We have schools that cannot deliver the quality our kids deserve and in some areas are hamstrung by the number of children with a poor grasp of basic English. Our infrastructure was not built for the numbers of people now trying to use it, and yet still more come in never-ending numbers. Patience has snapped and we must deal with it.
Freedom of movement is a precious right, for me probably the most important, although when it was first established it was reasonably balanced. The freedom to import labour at will, whether for agriculture or high tech projects, is critical to our economic success. And the EU will not allow us the benefits of unfettered access to the free market without freedom of movement whatever fantasyland Boris is currently living in. So we are in a near impossible position. What we need in terms of free trade relies on conceding free movement that we cannot cope with.
But there is a way of squaring the circle that would work, and might appeal to other EU countries with serious migration imbalances and infrastructure on the verge of collapse. A quota system. Free movement for visitors and cross border shopping and employment. Free movement for study. Free movement for temporary workers for up to 4 months a year. Free movement within certain skills areas (the points based element). For permanent residence and employment outside these categories a quota set at the current level of EU migrants in the UK – let’s say that is 3 million, plus whatever the government set as sustainable with planned infrastructure, say 50,000. Once the quota is met you must wait until a place is relinquished (though exit from the UK) or further infrastructure improvements create more places. Integrate and become a citizen and you fall outside the quota system.
This will give our transport, healthcare, education and other systems breathing space to catch up with the population numbers whilst crops are harvested, technology and building projects are completed, hospitals are manned, and leaky taps are replaced. We would have an identical quota with the rest of the EU but frankly we’d never get near to using it all. This is fair, addresses the infrastructure inadequacies, allows all migrants here already to stay and is free movement subject to the ability of the host to cope. No land boundaries needed as the quota is on living and working not crossing the border. Who knows, it might just be enough to keep Scotland inside the UK too.
* Stevan Rose first joined the Liberal Party in 1980. Having flirted with the SDP and then New Labour, he switched voting allegiance back to the Lib Dems after Iraq and re-joined the party in 2014.
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37 Comments
To inform the discussion:
Q: When casting your vote, what was the most important issue in your decision?
The impact on…
All adults (%) Leave voters (%) Remain voters (%)
The economy 34 3 67
The ability of Britain to
make its own laws 29 53 2
Immigration 20 34 4
National security 4 1 7
The NHS 4 3 4
So 34% of Leave voters were motivated to vote that way because of immigration. Only 4% of Remain voters had that as a factor – presumably being more in favour?
Sorry the above table is not easy to read. Really need a fixed width font for it.
Source is Comres: http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Daily-Mail-ITV-News_EU-Referendum-Survey_22nd-June-2016_61021xh5.pdf
Once the quota is met you must wait until a place is relinquished (though exit from the UK)
My undert
or further infrastructure improvements create more places. Integrate and become a citizen and you fall outside the quota system.
Or we could just fix the infrastructure problems and stop blaming foreigners. How about that, rather than this constant stream of anti-immigration poison on what, last I checked, was supposed to be a liberal site?
It is important to remember that many people voted Leave for reasons that had nothing to do with immigration. Some voted Leave because they felt the EU to be an undemocratic institution, but would be very happy to keep the freedom of movement. Others were very much pro immigration, but disliked the fact that in the EU we were forced to have an immigration policy that discriminated against people from outside the EU.
“Or we could just fix the infrastructure problems and stop blaming foreigners. How about that, rather than this constant stream of anti-immigration poison on what, last I checked, was supposed to be a liberal site?”
Yep. This.
Once the quota is met you must wait until a place is relinquished (though exit from the UK)
My understanding from close relationships with people who’ve worked in asylum and immigration is that we have no idea how or who or when people leave the UK. We don’t keep track of it. And our system has such a huge backlog of people to get in to the country and stay here safely that I logistically cannot see any way for this quota system to be reasonable, even apart from the humanitarian aspect of the equivalent of standing at the door to the newsagent’s counting schoolchildren in and out to try to cut down on rowdiness and shoplifting sweets.
or further infrastructure improvements create more places. Integrate and become a citizen and you fall outside the quota system.
How is this going to be quantified? How much infrastructure does one person need? We’d need different rates for parents, disabled people, young or old people surely. Who decides and monitors this? How much does that job cost? I’d rather spend the money on infrastructure than on bureaucracy to decide who’s worth it.
I’m a currently-unemployed, disabled immigrant to the UK, and I fear a quota system would not let have let me in with my British spouse. I see no liberalism in this idea.
@Catherine
disliked the fact that in the EU we were forced to have an immigration policy that discriminated against people from outside the EU.
I dislike that system too, as a non-EU immigrant. But as far as I can tell, all leaving the EU does is allow the UK to treat everyone as badly as it currently treats non-EU immigrants. And, being a non-EU immigrant myself, I can attest to how very bad that is.
When there are 98 white British people in the queue and 2 migrants it’s time to say that it *is* racist to blame the migrants for not being able to get a house.
Stop making excuses for creeping bigotry and start saying that our problems are in our own hands to solve. And in many cases migration *helps* us to solve them.
with regards my previous comment: that was not directed *at* anyone other than the Farage tendency at large in the UK
You cannot accuse people being racist and just write it of as bnp, thats sweeping it under the carpet and the usual sweeping comments of an out of touch liberal. You need to know what makes people fear immigration, why do people feel that way. Which means talking. Any lib dems prepared to talk or are you going to throw them away as not liberals. Also most people who voted leave voted for the EEC in the 1970 and voted leave now. A political union should never have been installed by stealth by generations of politicans
Holly, I should emphasise that I did actually vote Remain – and campaigned for Remain. But I know some people did vote Leave because they were unhappy about EU immigration policy discriminating against people from outside the EU. And I do feel that one positive thing that might just possibly come out of Brexit is that there might just possibly one day be a system in which priority was given to those who have the greatest NEED to come to Britain – whatever part of the world they are from
I can’t think of anything that would 1. make the UK more unattractive for financial services and 2. destroy the carefully woven fabric of Northern Ireland because of historic free movement between Ireland and Britain than controls on immigration.
Non-EU immigration outstripped EU immigration in 2015 – something that was always under the control of the UK Government. Investment in infrastructure and services has always been under the control of the UK Government. Penalising hard working Irish or Polish people who have always contributed more to the United Kingdom than they ever took out of it, and appeasing the fools who believe that is the solution to all the United Kingdom’s problems is an act of folly at the very least.
The numbers coming from the EU to us were completely manageable. There were no food shortages, there were no car shortages, there were no clothes shortages. The shortages came in our infrastructure and public services, where our over-centralised lethargic government failed to respond to increased demand. The solution is to fix government, not to cut immigration.
Duncan — exactly.
Catherine — “And I do feel that one positive thing that might just possibly come out of Brexit is that there might just possibly one day be a system in which priority was given to those who have the greatest NEED to come to Britain – whatever part of the world they are from”
I think that is staggeringly, *staggeringly*, unlikely when even Lib Dem Voice is posting constant articles that might as well be titled “Immigrants: Threat or Menace?”
Why should being born in the UK give you any more right to live in the UK than someone that wasn’t?
Andrew, well, yes, perhaps it is unlikely. But as liberals, we should be making the case for the most liberal possible immigration policy. I just meant that theoretically it would now be possible to introduce a far MORE liberal immigration policy, with priority given to refugees, asylum seekers, and others with the greatest NEED to come to Britain. In a truly ideal world, I would like there to be free movement for everyone, throughout the world. As this is not an ideal world, I suppose there do have to be some controls. But controls should be in the context of priority to those with greatest need.
I think one point that I did make a couple of times to people whilst campaigning for Remain was that economic migration, by its very nature, is self-limiting. If people move for a better life, if the place they move to has no jobs and no housing, they wouldn’t move there. This is why migrants in general do not move to Sunderland or Ebbw Vale (few jobs), and why UK residents don’t all live in Knightsbridge (no housing at reasonable cost).
Catherine, I definitely agree that we should be doing more to help non-EU immigrants. I just don’t think that this will turn into an opportunity to do so. As Holly says, it’s likely to just mean knocking EU immigrants’ rights down to the level of everywhere else, rather than pulling non-EU immigrants’ rights up.
If you look at surveys on attitudes to immigration a clear majority wants it lower, The BBC had a figure of 77% and even Channel 4’s had the figure of 65%. Immigration played a part in the Referendum, but it wasn’t the only factor.
The other problem is a tendency to see politics as only an economic argument, but countries and peoples are not just economic units. People are tribal, they tend to stick to their own cultures and that is as true of migrants as it is of locals. The point being the larger a migrant community gets the less it needs to integrate. The assumption of multiculturalism is that only the local population is not progressive enough to mix. However, this is plainly not true.
Glenn — and if you look at election results, only 8% of people want a Lib Dem MP. Public opinion can be, and often is, wrong. When it’s wrong, we should say so and campaign to change it, not capitulate.
Andrew, yes, I understand your pessimism. And I agree that its very sad to see people on Lib Dem voice going on about “controls on immigration.” I just feel that as liberals we should be optimists, trying to salvage something good from disaster. Therefore we should be arguing for a fair and liberal immigration policy, with equal rights for people from every part of the world, with priority always given to those with the greatest need.
Catherine, I agree with most of that. I’m just not a very optimistic person, though :-/
“The freedom to import labour at will…”
Freedom of movement is *not* – at a foundational level – freedom of the corporate employer to import.
It is freedom of the *individual* to choose.
Freedom of movement when the countries involved have very similar standards of living is not a problem.
The issue is that the former Soviet Bloc nations that joined the EU have much lower wage levels, so there are very few genuinely reciprocal opportunities for UK citizens to move to those countries and earn even what they would here, let alone several times that sum.
There are two kind of pressures which have been pressing the reaction to the wave of EC immigration. One is cultural (EC immigration has reached many parts of the UK left almost untouched by commonwealth immigration. Some of this is racist, much or it just extreme nervousness about the unknown, played upon mercilessly by Farage, Gove etc.
The other major issue concerning EC migrants has been due to infrastructure issues. This is largely unfair to blame upon the migrants or the EU. Both this present government and the Coalition before it and the Labour crew before that also have all relied heavily on a culture of central denial and reliance upon the magic private sector to produce solutions to problems which have been totally predictable and pretty measurable since almost day one. The ludicrous rubbish of ‘sustainable development’ meaning the building of estate after estate of new semis on green belt land which are neither wanted by or affordable by those who are on the housing list and which will only be occupied by people who will abandon homes in town and city centres contributing to further desolation and cost. No one seems to notice that these estates will also bring about increased petrol usage as their occupants will all have longer car journeys to their work and leisure each week than previously. No, we are not serious at all about climate change. 🙁
I find myself in agreement with Andrew Hickey on this.
This is about what sort of party you want to be. Are you a centrist party that follows public opinion no matter how dark the alley it heads down? Or do you want to be a principled liberal party that seeks to lead that opinion?
I don’t see why I should be allowed to move to the continent if I can’t speak the language of the country I want to move to sufficiently well. I can understand for temporary reasons, including study, but there is nothing wrong with having some migration controls and it’s not anti-migrant to say so.
Steven Rose is right that we can square the circle because other key European countries are concerned about migration too.
“Or we could just fix the infrastructure problems and stop blaming foreigners. How about that, rather than this constant stream of anti-immigration poison on what, last I checked, was supposed to be a liberal site?”
Double-plus this.
“the fact that in the EU we were forced to have an immigration policy that discriminated against people from outside the EU.”
This is news to me. Who was forcing us to do this?
As others have said, I’m very sad to see these immigrant-blaming posts appearing on a Lib Dem site.
An excellent article with positive solutions,a welcome change from the usual negativity.
Chris Bertram
You quote ComRes poll ,the same pollster that was telling us in their final poll Remain would win by 8%
@john – It’s the only analysis I’ve been able to find. If there’s another that tells a different story, then fine, let’s see it. But it passes the sniff test for me.
We need to realise that harping on about “anti-immigration poison” and treating Leave voters as if they were all racists, is a form of offensive denialism.
When a terrorist atrocity happens, we liberals rightly leap up to point out that Muslims should not be demonised just because of the behaviour of a small minority. When the white working class vote for Brexit, and a few of them also shout racist remarks, what do we liberals do? Do we leap up to point out that the white working class should not be demonised just because of the behaviour of a small minority?
If we don’t do that, then why do we treat white people differently from the way we treat brown or black people? Are we ourselves making a kind of reverse racist response? Or maybe we’re just a bunch of middle class snobs, who would share Emily Thornberry’s dismissive attitude to “white van man”? I hope we can rise above that!
I’m particularly interested in the increasing numbers of students who are included in the immigration figures. Last year there were 184,000 immigrant students arriving to our courses. A lesser number usually leave each year as some gain work after their courses. Most countries of the world include students in their immigration figures but many make special reporting clear about this valuable student population [valuable to the host country]. I think it was Vince Cable who wanted to make special reporting on student migration in and out of UK. The current government has a poor record on the data which records student leavers [as it does on all leavers who are temporary visitors without residence]
Info from: http://www.ons.gov.uk/…/migration1/…migration/student-migration…-/student-migration—...
Oops: Office for National Statistics – international student migration
There is nothing more racist than the current system which discriminates against non-EU immigrants.
Really David Evershed that is a ridiculous comment!
We are (still) in a European UNION, which treats all Europeans as if they were citizens of single country. After we leave I suspect people from Scotland will still be able to move to Yorkshire more freely than people from Pakistan – will that be “racist”??