In what seemed an inevitability, Theresa May admitted the annual net migration cap was “unlikely” to be met. The target of 100,000 a year net migration to the UK has long been posited to be unrealistic, and Cameron’s “no if no buts” pledge to meet it impossible. Yet in spite of this every year the government has pushed every effort to bring down migration levels.
We’ve seen caps on the amount of skilled non-EEA workers, much to businesses’ chagrin. Barriers put in place on UK citizens naturalising partners, heartbreakingly splitting up families. Curbs on international students resulting in the first drop in international student numbers in 30 years. None of these measures have worked to bring down net migration levels, but each have threatened family life, the financial health of our universities and our businesses’ access to the top talent.
Moreover there’s little evidence that the public actually supports these measures. In public polling the public is unquestionably in favour of international students, with a plurality believing they bring in more than they take. Equally the public is in favour of professionals coming to the UK to work, with a majority seeing such workers as good for Britain. On spouses a solid majority support UK citizens naturalising their immediate family.
We should instead be having a debate on how to make the most of the benefits of migration to the UK into the future, given that so many of our opportunities are intertwined with the UK’s international outlook. We’ve established that migrants are net contributors to the economy, now perhaps it’s time to talk about how to make sure that economic benefits are evenly felt in a fairer, more responsible economy.
We know also that migrants help to improve pupil’s educational attainment at schools and that migration has a vital role in sustaining the NHS. How can migrants continue to build the UK’s education and health systems to make them as strong as they can be? Instead of investing in the politics of division, what about building solidarity around common issues – and common solutions.
In blind pursuit of hitting the migration cap the government has instituted several unpopular policies. The only possible reasoning as to why is that the rhetoric and debate around migration has become so prone to hyperbole and demagoguery that evidence based practice is being neglected. It seems vital that a sense of perspective and the voices of the rational are heard once again in the ongoing debate around migration.
In the build up to the General Election the Migrants’ Rights Network is working to give a voice to migrants and allies, who want a humane and fair migration system. Our Vote 2015 is our campaign to get political parties and candidates to pledge to build an immigration system that works for all. That brings talented workers and students to our shores, gives migrants the right to a family life and creates a hospitable environment where communities can live and thrive together. Our Vote 2015 launched today with a lobby of parliament, it’s incredibly vital that MPs of all stripes here our campaign.
* Benali Hamdache is the Campaigns Coordinator for the Migrants' Rights Network
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60 Comments
“We’ve established that migrants are net contributors to the economy,”
No. It’s been established that EU migrants contribute more to the economy, but migration overall has a net drain on the exchequer. It has not been established that migration increases GDP per capita – aka it doesn’t make us any richer. It has however been established that migration (at the level we have it) has pushed down wages for the lowest paid – http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/labour-market-effects-immigration
The fact is that immigration at this level is completely unsustqainable. What we are seeing is our country being split along ethnic lines as huge diaspora form and sustain themselves though mass migration. Just look at the ethnic make-up of London for example – http://www.theguardian.com/graphic/0,5812,1395103,00.html
This has a further problem of reducing trust (or as Oxford Economist Paul Collier calls it, “mutual regard”). We can see by the work of Harvard Professor Robert Putnam that highly culturally (N.B. not ethnic) diverse societies have lower levels of trust not only between cultural groups, but also within them. We can see this in our society by the focus on reducing benefits for example, in polling at the bottom of the last recession in 1991 a clear majority of the population (about 61% from memory) would have voted for increases in benefits, now the figure is less than half that. This is because our society has fractured along cultural lines, and the poor are often seen to be a different ethnicity and therefore are seen as “other” and the propensity to pass wealth down to those not seen to be part of the main cultural group is eroded. I find this very saddening. You also see this in the US welfare system, where the middle classes are mostly white and the poor are mostly Hispanic or African-American.
We should judge our immigration policy on the rate at which we can absorb and assimilate migrants (there is no ethical reason why we should not expect migrants to adopt British culture), and the large diaspora present in the UK is a clear testament that migration is running at a rate way above this. Exactly what benefit to our country is it to continually take in more migrants than we can absorb?
The manifesto to which you refer makes absolutely no reference to this. In fact within it’s stated aims it make no reference to creating a migration system that offers the best outcome for the citizens of the UK (the overwhelming majority of which have wanted to see immigration reduced for decades in what is supposed to be a democracy), simply shows how wide of the mark it is. The UK is a densely populated country (the 4th most densely populated country in Europe, England is the most densely populated), and migration in the long run is a zero sum game – the offspring of migrants are British, and will only contribute in the same way the rest of the population do – and we will just be left with a more crowded country in the long term. I didn’t see a part in the manifesto where we can house the 1 million extra people who come here every 4 years.
It’s for these reasons that earlier this year I sadly cancelled my party membership. I want the best outcome for my country and a migration policy based on evidence of what is best for the UK – the Lib Dems right now have the opposite.
Simple. We want control of our borders.
England is the most densely populated country in the EU. The rate of increase of population is the highest, as is the scale of immigration.
Our population is increasing by 1 million every two years. This rate is likely to increase due to the failure of the Eurozone. This rate is not sustainable.
It matters not what you think about the value of migrants, that is not the issue.
Hi Peter, don’t suppose you could provide sources for the facts you’ve presented there – some of them seem a bit suspect…
Can it be entirely coincidence that the day this terrible news for the Tories came out was also the day they chose to announce proposals for Devo-Max? I think not.
A big problem with the immigration debate is, I strongly suspect, that people are talking about different things. As I understand it the international convention governing the definitions of migration statistics means that EVERYONE moving to the UK is defined as an ‘immigrant’ – whether they come as a student, on a temporary secondment by a multinational company or as someone aiming to move here on a permanent basis because they think they can get better work than in their home country.
But … most people talking about immigration are using a more common sense definition that only includes the last of the above reasons to move – a permanent relocation from another country. That is why, as the post observes, they are relaxed about students and professionals coming here for a limited time and purpose.
So, if I am right what the government should do is collect the statistics on a more granular basis. They could then add them up one way to make them suitable for international consolidation and in another way that would be more useful to help the rest of us to understand what is going on – a way that shows international students as, well, ‘students’ and not migrants. Unless, of course they decide to stay on completing their course but that would presumably be a breach of visa conditions and ought to result in summary expulsion.
That said, I don’t think the case for the immigration – in the sense of moving here permanently for a better job etc. – is nearly as strong as many here believe. It’s true that migrants currently pay more tax than they take in benefits but that’s only because so many are young, without families yet etc. and of course because someone else has funded their education. As they settle down, have children, age need more medical care and eventually pensions the cost/benefit equation goes strongly negative.
It’s also the case that as long as there is spare capacity in the system – housing, transport, schools, hospitals etc. then adding more people to use them more fully does, by some measure, improve efficiency. However, we are way past that point so many people are experiencing degrading services. I am told the only reason for HS2 is because for capacity is needed to cope with increased population; the government doesn’t add those costs aren’t added to the cost/benefit calculations on migration but ordinary people do.
The problem is that most people are in favour of any specific immigrant they have met, but against immigration in general.
@ Daniel Henry
You are right, my main fact was a bit suspect. The BBC has the latest figures today. The rate has gone up again. Net migration to the UK rose to 260,000 in the half year to June – an increase of 78,000 on the previous year, according to the BBC. So, it is increasing at well over half a million a year with a frightening rate of increase.
The other facts can be established by looking at official figures on the internet.
We know also that migrants help to improve pupil’s educational attainment at schools and that migration has a vital role in sustaining the NHS.
It shouldn’t do. The NHS should be self-sustaining. If the only way we can keep it running is a continual supply of immigrant labour, something is going wrong.
I’m a bit reluctant to keep on replying to this sort of “immigration is good” article with comments putting the other side, because I’ve probably already done it enough now for people to think that maybe I do have a thing about it, and underneath I have some sort of racist motivation. However, I’m sorry, it’s just an annoying aspect of me that has generally done me no good in life – in whatever environment I am in, I always find I want to question the consensus and put the other side.
It concerns me that we liberals are so anxious not to be seen as racist that we churn out thought-pieces putting the positive aspects of immigration, and don’t even want to think about balancing factors. The consequence is that it then leaves it to those who are racist or illiberal or have some other unpleasant aspect to be the only ones putting the other side, and so gaining more credibility and support for doing so than they deserve.
We in this country OUGHT to be training the labour we need to maintain our existence. Health care workers are not like tropical fruit, something we have to import because there are physical reasons why it won’t grow here.
The problem seems to be that it’s easier and cheaper to let the hard work of training and development of the right sort of mentality for these jobs to be done abroad. Easier and cheaper to bring in able people from poorer countries who’ll work for low pay than to pay a wage that will sustain family life for people from this country.
In the past, government and companies would have had no choice but to make use of the human resources we have in this country. No “Oh British people are lazy and unreliable and won’t do that sort of work”. They would have had to put effort themselves into developing the right sort of attitude in the people they would have had to take on.
I wonder sometimes if the problem is that we are pushing too hard the idea that everyone should become some sort of
thrusting entrepreneur, and so not encouraging the different sort of mentality that is needed for many, perhaps even most, of the jobs that actually exist? This is the message I get when I speak to employers, who tell me that many young Britons are just too self-centred, think the world revolves around them, aren’t willing to get their hands dirty with menial work, won’t follow orders, lack self-discipline, and so on. Just maybe the attitudes that will bring you success in a very small number of careers (entertainment, politics, finance trader, … ?) aren’t the attitudes that are needed in the vast majority of careers?
To put these figures in context, the number of new homes built in England last year was 122,000, a 6 year high.
These new homes would not even accommodate the immigrants arriving in a single 3 month period. The migrants arriving over the rest of the year would consume more than another 3 years of house building start ups. By the end of that 3 years, we would have about an extra 2 million immigrants looking for housing.
Now consider that rate of increase on other aspects of infrastructure and services. It is not sustainable by any stretch of the imagination.
Some people would appear never to have been on a train or a plane from London to Glasgow. Or if they have they have never looked out of the window. There are vast tracts of empty land and deserted hillsides, hour after hour of nothing but fields. Why do people go on about this island being overcrowded? It is not.
How badly informed or paranoid must you be ? You must be very insecure and feel very threatened to write such things such as –” England is the most densely populated country in the EU. “. Peter 27th Nov ’14 – 12:47pm
@JohnTilley
So you’d rather we concrete over the countryside to continue this mass migration? Please tell me what benefit that would be? How would that make my life, and the life of my children better?
Peter is incorrect. He is not “the public”, but just one member of the public, or perhaps one member of a small group of like-minded members of the public. A much larger section of the public want something quite different.
Most people want, for starters, some rational explanations that jive with their experience. Some politicians say immigration is good for business and prosperity, others say it’s bad for jobs and culture. Who’s right?
Most people want jobs, housing, a health service, safety on our streets, prosperity, a place fit for children to grow up in. None of these are adversely affected by immigration, and some positively benefit from immigration. But these things have to be argued and demonstrated, and that is presently lacking – particularly jobs and prosperity.
So it would help a lot if the politicians actually did something about jobs and prosperity.
There are vast tracts of empty land and deserted hillsides, hour after hour of nothing but fields. Why do people go on about this island being overcrowded? It is not.
How badly informed or paranoid must you be ? You must be very insecure and feel very threatened to write such things such as –” England is the most densely populated country in the EU. “.
I have no idea whether it is true that England is the most densely populated country in the EU (except to make the pedantic point that England is not a country), but ‘there are vast tracts of open land that you can see from the window of the train’ is a very bad argument against it. This is because there is a difference between density of population and distribution of population.
It would be entirely possible for England to both be the most densely populated area in the EU, and for thhat population to be unevenly distributed such that there were ‘vast tracts of empty land’.
Again, I have no idea if this is the case, but how much empty land you can see from the train is entirely irrelevant to the question of how densely populated England as a whole is.
@Richard Dean
“Most people want jobs, housing, a health service, safety on our streets, prosperity, a place fit for children to grow up in. None of these are adversely affected by immigration”
1. Migrants do not create more jobs than they take. The ratio is about 7 new jobs for every 10 jobs taken
2. House prices and rental prices have risen as a result of migration, but about 10%. It is simple supply and demand, especially in the south east
3. Have you spoken to anyone in the NHS recently who works on the front line?
4. As for prosperity, mass immigration makes the poor poorer and the rich richer, so it depends who you want to become more prosperous?
5. If you are bothered about social cohesion, you will want to bring immigration down to a level that we as a society can absorb.
The vast majority of people in the UK want to see immigration reduced, that is exactly what “the public” want.
@Peter Smith
Funny. My experience of what people, the “public”, want is different from yours. I wonder why? I listen to may ordinary people. Who do you listen to?
may –> many (unfortunately I haven’t had the opportunity to discuss these things with Theresa!)
@Richard Dean
The polling data isn’t hard to find – http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-concern
You’ll see a clear, sustained majority in favour of reducing immigration.
The one thing that is sadly lacking in any debate on mogration is facts.
Many people in the UK have no source of information about immigration except the press. The mainly right wing newspapers go on and on about immigration – without any facts at all – and they willingly spout the views of Farage and other anti immigration spokespersons. The BBC are no better, constantly quoting the anti immigration ‘Migration Watch’ which is about as balanced as Nick Griffin on the subject.
And what do our leader and MPs do about it? Rather than stand up for decency and put forward the truth about immigration, they increasingly seem to spout anti immigration propoganda. There is of course one exception and that’s Vince Cable, but he’s mainly attacked for his views.
As the son of a German Jewish immigrant I despair at the depths that are being plumbed in the discussion of immigration and the deliberate confusion of free movement with immigration by Teresa May and others. I have tried arguing the case on the doorsteps and am simply told that I’m a liar because of the way this whole debate is being treated.
Let’s for goodness sake stop faping UKIP, the Tory and Labour Parties and realise that we won’t benefit in the slightest from following the crowd. We believe in freedom and in free movement of people and it’s about time we stopped being afraid to say so.
@Peter Smith
If you actually talk to people, and listen to what they’re saying, they don’t say what the polls say they say. They don’t start by saying that they want less immigrants, they say they want the things I listed.
If you then suggest to them that immigrants are preventing them from having these things, and if they believe you, then they’ll say yes, let’s have fewer immigrants. But that’s just because you’ve convinced them immigrants are the problem. If you’d convinced them that global cooling was causing the problems, the natural reaction is to say yes, let’s have less global cooling.
It’s not immigrants that are preventing people from having what they want. It’s the economy, stupid! – to quote a phrase. And it’s the inept and irresponsible politicians who prefer to blame anyone but themselves. And it’s the time-wasters like Farage.
The way forward for everyone is to tackle the real issues, not to find scapegoats. You won’t get what you want by reducing immigration, quite the reverse, you’ll lose. It’s our job to persuade you against that fate, I guess. Perhaps you could give us a clue about how we could do that?
@Richard Dean
You are saying that your anecdotes trumps every poll on the subject then? Really?
I’ve not managed to convince the entire nation that mass immigration is a problem – in their every day experiences people see society changing for the worse as it fractures.
“It’s not immigrants that are preventing people from having what they want. It’s the economy, stupid! – ”
That would be nice, if we had infinite resources and full employment.
“The way forward for everyone is to tackle the real issues, not to find scapegoats. You won’t get what you want by reducing immigration, quite the reverse, you’ll lose.”
I don’t think you can prove that reducing immigration would leave us worse off – it’s not just the economy that makes for quality of life. It’s social cohesion, the price of housing, the ability to get a job that also make a difference. I don’t remember anyone in the 1980s or 90s saying “we need mass immigration to make our lives better”. It’s our job to look at the evidence and to set the right direction for what is best for the people of the UK – adding another 1m people every 4 years will not do this.
I agree that “social cohesion, the price of housing, the ability to get a job … make a difference.” And that immigration doesn’t adversely affect any of those things.
And that immigration doesn’t adversely affect any of those things
It clearly affects social cohesion, though, because it increases the diversity of people within society.
You can’t go from a society mostly composed of people who are mostly the same with regards to culture and backgrounds, where everybody knows that everybody else is much the same as them, to one which contains people form a wide range of cultures and backgrounds, and not have social cohesion suffer.
Diversity is not an opposite to cohesion. Put another way, cohesion isn’t about being the same.
And the idea that everybody is much the same in any given culture is completely wrong. anyway In my experience differences between cultures are miniscule compared to differences between people in any given culture. Compare a top UK academic with an out-of-work labourer. Compare a miner and his manager. Compare the manager with the company’s owner sitting at a computer in a hedge fund office. Compare a couch potato with an athlete. Compare a UKIP supporter with a LibDem.
Everyone is an individual. Diversity adds value and interest to a society.
Peter, that 260,000 quoted was for a full year, not a half year as you said.
Might be better to check your own facts in future rather than demand other people check them for you.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/migration1/migration-statistics-quarterly-report/november-2014/index.html
I agree with everything Richard has said.
There’s been a number of governmental failures on a number of issues, (housing, services, etc) and immigrants have become a popular scapegoat.
If we could address the problems in our economy, immigration would become less of a political issue.
@Daniel Henry
I think you owe me an apology.
Net migration to the UK rose to 260,000 in the year to June – an increase of 78,000 on the previous year.
“In the year to June” means during the first half of the year.
If you had been aware that the annual level was 450000 last year, you would have understood the figures.
Let me clarify. By coincidence, the population increase is running at double the immigration increase in terms of numbers. The quote in my 6:33pm comment is direct cut and paste from the BBC online news. It is ambiguous and it was on that basis I made that comment.
My original post concerned population, which is over 1 million every two years. This is the real concern. The main contributors are immigration, longevity and birth rate. The birth rate is immigration driven too.
“in the year to June” means “in the 12 months to June”. Look at the first graph here. All the years up to 2013 have single bars, meaning the figures are being quoted “per annum”. The two bars for 2014 are “annualised” figures, ie. each one takes the actual net migration for 3 months and multiplies it by 4.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2851521/Cameron-s-pledge-cut-net-migration-lies-tatters-figure-soars-260-000.html
An example of lazy reporting! The ONS is just as bad, with their “in the year ending June 2014”.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/migration1/migration-statistics-quarterly-report/november-2014/stb-msqr-nov-2014.html
No, Peter. The year to June means the 12 month period leading up to June, the last year up to June. This is because there is a considerable delay in producing the figures.
I agree with the ‘former Lib Dem’ we should be training Doctors in this country, there are enough smart people, rather than stealing vast numbers of health workers from countries that need them much more than we do. Mass immigration of 250,000 a year is just utterly unsustainable. We cannot build the infrastructure and our culture and population cannot adjust happily to an influx of this magnitude. We are seeing the anger at massive immigration levels (in a period of high unemployment as well) in the rise of UKIP. How much further does this have to go before democrats accept that people are angry and do not want this.
We have actually been sustaining net immigration of around 200,000 persons annually since 1998 or so, so sure, we can sustain the current levels.
Since 1998 we had a period of 10 years of reasonably good economic times, followed by a period of 6 years of bad economic times caused, not by immigration, but by the global financial crisis of 2008.
This seems pretty clear evidence that immigration does not have an adverse effect on our economy.
http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/HTMLDocs/dvc123/index.html
@Richard Dean
“We have actually been sustaining net immigration of around 200,000 persons annually since 1998 or so, so sure, we can sustain the current levels.”
During which time house prices have trebled. I bought my first house in 1997 on a very modest salary. My children haven’t got a hope of buying any sort of house until they are much older than I was and earning a lot more money. Meanwhile the number of new homes being built, which was a historically low 190,000 in 1997-98, has sunk to 140,000 in 2013-14, despite the population going up (according to another poster) by half a million a year at present.
Clearly, it is not the fault of immigrants that we as a country seem incapable of getting our act together and building enough houses (in fact migrants no doubt build a sizeable proportion of what new homes do get erected). Nor are immigrants responsible for more than about half of the population increase. But the simple fact is that the housing market is subject to demand and supply like any other, and so long as we fail to sort this out, current levels of immigration can only be described as “sustainable” if you’re willing to see more and more young people priced out of housing.
As 260,000 people have arrive (net) into Britain in six months we can assume that about half a million will arrive in a full year. If we assume that they are all couples then we would need 260,000 new homes to be built for them. This makes our policy of having 300,000 new homes built a year inadequate. Maybe it is time we increased it to 550,000 a year.
With regard to the area of the UK that has been built on, it is only about 7%. So if we built 500,000 new homes a year for 20 years we will have increased the percentage built on by 1%!
@ Richard Dean
I think most people want jobs, a living wage and a home for themselves and their children and to be able to live comfortably. However for some people these are not possible or are harder to achieve because of immigration.
While we wish to allow the free movement of labour we have to address these issues and provide solutions to ensure that immigration does not lead to low wages, house shortages and homeless, some people becoming poorer and disengaged from society. As liberals we have to provide these solutions – building enough houses, ensuring wages are high enough, and ensuring that no one is left behind and are marginalised.
@Amalric
260,000 is the annualised figure. “in the year to June” means “in the 12 months to June”.
It is 260,000 for the period from end May 2013 to end May 2014.
There is no actual evidence that immigration makes these things harder to achieve for anyone. That perception is certainly there, encouraged by irresponsible politicians, but it’s not actually the case.
@Richard Dean
“Diversity adds value and interest to a society.”
Yes, to a point. Right now we don’t have diversity, we have a large series of mono cultural and self sustaining diaspora which in which there is actually quite limited interaction between different groups. We are way beyond the point in the value curve where more diversity makes society better. As Prof Robert Putnam has shown, it is actually a bad thing for society – http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/publications/insight/democratic/robert-putnam
“We have actually been sustaining net immigration of around 200,000 persons annually since 1998 or so, so sure, we can sustain the current levels.”
Sure we can sustain the level of immigration (I would say endure), but what level is actually right for the UK? We certainty can’t absorb this level of migration into our society.
“This seems pretty clear evidence that immigration does not have an adverse effect on our economy.”
It depends who you are. If you are poor it will make your poorer, and if you are rich it will make your richer. http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/labour-market-effects-immigration – overall the economic arguments for mass immigration are pretty weak and are often selective. The key point should be looking at what it does to our society as a whole, does it make our society better? All I see is that at current levels it’s split us into groups along ethnic lines through the creation of large diaspora. I don’t see this as a good thing.
“There is no actual evidence that immigration makes these things harder to achieve for anyone.”
As I’ve shown above, it pushes down wages for the poorest in our society. It also raises house prices and rents (see page 48 here – http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldeconaf/82/82.pdf – where it references a 10% rise in prices) – which is basic supply and demand. And as I’ve also shown, it reduces trust in society which reduces quality of life.
What you can say with absolute certainty is that migration at the level we currently have it does not have a positive impact on the lives of UK citizens, for those less well off it is particularly negative.
@ Peter – as others have pointed out, the figures are from last June to this June – so a year. I can understand the confusion though because it is an unusual time period to count from.
@ Stuart – my take on that is that we need to get our act together on house building.
@ Amalric – unless all 260, 000 are choosing to live alone then things aren’t quite as bad as you make out. 🙂
If our population was increasing by 260,000 purely through the birth rate would we be saying that was unsustainable? Or would we glad that the biggest problem we face as a country – our ageing demographic – was being sorted out?
“I’m a bit reluctant to keep on replying to this sort of “immigration is good” article with comments putting the other side, because I’ve probably already done it enough now for people to think that maybe I do have a thing about it, and underneath I have some sort of racist motivation”
It is impossible to argue for limits to immigration, or to question the liberal consensus that immigration is an unalloyed good without being accused of racism and xenophobia.
Trust me, as someone who has done this publicly for a number of years, I know whereof I speak..
@Daniel
I said as much myself. That would be the ideal solution. But on the other hand, if you let twice as many people on to a boat as the boat can take, and the boat subsequently sinks and people get drowned, then nobody would be impressed if you said “well the real problem here is that we didn’t build a bigger boat”.
IF we get the housing crisis sorted out (and most Lib Dems seem to agree that we have one) then net immigration on the scale we’re seeing now may become desirable again. But that’s some way off. We need a level of immigration that’s sensible given the way things are now – and it’s difficult to see how increasing the demand for housing by a quarter of a million per year is sensible at present.
Never in several decades of following politics have I witnessed an entire party just fail to “get it” in the way the Lib Dems are doing at the moment over immigration. Most people who are concerned about it are not motivated by racism at all (even a majority of ethnic minorities want to see immigration reduced), yet all the Lib Dems seem to want to do is accuse all and sundry of racism and xenophobia. The more you do this, the more popular UKIP will become.
@simon
“It is impossible to argue for limits to immigration, or to question the liberal consensus that immigration is an unalloyed good without being accused of racism and xenophobia.”
That rather depends on who you are. Clegg has stated that he wants limits to immigration, and that people who are worried about it have legitimate concerns and are not racist. He does not get condemned for it.
When politicians from other political parties say exactly the same things, they are condemned as racist by Lib Dems.
A good example here :-
https://www.libdemvoice.org/liblink-ibrahim-taguri-immigration-do-you-want-the-truth-or-something-beautiful-43506.html
The fact is that there is little difference in principle between Lib Dem and UKIP immigration policy. Neither party believes in unlimited immigration. Neither party wants to stop immigration altogether. Both want limited immigration of some sort – the difference is mainly where they draw the line. All this “pro” and “anti” stuff people are going on about is completely phoney. (It’s interesting to Google Clegg interviews on immigration from the time of the last election – he kept going on about how good the Australian system was in a way that can only be described as Farage-like.)
@Andrew R
“If our population was increasing by 260,000 purely through the birth rate would we be saying that was unsustainable? Or would we glad that the biggest problem we face as a country – our ageing demographic – was being sorted out?”
This is a zero sum game. By that argument you will just end up with an even larger older population when the migrants age, and then who will pay for their retirement? More migrants? You’re just storing up problems for our children.
The actual solution is to raise the pension age. As people live longer they will have to work for longer.
@Stuart
“Never in several decades of following politics have I witnessed an entire party just fail to “get it” in the way the Lib Dems are doing at the moment over immigration. ”
You’ve just hit the nail on the head.
The problem with the immigration debate is simple: “the UK has problems; the UK has immigration; the UK must, therefore, have problems due to immigration.”
The links between the two are often never drawn (mainly because much evidence shows them to most suspect at best), but it is the perception that has been drawn.
This narrative is compounded by the second line:
“Society is becoming different; immigrants are different; therefore, immigrants make society different.”
Again, there is no logical bridge often drawn between these two things (though it is more of a provable point than the first one), and more importantly, it is rarely shown as to why this is an innately bad thing – some people just think it is.
We had a lib dem on here talking about how his ward no longer having many ‘Cockneys’ in it was a bad thing, as such Cockney culture is somehow innately superior to the range of different cultures that moved in after it. (He also failed to mention that many of the ‘Cockneys’ to which he referred actually still owned these buildings, but rented them out now. I guess we know which possible caused this cultural shift and it was not immigration.)
@Stuart: first of all, this guy is not a Lib Dem. Second, as the anti-immigration crowd so often like to say, just because we disagree with you, does not mean we ‘just don’t get it’.
@ Richard Dean
Thank you for pointing out my error – 260,000 is for 12 months not 6 (I seem to be making quite a few errors recently I hope it will not continue).
However I have to dispute the idea that increased competition does not make things harder. (Demand and supply do affect these things.) For example if there were 3.2 million people (200,000 for 16 years) less in the UK then there would be less demand for housing and prices would be lower and there would be fewer people homeless. I also believe that employers would employ marginal people if there were not better educated immigrants to employ instead and so fewer people would be unemployed. I also believe then when there are fewer people unemployed wages have to increase and we would therefore have higher wages. This might also have had an effect on those who are not working for health reasons as being unemployed for long periods can adversely affects a person’s health and well-being.
The link http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/HTMLDocs/dvc123/index.html
has some interesting data. Up until 1994 the net increase was small and for some years there was a net reduction. I remember the late 1970’s when the public believed that the level of unemployment was too high. According to this website it was 4.5% in 1975 and 5.4% in 1979. If you look at the unemployment level since 1994 the lowest were for 2004 and 2005 at 4.8%. This level of unemployment would have been seen as unacceptable in the 1970’s. Therefore even in the good times there was by the standards of the 1970’s too many people unemployed. I don’t believe we should accept a level of unemployment that only falls to 4.8% as a good thing worth sustaining.
@ Daniel Henry
You are correct instead of 260,000 new homes needed, if they are all couples, only 130,000 would be needed. Maybe a more realistic figure would be closer to 150,000 but I don’t know what the split is. However I still think 300,000 new homes a year is not adequate and would favour 450,000 rather than 430,000.
@Amalric
I don’t think your calculations are correct.
If there were 3.2 million fewer people, there would also be 3.2 million fewer customers with money to buy things. So at first sight there would be less employment, because there would be less consumer demand. The smaller demand would means that there would be 3.2x million fewer jobs available, where x is the ratio of the number of people to the number of workers, But of course, there would also be 3.2x million fewer workers because of the 3.2 million fewer people. In summary, by leaving, the 3.2 million people have taken demand away with them, as well as taking supply with them, leaving the people who remain more or less unaffected.
Those 3.2 million people will also have taken with them the money they obtained by selling their houses. So there will be that much less money in the economy for other purposes, such as investment in new jobs. Are house prices really driven by demand? I don’t think so! House prices have doubled in the UK since 2000, but has demand doubled? Houses are more than homes, they are investments, and investors don’t like the value of their investment falling. They’ll find some way of keeping house prices high.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/11/global-house-prices
In summary, there’s no reason to assume that the people who remain will have higher wages, because of the reduction in consumer demand. There’s no real reason why house prices should come down, so they will not have any better chances of buying a house, and if rents are tied to asset values then rents won’t go down either.
A small fraction of those who have left will have been maintenance workers on infrastructure such as roads. So either there will be less maintenance after they’ve left, or society will have to employ a larger fraction of its workers on that type of maintenance. That may perhaps reduce the unemployment levels, but will it be enough to compensate for the financial losses as the 3.2 million people take their savings abroad with them? And if society is going to do that, then we may as well do it now, since our infrastructure needs more attention even before the 3.2 million people leave!
On the other hand, there will be 3.2 million fewer users of the infrastructure, so there will be less degradation due to use and so less need for maintenance (although there will still be degradation by the weather!). With fewer people travelling, there will be fewer train services, and fewer bus services, and bus services that are presently subsidized – such as country routes – may become so expensive to maintain that the government will be forced to cut them.
There will be 3.2 million fewer patients for the NHS to treat, and there will be a corresponding reduction in the numbers of doctors, nurses, surgeons, and tea ladies to treat them. There will also be 3.2x million fewer tax-payers to fund the NHS. And so on ….
… and … if employers employ more “marginal” people who have fewer skills than the people they replace, then either the quality of the products and services will go down, or prices for the same quality will go up … and …
All in all, having 3.2 million fewer people doesn’t seem to have any advantages at all, but seems to have quite a few disadvantages!
simon
“I’m a bit reluctant to keep on replying to this sort of “immigration is good” article with comments putting the other side, because I’ve probably already done it enough now for people to think that maybe I do have a thing about it, and underneath I have some sort of racist motivation”
It is impossible to argue for limits to immigration, or to question the liberal consensus that immigration is an unalloyed good without being accused of racism and xenophobia.
Trust me, as someone who has done this publicly for a number of years
Yes, and you illustrate the problem so well. You are just using the immigration issue to whip up ill-informed support for your party led by a City fat cat and financed by City fat cats, which spits in the face of the working class when it pretends it is on their side against the elite. Your party wants MORE power to the financial elite so they can oppress the working class more. The way you use this issue is a disgrace.
Dav
“You can’t go from a society mostly composed of people who are mostly the same with regards to culture and backgrounds, where everybody knows that everybody else is much the same as them, to one which contains people form a wide range of cultures and backgrounds, and not have social cohesion suffer.”
Of course you can.Have you ever heard of something called the British Empire?
The UK is more diverse in some ways but in other ways it isn’t. Many of the” ethnic groups” have in fact become anglicised and these groups are very diverse. I wouldn’t expect you to know what a Hakka is.They get about!
I grw up with Anglo-Indian neighbours so things weren’t as the same as you think they were.
I have never known a time in the last 60 years when I didn’t hear someone complaining about foreigners.
John Tilley is right about population density and the ‘concreting over the countryside’ myth. See here, for example:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18623096
UK 1.5%
England 2.3%
Scotland 0.4%
Wales 0.9%
Northern Ireland 0.8%
Or alternatively, as John suggests, look out the window next time you’re on a long train journey (or taking off from Stansted or Gatwick).
@ Richard Dean
I didn’t make any calculations. However you have made an assumption that I didn’t make. You have assumed that none of jobs these 3.2 million people do can be done by those who are not employed. In the 50’s and 60’s the marginal people were employed. As a liberal I don’t understand why you would support these people being left behind. There are about 2 million people who receive Employment and Support Allowance, 1 million who receive Job Seekers Allowance and another million who are classified as unemployed but don’t receive benefits. I also think there might be others who could work but are not counted in these numbers. There is therefore a pool of over 4 million who could replace the 3.2 million immigrants.
Therefore if those of the 3.2 million who are in work were replaced by some of the more than 4 million who are not working there would not be a great decline in general consumer demand and there would not be 3.2 million fewer jobs. There will not be fewer tax payers because the number employed will be the same just coming from different places – from the pool of non-employed people rather than from outside the country.
According to the link to the Economist that you provided house prices in the UK are overvalued by more than a factor of 20 but in 1998 they were only overvalued by a factor of 6. Therefore house prices are three times more overvalued now than in 1998 when you stated we could sustain an annual net migration of 200,000 a year. If we assume that each year 200,000 more purchasers and renters enter the property market than people exiting the market and then add 200,000 migrants each year this hugely increases demand and as we are not building enough houses to meet this demand prices have increased.
If it is difficult to fill a vacancy the employer is likely to increase the wage offered until they can fill the vacancy assuming that filling the vacancy is very important. If employers had to employ marginal people they would have to offer more flexible working and provide training so these people would have the necessary skills (as they did in the past).
The use of infrastructure is an interesting area. With roads and railways I would say that those not in employment do not put much strain on them, it is those in work who do. Therefore the amount of wear and tear caused by those in work will be the same no matter if they come from migration or the pool of 4 million not in employment. Therefore the reduction in wear and tear will not be great and if those who are currently repairing it were still employed the state of the infrastructure would be improved. With the NHS the time waiting for services would be decreased and there would be a reduction in demand and this might mean fewer people are employed but a better service is provided.
So just to recap the advantages of there not being 3.2 immigration would be house prices would be lower, rents would be lower, wages would be higher, there would be more flexible working, employers would provide better training and value their staff more, the infrastructure would be in a better state, the amount spent on welfare would be less, there would be millions of people fewer who are not in work. The disadvantages would be there would be less demand for school places and to use the NHS and so there would be less demand for health workers and this would mean the economy would be smaller. To me the advantages out weight the disadvantages, but it is not a choice that could be made. We are in the EU which benefits us and we therefore agree to be part of one market with its free movement of labour. We do need to accept the costs of free movement and the government should deal with the problems that the free movement brings.
@Amalric.
I don’t think I did that assumption. I reasoned that fewer people will mean less demand for goods and services, which leads to a situation in which employers will want to hire fewer people – otherwise they’ll end up with unsaleable stock or with service providers having not so much to do, both of which are unnecessary costs as far as an employer is concerned. The number of jobs lost , as a result of the falling demand, will be the same as the number of workers who have left, because it’s those workers and their dependents who created the demand that was lost. So the result is that no new jobs will be available for the people who remain.
Remember too that some of your 4 million will have been immigrants, and so will be part of the 3.2 million that you are thinking about as leavers.
All this argument about whether net inward migration is good for the economy, whether people really resent it all that badly, and whether or not there is room in Britain, is, in a sense, beside the point. It is arguable that there is room, that many of the indigenous population are quite tolerant, and that inward migration can be good for Britain. But:
European rules say that we must like it or lump it. European rules say that it doesn’t matter what we think, because free movement is unchallengeable. European rules say that just because the Dutch are used to whizzing across the border to shop in Cologne on a Saturday morning, therefore the British must expect EU migrants to whizz across our borders. European rules make a virtue of inflexibility, of sacred principles, of sclerosis. As a pro-European, I am bitterly ashamed to acknowledge that the Pope is right.
You don’t have to be UKIP, or racist, or anti-immigration, to recognise that an organisation that has no real democracy, cannot tolerate dissent, and cannot adapt to pressures to change, is an organisation with a problem. Today it is the UK who have exposed the problem. Tomorrow it will be a different issue and a different complainant.
Dinosaurs died out because they could not adapt. Europe, sadly, is heading the same way.
@ Richard Dean
The immigrants have money to spend here because they are mostly in work. If there were 3.2 million more children in the UK you wouldn’t believe there would be more demand. Of course if there were 3.2 million more holiday makers there would be just an increase in demand and if we didn’t have them there would be a fall in demand. So even if you didn’t consciously make that assumption you assumed that the demand created by these 3.2 million people (mostly being in work) would be removed and didn’t assume that most of that demand would still exist if people who are not now working did those jobs and so had that income. To be clear I am arguing that most of the jobs being done by those of 3.2 million in work would be done by the 4 million currently not working and therefore the number of jobs lost would not equal the number of migrants who are in employment.
Your last point is a red herring. If half of the 3.2 million were in my 4 million then only 1.6 million would be employed and this would leave 2.4 million to do those roles which still leaves 800,000 who are not employed at the end.
If there were fewer people not being employed than the number of migrants in employment then magically removing the migrants would decrease demand by the amount paid to those doing the roles that couldn’t be filled, and this reduced demand could produce unemployment or prices would drop to keep output the same or a combination of both.
By the way I am not thinking of anyone as “leavers”, we are discussing what could have occurred if the migrants hadn’t come compared with what has happened.
@Amalric
If, by employing one of your 4 million, an employer could make money when the 3.2 million are gone, then why can’t the employer make the same money by employing that one while the 3.2 million are still here?
@Richard Dean
“Are house prices really driven by demand? I don’t think so! House prices have doubled in the UK since 2000, but has demand doubled?”
I take it you’ve never studied economics. Demand does not need to double to bring about a doubling in prices. It depends (among other things) on how inelastic the supply curve is. Commonsense should tell you that the supply curve for housing is pretty steep – or at least it is in the UK, where we have been unable to get our act together and build enough houses for the past thirty years, even during times of booming demand.
You seem to be making a general case for a reduction in the population leading to dire economic consequences. Does this work the other way round then – will an increasing population lead to more wealth infinitely? If it does, shouldn’t we just have the kind of genuinely open-door immigration policy that even few Lib Dems seem to be calling for?
@Stuart
I’m simply pointing out that if we reduce our population by 5%, then we reduce a lot of other things by the same amount, and the result can be that there is not necessarily any change in balances between things.
Thus if the supply of labour and the demand for labour both reduce by 5%, there is no effect on the wage-setting process. There is also no effect on the unemployment rate, because the number unemployed and the number employed will both reduce by 5%.
Similarly, if the population increases by 5% immigration, the sides of many balances will both increase by 5%, resulting in no net effect on the balance. There will, of course, be effects in relation to things that are fixed, such as the supply of infrastructure in the short-term, but these things are likely to adjust in the long-term, through normal political and economic processes.
Any economist will tell you that the housing market is special, because houses are not just homes for people, they are treated as investments as well.
@ Richard Dean
You may be correct that there would be higher costs to an employer by employing one of my 4 million rather than one of the 3.2 million immigrants. However to someone in the 4 million this is not important and so those people who feel that it is vital for the UK not to have 3 or 4 million people not in employment when they could be it should not be a vital concern.
If there was not 4 million people not in employment who could be employed then your point about a reduction in population could result in less production and less purchasing. It is also possible that productivity could increase and wages are increased in line with the increased productivity and so there is neither a fall in production nor consumer demand.
However the demand for labour comes first and this initial demand for labour would not be reduced if no migrants were available. The resulting extra consumption from employing anyone would still exist so long as people from the pool of those unemployed can be employed. Once the pool of available people has been reduced there will be pressure to increase wages to tempt those already in employment to changed roles. If I am paying someone £8.00 an hour and there is a never ending supply of people prepared to work for that rate there is no reason for me to increase it. If however there is a limited supply I will have to increase it.
@Amalric
In economic terminology, the “demand for labour” is the demand, by government agencies and businesses, for people to work for them. It is not the desire that people have to be employed.
A business owner normally starts by assessing the likely sales, that is, the demand made by customers for products or services. As a result of that assessment, the business owner can work out how many people with what skills are needed, ie, what the business’s demand for labour is. No businesses employ people without having some confidence that they can sell the products and services that the employees provide.
So if 3.2 million people leave, business owners see loss of sales in the first step of their assessment. As a result, the demand for labour reduces.
@ Matthew
You said UKIP is a party of fat cats “which spits in the face of the working class.”
Don’t you think (apart from being rather over the top) that this is a tad condescending? As far as I am aware Nigel makes no secret of his schooling at Dulwich, and history as a Commodities Broker (a profession I happen to pursue as well, as it goes) and does not seem to find it as shaming as you clearly do.
Nor do Carswell or Reckless hide their public school, Oxford backgrounds. But if you join the People’s Army it doesn’t matter.
You see, the working class in places like Clacton and Strood voted for these two in droves. Are you saying they are stupid or something? That they can’t recognise a toff when they see one?
Can I put it to you, gently, that perhaps they do notice that Farage and our two MP’s aren’t remotely working class, but they don’t care?
They want immigration brought under control. The only way to do that is to leave the EU and the Free Movement of Labour.
UKIP is the ONLY party with an intellectually coherent policy proposition to being immigration under control. And the working classes don’t have to have university doctorates to appreciate that.
As Reckless said, UKIP is heir to the Levellers and Chartists. A radical movement from the bottom attacking the elite.
You as a Lib Dem MP manque (I think?) are a part of that elite. It is you who have been spitting in their face by allowing in unlimited immigration and supporting it publicly.
A policy no-one has voted for.
@simon
No, the electorates in Clacton and Strood simply voted for their sitting MPs. The votes were for the persons, not the parties. Farage is now in a difficult position, he cannot be the arbiter of UKIP policies in the House of Commons because he’s not there! If Farage fails to get elected in 2015, he’ll really have no future as a leader of that party, and Carswell and Reckless will change the party into something that’s civilized.
@ Richard Dean
When I use the term “demand for labour” I also am talking about employers wanting to recruit employees.
From time to time a business would look at how their business is running and determine if it would be more profitable if they employed more staff. Businesses are not all about salespeople.
I can agree that if magically the 3.2 million all disappeared over night businesses would have a problem, but that is not what I am talking about. We have agreed that 3.2 million people (net) have arrived in the UK since 1998 at the average rate of 200,000 a year. So I am saying that in 1998 businesses wanted to employ some of these 200,000 people but they could have employed different people – people who were not working. So long as they employed the same amount of people consumer demand would be roughly the same. You may argue that part of the demand for further workers in 1999 was because of the spending of the extra 200,000 but I am saying this extra demand would not disappear if those employed instead of being immigrants were people who were not employed.