Guardianistas facing reality over immigration
- From: MikeinCamden@xxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 12:01:08 -0700
The left can no longer afford to bury the migration debate
The gulf between the political rhetoric and people's experience of
immigration has grown too big to be ignored
Jenni Russell
Wednesday October 31, 2007
The Guardian
For years, the vast majority of politicians in the main parties have
avoided having an honest public conversation about the extent and
consequences of immigration. The fear of appearing racist, or of
giving any ground to the arguments of the far right, has left most MPs
and commentators in Pollyanna territory - extolling the economic and
cultural benefits of immigration and glossing over the problems. That
has done the nation no favours, because the consequences of rapid
social change have been scarcely studied, let alone addressed. And it
has increased many people's distrust of the political universe, as the
gulf between their own experience and the bland assertions of leaders
has grown.
Now that gulf has grown too big to be ignored. This week the
government admitted substantially undercounting the foreign nationals
who have come here to work in the past 10 years. Last night the Home
Office almost doubled its original estimate to 1.5 million workers,
and acknowledged that those workers had filled more than half the jobs
created since 1997. Meanwhile polls show that only 3% of the country
thought immigration an important issue 10 years ago; this month the
figure was 41%.
Suddenly immigration is back on the mainstream political agenda as a
subject more complex than a simple good-news story. Both main parties,
while careful to say that immigration has been good for Britain,
acknowledge the need to talk about its costs, and assert the need for
limits. David Cameron has called for a grown-up conversation, and
yesterday Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, said that policy would
be made in a new way in future.
The emphasis in both parties is on slowing down the rate of arrivals
with new border controls and immigration rules, and continuing to
restrict the right to work of citizens of the newest EU members,
Romania and Bulgaria. The problem is what little effect these measures
are likely to have. Border controls are unlikely to slow the arrival
of illegal workers, since most stay on without permission after
arriving legally. Nor can Romanians and Bulgarians be kept out
permanently since the point of the EU is free movement. As it is,
there is nothing to stop anyone from either country finding work here
without declaring themselves to the authorities. As for the huge
influx of skilled and employable Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians and the
rest, that too is a fait accompli. Unless the terms of the EU are to
be completely renegotiated, there is no going back on their right to
stay.
The dilemma for politicians and the country is that the availability
of cheap, willing and work-ready foreigners has been a key factor in
Gordon Brown's much lauded economic boom. But the social costs are now
becoming apparent. Social cohesion is one of them. People not only
find it difficult to adjust to sudden change; they also, as the
political scientist Robert Putnam has pointed out, feel less trust in
those around them when those people are of a different group. People
find it much harder to read social signals, and are afraid of losing
their own cultural identities. That makes them more likely to retreat
into their families and small social circles, and less likely to
participate in wider community life.
The worst affected are those who cannot compete economically with the
new migrants. Among 18- to 25-year-olds unemployment has actually
grown in the past few years. A substantial minority of young Britons
do not have the skills to make them desirable to employers. In the
past, businesses would have had a strong incentive to train them. Now
it is far easier to take work-ready migrants, often at lower wages
than a Briton would expect, and leave the untrained to languish. The
same is often true of older workers - men and women in their 50s who,
as Felicity Lawrence has documented in this paper, suddenly find
themselves out of work because they have been undercut by foreign
agency workers.
What politicians have to address is that workers will inevitably be
attracted here as long as we have jobs to offer. The movement of
labour, following the free movement of capital, is a fact of the
modern world. But the reason that there is such an appetite for
migrant workers here is simple: they offer more highly skilled labour,
at a cheaper price, than their British equivalents. Often migrants are
working illegally, at below the minimum wage, or having their wages
skimmed by gangmasters. There has been almost no political will to
prosecute companies or individuals engaged in these practices, since
the political priority has been cheap products.
If immigration is to be slowed, that policy would have to be reversed.
And there would have to be a concerted effort to develop real skills
in the British population. Both initiatives would require huge
expenditure and a strong political will, and would incur real costs
for consumers. But without them, announcements about bringing down
immigration will just look like political posturing, designed to
reassure anxious people and deliver votes without offering anything of
substance.
jenni.russell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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