Immigration must serve British interests

We need a serious national conversation on immigration

by David Goodhart / January 25, 2013 / Leave a comment

A 2008 citizenship ceremony in London (© Getty Images)

Last week saw two notable interventions in Britain’s rolling debate about immigration and integration. Both of them felt rather anachronistic, almost historical commentaries on a debate that has since moved on. First was another speech from Eric Pickles, the secretary of state for communities and local government, which had nothing new to say by way of analysis or proposals—beyond the usual plea for newcomers to learn English. This is despite the fact that he was speaking just a few weeks after a vast deluge of new information emerged about integration, or the lack of it, from the 2011 census. More of Pickles later.

The other intervention came from Matt Cavanagh and Sarah Mulley from the IPPR, who proposed a new list of basic principles that should guide progressive thinking about immigration. Matt is a friend and someone I have learnt from: he was often a voice of reason on these issues when Labour was in power and he worked for David Blunkett and later Gordon Brown. (Sarah I know less well.) This is an ambitious and in some ways admirable project—trying to establish some first principles for the centre left—but I can’t help thinking it is at least 10 years too late.

First some things about the statement that are welcome and sensible and have not always been said so unequivocally from the centre left: public concerns about immigration are real and legitimate, and in most cases do not stem from racism; the public are not just dupes of a reactionary media, so better communication of the “correct” attitude is not a sensible approach; cultural and psychological factors matter as well as economic ones and countries do have an absorptive capacity; and the distributional effects of immigration should be central to the economic benefit argument.

What I don’t like so much is the fact that there is also plenty of rather elaborate restatement of very familiar, and mainly unexamined, centre-left views: there is the standard triangulation trope, and the surely inaccurate claim that the most prominent voices in this debate are often “extreme ones”; the current government’s policies are dismissed as wrong and damaging largely without evidence or argument including the standard attack on the “tens of thousands” target as raising expectations that are likely to be disappointed (though to be fair the IPPR has gone into more detail on this elsewhere); and there is the underpinning assumption that immigration is of significant economic benefit, even if there are costs that arise from it.

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Comments

Philosopher's Beard
January 26, 2013 at 12:56
Oh dear. Please do not try to comment on economics. All you have to give is nativist mercantilist assertions of the kind Adam Smith thought he had put to rest 200 years ago. 1. You seem to believe that remittances reduce the size of the British economy! Yet every pound 'sent' abroad must eventually be spent on British goods and services. This is economics 101. Think about it. What else can pounds be spent on? 2. The real problem is made in Britain: inequality second only to America's. Too many British people are basically unemployable because of the failures of entrenched poverty and the education system. They are not competing for jobs - no one wants them. It is a mistake to see Poles as stealing jobs that would not have been there if they hadn't come (that is the lump of labour fallacy) 3. Your proposals for reserving some jobs for British citizens are not only odious, but ridiculous. It means only British could compete for those jobs. But those unemployable British youth from deprived areas would still never get them, unless you had a special quota for people who can't read or count. 4. You conflate the 'cultural' with the economic aspects of immigration to give an argument about perceptions (i.e. race) a veneer of objectivity. The biggest reason immigration has become such a controversial issue recently is that British people of a different colour are turning up outside London in large numbers for the first time. http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21568396-britain-becoming-more-its-capital-city-london-effect That is a perception problem not an integration problem (integration into British life, culture, values, labour markets, is actually much better now than in the past)
Isa Ko Chet
January 26, 2013 at 21:02
I have been trying to launch a debate in those terms for Spain (from my humble web site), but people prefer to close their eyes in front of reality. There are political, economic and philosophical reasons to curb immigration. The exponential kinetics of the increase of unemployment in Spain suggest that this problem will be the main reason driving us to quit the euro. With 26% unemployment -6 million people- we are still receiving in net terms about 150 000 immigrants per year. The sinergy of geographical (Africa) and linguistic (Latin America) factors explains why that has become unstoppable without a radical change. For every euro we hardly save to reduce the debt, two or three will have to be spent in social aids for unemployed immigrants and their big families. But this issue is the big taboo nowadays in this country. Everybody prefers to point to Merkel as the real devil.
Stuart Williams
January 27, 2013 at 12:07
Re: the lump of labour fallacy. I think it's generally expressed as there being a fixed *demand for* labour, rather than a fixed *supply of* labour. Some writers think the number of jobs available is equivalent to the supply of labour, but the latter is the number of people seeking employment, not the number of vacancies that employers want to fill. And speaking purely for myself, the impact on my living standards of skilled immigrants since 2004 has been excellent. In 2002 I paid an English electrician £50 for 30 minutes' work. In 2012, I paid an English electrician £75 for 2 hours' work. I put that down to competition. It is very hard to sympathise with builders, electricians and plumbers whose incomes have fallen from (potentially) 70k to 40k. Only an anecdote, I know, but I wonder if this kind of consumer benefit has been fully accounted for in the studies you and others have made.
Geoff332
January 29, 2013 at 11:19
In response to the, "immigrants are stealing our jobs" meme, I am always a little suspicious. There are two ways an immigrant will get a job over and above a local worker: they can either do the same (or similar) job for a lower cost (lower pay, worse conditions, etc) or they can do a better job for roughly the same cost. Solving this problem by limiting immigration is a poor solution that misses the actual problem. These two issues should be dealt with separately. The pay and conditions argument is best addressed through a combination of regulation and competition. Regulation is needed to ensure that all workers enjoy reasonable pay and conditions. Competition is about whether or not the 'native' workers are willing to work for those reasonable pay and conditions. If they are not, then UK workers are uncompetitive. This will hurt the UK both domestically, by increasing cost of living and internationally, by decreasing the competitiveness of UK production. On the other side, the employability of 'native' workers has similar consequences: either UK companies can't employ anyone or they are forced to employ less able workers. Neither is good for either domestic or international competitiveness. The solution is about improving education and training. There may be a sensible attitude of using paid training (e.g. apprentices) to bolster the employment and training of local workers. But more important is to improve the quality of education provided.
Tiny Tina
February 2, 2013 at 19:35
The comments above and the article itself all seem to generalize that the jobs that are being filled by the immigrants are those not wanted by British workers. It paints a picture of all the unemployed British people not wanting these jobs so they have to be filled by others. This is simply not the case and I am wondering where the evidence for this is. Has there been any serious study conducted or is it all anecdotal from the Daily Mail.
John Turvey
February 4, 2013 at 08:38
I've yet to feel enriched by mass immigration. I have experienced too much overcrowding though ! Which is not good or healthy.
Viano
February 11, 2013 at 16:05
Like so many have already said. Immigrants often take those jobs that are neglected by the natives. Also, they are given the jobs because they have what it takes to make the company proper. You cannot expect a company to employ someone who has no skills or training simply because they are natives.
Zahra Patel
March 23, 2013 at 08:32
Immigration immigration immigration. When will society realise time has moved on from the 19th century, all this 'my country your country' has to stop. Each country is adapting a new multicultural society in its own way. Simply because you and your anscestors are born in a country doesnt make it 'your country'. Where does this immigrants rivalry come in- your all humans, all equal, all the same. However different we may look, we are all one type of species. Therefore understand the situation, try looking at the situation through the eyes of an immigrant. Times moved on, theres no point startig discussions on why theres so mamy immigrants in the UK today, rather focus on the future and how we could all make society better. Ps. The world belongs to everybody
Raymond
March 23, 2013 at 10:06
I have also read David Goodhart's Saturday Essay in the Daily Mail on the epic mistake the left has made on immigration. Mr Goodhart has over some time now re evaluated previous held beliefs. I can only hope both these well written articles be made essential reading for the Westminster elite. Unfortunately our leaders, movers, and shakers, need all the help they can get to stimulate their thinking matter.
James
April 17, 2013 at 12:13
A wonderful example of how muddled your thinking can get if you are trying to wrap up your innate dislike of foreigners in layers of flawed argumentation.
John Turvey
April 17, 2013 at 16:18
I got a solution give me back my Cockney heritage. The heritage that has been destroyed by the Banking elite who's quest for mass cheap Labour, immigration, is vast. Leaving the cockney's Marginalised in there own town of London. No doubt the Multiculturalist's don't care about this fact. ! Leftist's don't care about the poor white communities of Britain. They're only interested in the welfare of immigrant's
DismalScientist
May 4, 2013 at 23:24
A thought-provoking piece. From an economic standpoint, those who wish to limit the scale of immigration must be prepared to retard globalization. Labour and capital are merely factors of production. Restrictions on free global mobility of labour must go hand in hand with limitations on free mobility of capital. If news reports are to be trusted (Independent, Dec 2012), the UK's largest private sector employer is an Indian company. The social argument against immigration reveals the emergence of a more insecure mindset: the fear that our identity will be buried in mass of strange tongues and religions. Really? Surely our culture is more robust than that.