How much is enough?

For too long we have allowed xenophobes to set the terms of the immigration debate. We do need controls over who comes, but better ones

by Paul Collier / September 18, 2013 / Leave a comment

The queue for visas outside the British Embassy in Sofia, 2006, before Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007. (© Rex/Ray Tang)

British immigration policy clearly needs overhauling. Desperate not to give succour to xenophobes and racists, social scientists have strained every muscle to show that immigration is good for everyone. Inadvertently, this has allowed the terms of the immigration debate to be set by the xenophobes, and for the question to be asked: “Is immigration good or bad?” This is the wrong question. We should be asking not whether immigration is good or bad, but how much immigration is best. And while some immigration is better than none, there are solid reasons for thinking that beyond a certain rate it can be excessive.

Effective controls on immigration, therefore, are neither an anachronistic vestige of nationalism and racism, nor merely the obsession of paranoid xenophobes: they are going to become increasingly necessary in all the societies in which diasporas have accumulated. In the absence of effective policies, immigration tends to accelerate. The reason it does so is straightforward but is little understood and has only recently been decisively established by research. The single most powerful influence on the rate of immigration is the size of diasporas (meaning those immigrants and their descendants who have chosen to retain strong links with their country of origin). They are crucial for the rate of immigration, especially from countries which are poor and distant, because migrating is expensive. Most citizens of poor countries simply cannot afford the costs and risks. This is why immigrants tend to be from middle-income groups rather than the poorest. Having a relative in the country of destination dramatically lowers the costs and risks. As immigration fuels the diaspora, and the enlarged diaspora fuels immigration, it accelerates.

If migration accelerates it is liable to rise beyond the range at which the benefits of further migration exceed their costs. Britain, like other high-income societies, has only had six decades of immigration and so diasporas have grown gradually from negligible beginnings. For much of this time they were small enough to keep entry rates modest. This phase is over.

The process of immigration fuelling diasporas and diasporas fuelling immigration can either spiral explosively until the country of origin has been depopulated, such has occurred in Northern Cyprus, or else it will eventually…

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Paul T
September 23, 2013 at 13:16
I can't agree more with this. I am married to an Indian immigrant, and we both have real concerns about the type and rate of immigration, but the subject is virtually taboo with many of our friends. As a society we need to start talking about this subject in a calm and rational manner. The UK border agency processes are an absolute joke, misleading and very very slow (trust me, we have been through this) - but this is a symptom of the strain the system is under due to the unprecedented scale of this mass migration we are seeing now. I would see this as something to turn away the very high caliber immigrants we actually want. I do hope someone in the Tory party is reading this...
cymrugel
October 14, 2013 at 16:22
I agree. I too am married to an Indian and we have lived here for all of our married lives. All countries will have some level of immigration; it is a question of the type of immigrants. Every country needs to attract highly skilled high-value immigrants to boost its workforce, though it makes more sense to train the indigenous community to do such work, rather than imports foreign labour with no stake in the UK other than a job. Such immigrants will usually come with a high level of ability to integrate - not least fluent English- and no cultural norms that prevent their having a meaningful relationship with the society around them or which clash jarringly with notions of civil rights and racial or sexual equality - or if they do, they have the ability to adapt. Few people will in fact notice such immigrants to any significant degree as they will by definition be small in number and easily integrated. However immigration per-se is not always a benefit. There is little point in allowing the arrival of large numbers of unskilled or semi skilled people who will, at best, occupy low grade jobs that will benefit no-one other than a small number of middle class people who want cheap servants - and that is the term whatever euphemism Guardian readers like to use - to clean their homes, cut their grass and look after their children. The only consequence of this will be to lower already poor wage rates for indigenous low skilled workers. This is the immigration that is really controversial and which if not limited and strictly controlled cause serious social tension and change the face of Britain. I do not wish to see several generations of painful hard-won progress simply set aside in order to accommodate cultures that are virtually unworkable in the UK; which fly in the face of modern western norms and which will reintroduce prejudices and social attitudes that have rightly been consigned to the scrapheap of history. Nor do I want to see such attitudes reintroduced simply so that a few middle class people can have cheap help and so that the likes of the Guardian can posture as open minded. Above all I do not wish to see my own countrymen reduced to penury by cheap foreign labour while the more fortunate sneer at them for being "lazy" because they will not work for beggars wages in their own land. It makes little sense to follow a policy of mass immigration as some sort of gesture of cosmopolitan tolerance in the fond assumption that people, who are spiritually living in the 15th century, will in a single generation become integrated members of British society, only contributing "vibrancy" (that weary word) to our culture, most of whom will struggle to find work and who will more likely be a permanent burden on the state. It is in fact an unjustifiable burden on the British taxpayer and on the British common wheal