How big an issue is immigration?
Very. Since 1997, net inward migration to Britain stands at around three million people (not including illegal immigrants). In 2004, Britain was one of only three EU states to allow citizens from the eight new central and eastern European member states to come and work without restrictions. Since that peak year, levels of migration have fallen as the economic downturn and sterling’s weakness made Britain less attractive. But the subject remains politically charged.
Why?
Economic worries are largely to blame. A survey for The Economist at the end of last year showed that, compared with seven other similar rich countries (five big European nations plus the US and Canada), Britain was the least happy about immigration. That’s despite having fewer immigrants (about 10% of the population) than all but two of the eight countries surveyed. Britons don’t particularly blame immigrants for crime, and they are not especially worried about cultural clashes. What they are worried about is jobs. They are also particularly keen on stronger border controls – an oddity, since most illegals are over-stayers rather than illegal entrants. Meanwhile, workers from outside the EU make up only a fifth of immigrants, once students (who pay lucrative tuition fees) are excluded from the figures.
Are concerns over jobs justified?
The classic argument used against immigrants is that they suppress wages for existing workers, especially at the low end of the wage scale. They also discourage employers from helping develop indigenous workers with low skills or abilities. Yet many of the jobs taken by, say, Poles and Lithuanians are minimum wage positions, where the downward pressure on wages is insignificant or nil. Moreover, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that Britain’s long-term unemployed are not desperate to do the poorly paid, extremely tiring and hard jobs often taken by eastern Europeans. In other words, Britain needs to import workers or export jobs – or else radically rethink the ways in which its social security motivates (or doesn’t) low-skilled workers to seek work.
What is proposed?
All the main parties have a broadly similar – and similarly illiberal – stance when it comes to immigration. The Labour party claims credit for slowing immigration in the past two years by adopting a points-based system aimed at keeping out low-skilled workers. The Tories’ solution is to put a fixed cap on numbers: they say they will reduce inflows to “tens of thousands”. Both downplay the fact that the vast bulk of immigration is from EU countries (which they cannot stop) and both ignore Britain’s need to attract more skilled workers, not fewer.
What about the Lib Dems?
Their points system would aim to attract new immigrants only to areas of the UK (such as Scotland) that are relatively underpopulated. David Cameron has ridiculed this policy as requiring “border posts on the M62”. But the Tory leader is being disingenuous. In fact, all migrants from outside Europe already have to be sponsored by an employer: what the Lib Dems are proposing is a system that gives more points to migrants coming to work for employers in certain areas. The Lib Dems also differ from the other two parties in their plan for “earned citizenship” for “undocumented” migrants who have lived here for ten years.
Is that in effect an amnesty?
The Lib Dems don’t like to call it that, and you won’t find the word in their manifesto. However, in short they are indeed proposing a de facto amnesty for illegal immigrants who have been here for ten years, albeit with conditions attached. They would have to speak English and have no criminal record, for example. Also, the proposal would only apply to people already here, not to new arrivals from 2010 onwards. But even so, critics – from Gordon Brown to the Daily Mail – complain that amnesties just encourage even more people to chance their arm.
Is that likely?
There’s no way of knowing for sure whether an amnesty would open the floodgates. The example most often cited by analysts, the US, suggests it might. In 1986, some 2.7 million illegal migrant workers were granted an amnesty; 14 years later there were around 9.3 million illegal immigrants in the country, many of whom had come to join family members. More recently, Spain and Italy have implemented amnesties and still have large numbers of new arrivals. On the other hand, Britain has been operating a de facto amnesty after 14 years since the 1980s, a concession that was formalised in 2003. So some argue that cutting the limit to ten years hardly seems likely to cause a fresh stampede.
How many illegal immigrants are in the UK?
It’s impossible to say with certainty, as Nick Clegg was obliged to concede last week during a Radio 1 phone-in. This week, a study from the anti-immigration pressure group MigrationWatch put the figure at 1.1 million. A separate report from the London School of Economics puts the number at 725,000, falling to 250,000 if the ten-year rule applied. The LSE report suggests an amnesty would cost £1bn in extra demands on public services and benefits. But Boris Johnson, the Tory mayor of London who commissioned the report and also favours a one-off amnesty – after five years – reckons it would still provide a net £3bn boost to the economy.