Well,
there are only 3 weeks left (ish) until probably the biggest vote any of us able to vote will take for the next 50 years.
The EU referendum. As a topic, for a lot of people the single biggest turn off
since the first time they realised that their parents had sex. The reason for
that disengagement is varied, and consists of several strands according to
various insights and polls produced for our delectation. For some people it is
a lack of hard facts, for others it is the language and behaviour of both sides
of the argument – spurious figures, absolute certainties shared, fears
mongered. There is also some concern over the topics that the debate seems to
now centre on – immigration, the economy and control / democracy.
Now
this is only a little blog, so I am going to focus in on just one of these
areas – and the one that still a lot of people feel uncomfortable talking about
– immigration. It is probably the most pertinent and divisive of the areas.
After all, where were all these democracy warriors when the referendum on proportional representation was happening?
Probably best to set a few ground rules for myself though. Firstly, talking
about immigration, and the volumes of immigration, and the process for managing
immigration is NOT racist. Some views might be, but the subject itself isn’t.
It worries a lot of people, and so is well worthy of consideration. Secondly,
in any discussion about remain or leave there are a limited number of hard
facts. There is only evidence and expectation, assessment and opinion. But
where possible I will try to bring in what facts there are.
A lot
of the arguments about immigration really focus on one thing – the sheer VOLUME
of inwards migration of people from Europe and our ability to control it to
suit our needs. Indeed the UKIP Leader Nigel Farage has gone so far as to claim
that Britain “is in the grip of an immigration crisis” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-34348834
) and that we can’t do anything about it until we leave Europe – as they set
our immigration policy. But we need to pick this apart in to chunks that we can
consider, and see what stacks up.
So, we
should really look at whether immigration has increased to the UK firstly, and
whether Britain is particularly special in this. Next we need to define what a
crisis would be and whether what we are experiencing is one, and if we are, is
it being caused by immigration. Finally, we should look at specifically the
impact of Europe on that migration level, and whether leaving the EU would
help.
So, is
immigration higher now than historically? Well, almost certainly. Various
studies have been done on long term trends on migration. Just between 1960 and
2000 the growth in the number of people living outside of their birth country
is 100 million. That is 100 million more migrants in just 40 years (http://www.jstor.org/stable/27645348?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
). Clearly, that is a huge amount. But is this particularly surprising? Simply
factoring in advances in travel, our economies (and how we work) and the increase in the middle class, you would expect
more people to be living, working and settling overseas. So it is not unfair to
say that we are seeing more immigration now than before. But this is part of a
global trend. The problem with trying to put barriers in place for inwards
migration is that those same barriers then go up for outward migration too.
Are we
taking the brunt of this immigration (from a European perspective) in the UK?
Certainly there has been an ongoing attempt by the media to create a “moral
panic” about Eastern European flooding to the UK to either steal our low paid jobs or live off our benefits system (or from some
people, confusingly, live off our benefits AND steal our jobs). Actually, when
we look across Europe we are pretty much middle of the pack in how many
immigrants we have living in our country. This graph is from 2009, but is a
good indication:
( http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/sep/07/immigration-europe-foreign-citizens
). So whilst the overall average level for the EU is 6.4%, for us it is 6.6%.
Hardly evidence that we are an outlier in this case.
Still,
size isn’t everything. It is still possible this is a crisis. What should
really decide that is the impact it has on the receiving country. So even
though we are not receiving lots more immigrants than other countries it is how
they are affecting the indigenous populations that can really have costs (and
in some cases benefits). In fact the official Vote Leave campaign points out
two areas in particular – the NHS and
schools ( http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/our_case
). But also in other areas people genuinely have concerns – availability of
housing, access to jobs and the impact on our culture. All of these have been
raised as problems of uncontrolled immigration.
It is a
quite simple supply / demand question. You have to do one of two things -
either increase supply or reduce demand. "Get control of our borders"
rhetoric is about a belief that you can reduce demand (but there are strong
arguments it wouldn't have any impact). The alternative is to increase supply
of all of these things.
1) The
majority view of experts is that just in order to stand still in terms of
housing we need to build 250,000 new homes each year. No government has
achieved that since 1980. In fact, since the economic crisis in 2008
housebuilding has tanked (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-house-building
table 211). And I am not suggesting we concrete over the green belt – there
are £12 BILLION of empty homes in the North West alone (http://www.mancunianmatters.co.uk/content/070811937-housing-crisis-%C2%A312billion-worth-homes-lie-empty-across-north-west-according-report
)
2) When the
last coalition government had an opportunity to secure the NHS and pump extra
money in, they instead pushed ahead with a costly top-down re-organisation. One
which makes the NHS much more privatisation-ready. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31145600
)
3) LAs are
no longer allowed to open new schools where they are needed - these can only be
opened at the mercy of the open access academy system. This is purely to break
the link between those dangerous left wing county councils and school
leadership.
4) LA
funding and social services funding has been strangled on the back of an
austerity drive which has ADDED to the national debt, not taken away from it.
5) We are
currently told by the government that we have the lowest unemployment figures
in a long time at 5.1% and holding (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36320028
).
So really, this crisis is not one
made from too much demand, but one created by too little supply. Quite simply,
our governments have created this issue. And migrants are a handy scapegoat for
us to blame. Of course, all of these things have to be paid for, and have a
cost to the economy too. How can we do that?
Well, migrants are actually net CONTRIBUTORS
to our economy (http://www.cityam.com/213058/eu-immigrants-contribute-463-second-uk-economy
) – in other words having migrants actually means we have more money to pay for
services even after taking account of the cost of providing services and
benefits to them. Where has this extra money gone? Over the period of
tory-imposed austerity that has led to many of these cuts the government have
managed to find the space to cut corporation tax to 18% - even though there is
zero evidence base this brings more companies and employment. The real pressure
on services has been created by the recent governments this country has had –
none more so than the coalition and current governments. I don’t deny that
there are crises in all of these areas – but the cause is much closer to home.
So, a fairly
fact informed consideration of immigration (I hope) and we haven’t yet
mentioned EU Brexit OR been racist (I REALLY hope). We should probably turn to
one of those two topics now – Brexit. How much of our immigration comes from within
the EU as part of freedom of movement rules? Again, trying to arm ourselves
with the best facts available, the ONS reckons that EU migration makes up less
than half of our inwards migration (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/migrationstatisticsquarterlyreport/may2016
). Not only that but MORE of the EU citizens coming here have definite jobs to
go to than ever before (about 60%). So most of our migration comes from outside
the EU, and those from within the EU come here with definite jobs. So if we
could stop EU immigration we would only be stopping half of the inflow – and a
half with a good track record of helping our economy.
Maybe that
would be enough? Perhaps cutting immigration in half would allow our
underfunded services to get back to an even keel over time, house building
could pick up etc. Well, there are still a couple of major challenges with that
suggestion.
The first is
that a lot of those services (particularly the NHS) rely on European immigrants
to fulfil their staffing requirements (http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/26/nhs-foreign-nationals-immigration-health-service
). A lot of other areas do too – construction being another. Not a great idea
when you are trying to increase housebuilding.
The second
problem is that leaving the EU does not guarantee that we would be able to
refuse rules on freedom of movement if we wanted to trade with Europe. All of
their other local trading partners who are NOT members of the EU have had this
stipulation placed on them. It is almost certainly one that the EU would place
on us too. So Brexit would not in any way guarantee us the ability to stop EU
migrants, whilst at the same time carrying lots of other risks. Quite simply,
Brexit do not know what would happen with free movement of Labour.
So, there you
have it then. It is not racist to be worried about the crises in public
services, in housing and in jobs. The problem is that you have been given the
wrong cause of the problem by political parties and media alike. It is much
easier for you to be told the problem is economic migrants (and by extension
the EU). Actually, the problem has been our own leaders. So if you are still
not sure which way to vote (and that will be many people given the way the
campaigns have run) do think carefully. But do one thing right – don’t make
your decision based on immigration. It is the wrong argument to be focussed on.
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