How Labour really got it wrong on immigration

At the moment, British political parties appear to be in a race to the right on immigration. Theresa May has made many announcements about how Labour 'got it wrong' on immigration and that the Tories now have to fix the 'mess' in which Labour left the country. Now Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party, has acknowledged that Labour let in too many immigrants.

Most of the discourse now follows this pattern:
1. We have too many immigrants and we don't know what to do.
2. Why, oh why, did we let so many people in?
3. Immigrants take money out of the system and take British jobs away from British workers.
4.Net migration is out of control.
5. We have to stop immigration.

However, all of this misses several important points.
1. At most, immigrants have no effect on the economy.[Footnote 1] They have no access to the benefits system, unless they are applying for asylum or have received recognition as a refugee - and these benefits are meagre. There are a wide range of estimates about how much immigrants contribute to the economy, but, with the exception of Migration Watch, both government estimates and a wide variety of think tanks have concluded that immigrants have a neutral to positive impact. Furthermore, the Migration Watch figures are problematic in their treatment of the numbers.

2. Immigrants, even when they qualify for benefits (which is generally limited to contributory benefits into which they have already paid or to those who hold the status of permanent resident or refugee) are far less likely to apply for benefits than British nationals.

3. The majority of illegal immigrants are estimated to be visa overstayers. This means that they entered the country legally but did not leave when their visas expired. The number of people entering through people smuggling operations, or hidden on various means of transport, are small in comparison. This is connected to point 4:

4. The UK doesn't have exit checks, so the Home Office has no actual idea how many people are actually in the country. All figures are based on estimates, samples from the International Passenger Survey and educated guesses about flows of people. This is part of why so many of the illegal immigrants are visa overstayers. As long as these immigrants work in jobs that don't ask for ID checks and they don't appear on the police radar, try to apply for benefits, or leave the country and try to re-enter.

5. The government can't stop most immigration, as the majority of immigration is family members, protected persons (refugees and those given other exceptional leave to remain) and EU migration. Subtract student immigration, which has no rights for post-work study any more, and there is a relatively small percentage of immigration that the UK can limit.

6. The current government has politicised net migration figures, which means people coming into the country with intentions of staying a year or more minus those leaving the country with intentions of staying away for a year or more, thus excluding tourists, short-term business trips, and short-term academic exchanges. Net migration has not been dropping, but immigration has been dropping. Net migration has not dropped because fewer Brits are leaving to live abroad.

The most important point, though, is this:
7. Without the immigration rates under Labour, the UK would already be facing demographic change similar to Germany. This would mean much higher burden on the pension system and a contracting labour force.

The way that Labour (and governments before and after) got it wrong is this: although visa fees have risen more than 800% since 2004, when the Home Office was given the right to reclaim more than the administrative costs, this money is not hypothecated, i.e. the money raised from visa fees over and above the administrative costs is not used to address the strains on services (interpreters and translation costs in healthcare, schools, etc.) created by immigration. Thus, even though the immigrants are paying their way and are net contributors, the inevitable need for extra support for teachers, doctors, etc., are not addressed through the visa fees, and communities with greater strain do not receive the extra help they need.

There is no specific 'threshold of tolerance' after which a society breaks down because it cannot accommodate more diversity. The strains can be addressed through providing extra support and education for the communities most in need. There needs to be more two-way dialogue between different portions of society, but there is no less interaction between minority groups and the white British population than there is between many of the different segments of the white British population itself: how much do working-class Britons mix with the upper classes, for example?

Instead of addressing these problems, the current rhetoric simply blames immigration for many of society's ills. This blame game can hardly help the situation and is likely to fuel racist attacks, both physical and verbal, and these attacks will affect not only immigrants but also British-born British nationals, whose non-white skin will target them for abuse. Instead of pandering to the public's ignorance, politicians should take apart the myths about immigration and take the time to educate the public.




[1] Home Office report (Gott and Johnston, 2002) found a net positive contribution of £2.5bn in 1999-2000; Institute for Public Policy Research (Sriskandarajah et al., 2005) found a net contribution of £1.9bn for 1999-2000; Rowthorn (2008) found much smaller positive contributions for 2003-2004 of £0.6bn; Migration Watch (2006) classified children of mixed nationality couples differently and concluded there was a negative impact of -£1bn for 1999-2000 and -£5bn for 2003-2004;

Treasury data: Immigration contributed £6 billion to the UK economy, 2001-6; National Institute of Economic and Social Research: immigration added 3% to GDP between 1998-2005

Support for far right grows in the UK

A newly published Searchlight poll gives some disturbing food for thought: 48% of Britons would consider supporting an anti-immigration party promising to tackle Islamist extremism. Another poll recently found that 71% of young people (16-24) think immigration is a "very big" or "fairly big" problem, the highest number registered in the 12 years this question has been asked. A majority of Britons believe that "on the whole, immigration into Britain has been a bad thing for the country" and that "Muslims create problems in the UK".

Though disturbing, these results are hardly surprising to someone familiar with the history of immigration and rhetoric in Germany.  In the 1990s, German politicians increasingly toyed with anti-immigrant rhetoric, finding that it gained them votes. The result: a rise in neo-Nazi and other right-wing, xenophobic parties as well as a huge increase in the number of violent acts perpetrated against foreigners and minorities. People began to attack asylum seekers' houses and burn them down. After years of electioneering by manipulating anti-immigrant sentiment, German politicians realised that they had created a monster. While such rhetoric might originally have bought them votes, these voters quickly abandoned them for more extremist candidates. Furthermore, the politicians were faced with the stark reality that Germany needed immigrants - desperately, in some industries - to fill hundreds of thousands of vacant jobs that Germans could not or would not fill.

When David Cameron made his 'multiculturalism is dead' speech on 5 February 2011 in Munich, he made some grave errors. First, he did not distance himself from the English Defence League rally in Luton occurring the same day, giving credence to their views on immigration. Second, he was hardly original, seeing as Angela Merkel gave this speech back in October 2010. Merkel was wise enough to insert cautions about xenophobia and violent racism and was arguably responding to intense pressure from within her party to move back towards the right. Third, he continued to draw attention to immigration, painting it as a horrible evil whilst failing to recognise the huge amounts of money that foreigners contribute to the UK economy, especially via the higher education sector.

While Damian Green gives speeches about how net migration is increasing, he fails to recognise that this is not actually because more people are coming to the UK - they're not. It is because fewer Brits than usual have left the country in the past year or so. Immigrants pay for two-thirds of the costs of UK border patrolling. They're forbidden from accessing benefits but pay National Insurance and taxes. They pay £11,000 a year to study at UK universities.

And they've been consistently criminalised by the Tory government.

The important point is that these speeches are not just empty words. They have a fundamental impact on real people's lives. They will increase the number of racial slurs identifiable minorities face on Britain's streets. They will increase the number of violent acts perpetrated against foreigners - or people the actors think are foreigners. And these people will see themselves as justified, sanctioned by the government rhetoric.

It saddens and angers me to think that the UK has the same lessons to learn as Germany and that I personally may have to pay some of the price of Cameron's and Green's speeches.

Student fees and transatlantic misunderstandings

Lord Browne's review of university funding dominates the thoughts of many people at the moment, not least this household. This entry won't be about citizenship or immigration but about student fees in order to address the incredible misunderstandings upon which politicians are making transatlantic comparisons at the moment.

The review proposes raising university fees substantially, throwing in the possibility of unlimited fees. Many politicians draw parallels to the American system, where well-known, top-class universities like Harvard charge upwards of $50,000 a year. Yet such comparisons are generally hollow without a deeper understanding of the American private university system.

While Harvard's pricetag may be $50,000 a year, it is a heavily endowed university committed to removing financial barriers for students good enough to be accepted. It offers means-tested grants that can make the education nearly free for students coming from families with incomes under $60,000 a year. In fact, at Yale, students coming from such income backgrounds were expected on average to contribute about $2,600 a year - including room and board. At Harvard, nearly 70 per cent of students receive aid, and the other 30 per cent would be from families with incomes over $120,000 per year.

Private American universities are able to provide such levels of grants through substantial endowments. During the 2010-11 year alone, Harvard anticipates giving out $158 million in need-based assistance. British universities cannot even begin to match such levels of private holdings to subsidize education.

At the other end of the spectrum, America also has a system of junior colleges that can cost as little as $150 a term and give a qualification equivalent to half of a bachelor's degree, after which the recipient can transfer to a full-fledged university to complete his/her education. This offers a good option for students whose families do not have enough money to pay for a four-year degree and whose grades are not competitive enough to draw a merit-based scholarship from a well-ranked university.

Without such alternatives in place, Britain's discussions of such fast, possibly uncapped, fee rises are ridiculous. Why would a top-calibre student choose to study at a good UK university in the face of high fees if s/he could gain a place at an American university and pay less?

There is one other problem that needs to be addressed. The review says that the funding structure of the universities is unsustainable and that the students must contribute more to their education. On the surface, this is somewhat understandable, though there are logical fallacies that were pointed out in the previous blog post. Now, however, it emerges that Osborne is proposing 80% cuts to government funding for universities, essentially shifting the burden of education from the government to the students. Yet students will - reasonably, it would seem - expect higher standards if they're going to pay twice as much, standards that it will be impossible to meet because the departments will have the same budget as they do now, simply a different source of income. Raising student fees cannot be seen as an alternative to government investment, and there can be no doubt that it will hit the poorest the hardest.

Are we really all in it together?

Logical fallacies of visa fee rises

The government appear to be applying the same logical fallacies to justifications of visa fee rises as justifications for limitless university fees. The argument goes something like this:

Thesis 1: Immigration costs the UK money. It is unfair for the taxpayer to have to bear this burden. Therefore, the immigrants should bear the costs.

Thesis 2: Immigrants receive benefits from immigration in the form of higher wages/better standard of life/etc. They would not have access to these positives if they didn't come to the UK. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect them to pay for their access to higher wages.

Thesis 3: It is justifiable to recoup more than just the administrative costs from immigrants because they benefit so much from their status in the UK. Those who remain long-term will have access to more than contributory benefits. Therefore, it is justifiable to charge a large amount up-front for settlement status because the immigrant will receive that much benefit from his/her immigration status over the duration of his/her residency.

The logical fallacies are these:
1. Immigration pays for the UK economy.

2. Immigrants on limited visas are not allowed to access any benefits they haven't payed into.

3. Immigrants have a higher average per-capita income than Brits, and they pay more taxes per-capita than Brits while not being allowed to claim tax credits, housing benefit, etc. They are only allowed to stay in the UK as long as they are net contributors.

4. The biggest fallacy is that the equation fails to take into account the immigrants' contributions to the UK. Really, the UK should be paying highly skilled migrants to come, as the UK will reap far more benefits than the individual immigrant.

This is the same fallacy that is applied to the arguments to raise tuition fees: the average graduate earns £100k more over his/her lifetime than a non-graduate; therefore, he/she should be willing to pay more for a degree. This leaves out the fact that if the average graduate earns more, he/she also pays more taxes as well as repaying the loans. An average earner will pay £45k in loans (with interest) as well as paying taxes, which pretty much negates the benefit from getting a degree in the first place. Furthermore, the calculation leaves out the fact that graduates are - generally - easier to retrain into other jobs in response to economic shifts, which means fewer people claiming benefits. Now why is it that students and immigrants should bear this burden?

Unjust fee changes for UK visas

The UKBA is proposing fee increases that represent a violation of constitutional rights of British citizens as well as an unjust hardship on many families. We need to educate and act on the information in this petition. Please circulate it as widely as possible.

On 9 September, the UK Borders Agency published a notice of mid-year visa and naturalisation fee increases, proposed to come into effect at the beginning of October and November 2010. This is in addition to the fee increases that were already brought in on 1 April 2010. The proposed fee levels represent a breach of the human rights of British citizens and put the UK in contravention of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, of which the UK is a signatory.

Article 16 of the Declaration states, ‘Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution…The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.’ The fee levels combined with the pre-entry English language tests present a direct impediment to family life.

In April, the government raised the cost of settlement permits to £840 from £820; now it proposes to raise the fees another £60 to £900. This does not include the £34 fee for the Knowledge of Life in the UK Test – more if one doesn’t pass the first time – or the £9.99-£17.50 for the official study guides without which one cannot hope to pass the test, as it does not actually contain questions and answers one would know through everyday life in the UK.

I am the non-EU wife of a British citizen. I have brought £130,000 into the UK economy from other countries in the past four years. Yet the UK government has the audacity to justify the fee increases on the grounds that I am burden to the taxpayer.

While the UK government has the right to control labour migration, it does not have the right to prevent family reunification or to interfere with its citizens’ right to marry anyone without regard for nationality. Such high fee levels cannot be anything but an impediment to family life, yet we have no option but to pay them because my visa will expire, so we have to pay whatever the government demands.

The application process is a further violation of citizens’ right to freedom of movement. When I applied for my first spousal visa, we had to send both my husband’s and my passports to the UKBA. They kept the passports and our marriage certificate for the entire three-month processing period, which meant neither of us could leave the country. Should a family emergency have arisen, I could have withdrawn my application and received my passport back, but I would immediately have become an illegal immigrant, would have forfeited the entire visa fee, and would have had to re-apply from outside the UK, during which indefinite period of time my husband and I would have been separated. Now my application for settlement is looming, and I have only a 95 per cent guarantee that the UKBA will be able to process my application within six months, which means again being entirely without identity papers or the right to travel.

In 2009, applications for children, husbands and wives to settle with their family members in the UK made up 69 per cent of settlement grants. Of the spouses, 87.5 per cent were married to British citizens. This means that the proposed measures overwhelmingly affect the rights of British citizens to family life without interference from the state. I cannot do more than express my extreme outrage and beg people to campaign to their MPs to block this measure when it is submitted for parliamentary approval in the coming weeks.

To sign the petition, please go to:

http://www.petition.co.uk/unjust-fee-changes-for-uk-visas