Should immigration always be perceived as ‘a problem’?

First topic message reminder :

Writing for ‘Compass’ in July this year, Lisa Nandy MP said: “For most of my lifetime, politics has been based on a belief that the only way to win elections is to seek out the centre ground, but it is surely an essential plank of a democracy that politicians should provide leadership and not just follow; as Robin Archer of the LSE says, to seek to define and not just seek the centre ground”. She continued by saying that people on the left in politics have to tackle the issues which make us feel uncomfortable – welfare reform, law and order and immigration.
http://www.compassonline.org.uk/news/item.asp?n=13151&offset=50

Let’s tackle the issue of immigration. The right-wing press has been indoctrinating us for years with claims that most immigrants are living on benefits, while at the same time saying that they’ve taken many of our jobs, and of course both scenarios can’t possibly be true. We’re told that the country is already overcrowded; it’s not, only S.E. England is, although we are now the most densely populated country in Europe. We’re told that immigration increases crime (our prisons do indeed hold a disproportionate number of people who weren’t born here) and increases the threat to our security. By increasing the labour force, does immigration suppress wage levels?

In the 1970s, the National Front used to peddle the spurious argument that as there were a million people unemployed in the UK at the time, all we had to do was repatriate a million immigrants and there would be no unemployment. Anyone with half a brain can work out that by reducing the population by a million, you would have a million fewer consumers to buy goods and services, thereby reducing demand and creating unemployment. There would also be a million fewer taxpayers (even those not working pay VAT).

So why have successive UK governments over the last fifty years allowed and even encouraged immigration?
Not out of charity but out of necessity. Firstly, to do jobs which the indigenous population didn’t want to do, or didn’t have the skills to do. The NHS would have collapsed years ago without immigrant doctors and nurses. Secondly, Europe has a declining birth rate, which is threatening to make it difficult to pay for pensions for future generations. Most immigrants are of working age, which means they consume less of the services provided by the state, such as health care and education, and pay more in taxes. Home Office research in 2002 suggested that immigrants paid £2.5bn more in taxes than they took in benefits.

Perhaps if more of us showed a positive attitude to immigrants, welcoming and celebrating diversity instead of perceiving it as ‘a problem’, immigrants might feel less of a need to retreat into ghettos, where some of them succumb to religious fanaticism and terrorism.

tlttf. Why don’t you pay attention to detail for once? ‘The Guardian’ didn’t research this “story”, it reported the findings of the University College London's migration research unit, as did a number of other sources, for example:-
 
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/immigrants-made-25bn-net-contribution-to-uk-economy-since-2000-report-finds.1383636407
 
http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/uk-news/immigrants-contributed-25billion-more-tax-6271752
 
http://www.channel5.com/shows/5-news/features-archived/immigration-brings-25-billion-to-the-uk
 
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article3913714.ece
 
Which part of “migrants made a net contribution of £25 billion to public finances” can’t you understand? Where is your evidence that “a majority of migrants take low paid jobs and are more likely to be claiming tax credits than the indigenous population”, or is it just what you ‘think’ (for want of a better term) after years of ‘Daily Mail’ brainwashing? Are you trying to emulate the pathological liar Iain Duncan Smith, who ignores all evidence and insists that what he believes represents the truth?
 
It would be nice if you could make a useful and properly researched contribution to this forum at least once in your life, instead of continually seeking to mislead members with tripe from Redwood, the gutter press and your squalid right-wing prejudices, but I won't hold my breath.

No don't hold your breath Ivan, I'd hate for you to turn blue:suspect: No prejudices from me, simply a need for the full story not some half baked theory dredged from left footed sources.

We must not ignore the economic evidence on immigration’s benefits

by Ben Southwood
November 6, 2013, 12:35am

CONCERNS about immigration continue to gather strength. A recent poll by Survation for Sky News found that 67 per cent think the coalition’s attempt to reduce net migration to 100,000 per year does not go far enough. More than a quarter feel that immigration in the last decade brought no positive benefit to the UK.

Read the link son, though I won't hold my breath.

http://www.cityam.com/article/1383698143/we-must-not-ignore-economic-evidence-immigration-s-benefits

Here's another link for those that can force their rose tinted glasses from their noses.
 
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/441386/Migration-report-that-conceals-a-multitude-of-sins
 

Tax credits are a subsidy for employers, enabling them to pay low wages, tlttf.

Did Osborne describe the 5% reduction in the top rate of income-tax as quote "just another benefit" unquote for his wealthy pals?

"Tax credits are a subsidy for employers, enabling them to pay low wages"

 
Absolutely 100% correct ow. Other benefits also apply.

tlttf. What qualifies you to dismiss the work of University College London as “half baked theory dredged from left footed sources”? If that isn’t prejudice, I don’t what is. You claimed that because some migrants receive tax credits, the research conducted at UCL was somehow invalidated or at least incomplete, which is nonsense. The net effect – that means taking into account what migrants both contribute and take out - has been an extra £25 billion to the Treasury over a period of ten years. You also tried to pin the blame for what you consider shoddy research on ‘The Guardian’, just because it reported the study.
 
Maybe you’re not providing “the whole story” since, according to your first source, migrants are much less likely than UK nationals to claim incapacity benefits, Jobseeker’s Allowance, lone parent or carer benefits, disability benefits or bereavement benefits. I don’t doubt that, because they take low-paid jobs, migrants are 20% more likely than indigenous Brits to claim tax credits, but you still haven’t provided evidence to support your assertion that “a majority (that means at least 51% in case you didn’t know) of migrants take low-paid jobs”.
 
“No prejudices from me”, you claim, then you shoot yourself in the foot by posting a link to a piece of utter garbage written by Ross Clark for ‘The Daily Express’. If that’s the sort of stuff you read and find so impressive that you want to ram it down other people’s throats, you must be a bigger moron than I realised. So anecdotal evidence about one Ethiopian and three criminals in Nottingham is considered relevant to the net effects of migration over a ten-year period, is it? If such stories weren’t extremely unusual, they wouldn’t make the news.
 
Clark can’t even get the figures right for the net contribution made by migrants; I can’t see £15 billion a year mentioned anywhere in the original UCL study. He talks of “another study”, starting from an earlier date, which claimed that migrants have been a net cost to the UK. He gave no source, no details, and I wonder why? It was because it wasn’t another study at all, but part of the same one from UCL which he spends most of his article attempting to rubbish!
 
Clark panders to your prejudices and those of other grotty’ Little Englanders’ by reminding us that some migrants claim benefits and “consume public services”. Of course he omits to mention that many migrants pay tax on what they earn, they all pay tax on what they spend, most pay national insurance and all pay bus and train fares when they use public transport. But no doubt Clark provides “the full story” in the mind of someone as cerebrally challenged as you.
 
Sweeping remarks like “those who have come here just to use our health service and live on our benefits system” are thrown in without any supporting evidence. And of course immigration is “a problem”, which is the lie that this thread was started to counter. Naturally, no right-wing rant would be complete without a swipe at the EU for “enshrining in law the right of migrants to claim benefits in Britain”. Yes, the same law that gives Brits the right to claim benefits in 27 other countries, but we don’t really want to be reminded of that, do we? If you’re going to promote anti-EU drivel like that, why don’t you give us “the full story” and tell us what the CBI had to say about our EU membership? I notice that you haven't rushed in here at 6am to share that with us on an appropriate thread.
 
Finally, I’ve told you before not to call me ‘son’. It makes you look even more pathetic than usual, and the suggestion that I might in any way be related to an ignoramus like you is extremely offensive. If you ever do that again, the offending message will, without explanation, disappear in its entirety.

No foreigners should be let in and those that are here should be thrown out as they are all terrorists and benefit cheats.

I know all this as I think I read it in the Daily Mail...      

Galatians VI (King James Version):
Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

Exploiting the British Empire's wealth and native inhabitants probably seemed a good idea at the time.

It's not easy to admire those who always choose easy targets for the scapegoat.

The blame for our current predicament can be fairly and squarely laid on Greedy Bankers, Greedy Politicians and selfish people generally - not on those who come here to work.

When I moved into my current house some years ago, I parked my car in the lay-by in front of the house next door. The owner of the house (an old Tory man, who used to dress all in blue on election days) shouted at me that I couldn’t park there, and he wouldn't accept that it was public property (we know there will be no such thing for much longer if the Tories prevail). If I repeat on here what I said to him, one of the other staff would have to ban me, so enough said. The point of the story is that the instinct to be territorial is common throughout the animal kingdom, and it might help to explain the ‘Little Englander’ mindset of those who don’t like people from next door - or another country - “trespassing” on what they perceive to be their space.
 
The author Paul Collier writes: “Everyone has an opinion on migration but very few can justify it. I have reached this dismal conclusion in writing a book on the subject. The media have been drowning in advocacy, supported by anecdote, assertion and moralising. As I read and listened, I was struck by the gulf between the strength with which opinions were held and the depth of ignorance on which they managed to remain afloat.”
 
Rod Liddle, and sickos who applaud his demonisation of foreigners (especially Pakistanis) in ‘The Spectator’, try to pretend that they’ve not been allowed to talk about immigration. That’s just a lie. Matthew Goodwin reminds us that for over a decade, Britain has constantly debated immigration and its effects, adding “those who argue we have not been given a national debate are like students who turn up to seminars to argue with everybody, but having not actually read anything”. Goodwin continues:-
 
“Irrespective of whether you agree with the content, voters who are concerned over immigration have been given a sustained array of policy offers. Just think for a second about what the current generation of voters has been given on immigration: reductions in net migration; criticism of multiculturalism; talk of limiting EU migrants' right to benefits; cuts to international students; proposals to stamp down on 'health tourism'; vans urging illegal migrants to 'go home'; preference over migrants when distributing public resources; and even talk of withdrawing from the UN refugee convention just so that we can remove asylum seekers.

Yet despite all of this, public discontent with the political mainstream has gone up, not down, and overall levels of public concern about immigration are going up, not down. This is why the new plans on EU migration simply won’t satisfy the British electorate, or help the ratings the Tories on immigration. Voters have been raised on a diet of demand, demand and demand, and are ignorant of how policy works or the constraints that government is under.”
 
Ian Dunt highlights what the press does to immigrants: “It libels them, abuses them, humiliates them and stokes up resentment against them. It's been that way my entire life.” And it’s been that way my entire life too. In the 1964 general election, the academics David Butler and Anthony King observed how a large majority of voters believed there were too many immigrants even then. The Old Etonian toff Alec Douglas-Home, who had “emerged” as PM the year before, pulled the usual Tory stunt of scaremongering by claiming that a million Commonwealth migrants were waiting to descend on Britain if Labour won, and in Smethwick the Tories gained a seat with the slogan: “If you want a nig*er neighbour, vote Walker, vote Labour”. Douglas-Home refused to publicly condemn the local Tories for their despicable tactics.
 
Nearly fifty years on, as we approach another election, nothing much has changed, as Owen Jones points out:-
 
“The Tory crackdown on benefits for EU immigrants is a ruse to redirect anger, to toxify political debate, to make sure the real villains are protected. It aims to inflame the idea that those pesky foreigners are invading our shores to leech at public expense. The evidence isn’t there, of course. According to a study by University College London, immigrants who have arrived since the end of the last century are 45% less likely to claim either in-work or out-of-work benefits than native Brits, and less likely to live in social housing. European immigrants have actually paid 34% more in tax than they received in benefits. The OECD reckons immigrants throw in about £16.27 billion to Britain’s Exchequer each year. Immigrants are basically a deficit-reduction programme.

Immigrants come over here and flood our public services all right: in the case of the NHS, they make up around 30% of our doctors and 40% of our nurses. They help deliver, yes, native-born Brits into the world; they tend to us when we are sick, from birth to our final moments.”
 
Sources:-
 
http://www.newstatesman.com/global-issues/2013/11/new-exodus
 
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/11/why-immigration-debate-getting-us-nowhere
 
http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2013/08/08/comment-this-is-how-the-press-breeds-hatred-for-immigrants
 
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/nick-cleggs-scapegoating-of-immigrants-is-his-most-unforgiveable-tory-collaboration-yet-8967617.html

Nicely put together - and rather thought-provoking - we tend to forget about the ignoble history of worrying about Johnny Foreigner - but there's little doubt this kind of scaremongering resonates with many of the electorate.

Government delays EU immigration report because it is too positive

By Kunal Datta:-

“A review into the impact of EU migration on Britain has been delayed because the government feared it was too positive. The latest part of Whitehall’s Balance of Competences study, which looked specifically at freedom of movement, has, according to reports, been shelved until next year because Theresa May takes issues with its findings.

Amid concerns that much of the evidence submitted was broadly positive about current rules for freedom of movement, 'The Times' suggests May believes the study underestimates the problem of people coming to Britain to take advantage of the welfare state, which is central to the government’s rhetoric about cracking down on migrants. May believes that the EU free movement rules make it too easy for European migrants to come to Britain to establish residence and benefits entitlements.

The review, compiled by civil servants in departments across Whitehall, was commissioned with a view to providing supporting evidence for Cameron’s plan to negotiate a new settlement with Brussels before holding an in/out referendum if re-elected in 2015.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-delays-eu-immigration-report-because-it-is-too-positive-8994264.html

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/looking-for-person/naturalised-britons.htm

If immigrants came to Britain from Ireland or the British colonies they were called Britons. If they came from elsewhere (including Scotland before 1707) they were called aliens. Before the mid-20th century Britons from across the world were British citizens. After the British Nationality Act 1948, colonial Britons had to register British citizenship.

Right now, with a New Year approaching, Romanians are far more afraid of US than we are of them. Why? Because other Europeans will be able to buy land in Romania without restriction. They can see what happened in Portugal and Spain. Colonisation but with a different name.

Ed Miliband on immigration:-

“People are worried about immigration and that is why the next Labour government would offer a different approach, maximising transitional controls on EU accession countries, as well as driving out exploitation and driving up skills to reduce demand for low-wage workers from abroad.

Earlier this year Labour proposed clarifying and strengthening rules around access to benefits, including a three-month presence test. We don't believe it is right now to commit to an in/out referendum in four years' time, creating real uncertainty among potential investors in our country.

Our diversity makes Britain stronger. Britain has benefited over many centuries from immigration and this will continue to be the case in an ever-more global economy.

I'm the son of immigrants myself and hugely proud of my heritage. But we must also address people's legitimate concerns. Those concerns aren't based on bigotry. They are real anxieties about the way our country works for working people.

We need to ensure the prosperity that immigration can help build is fairly shared. We need to drive out exploitation and drive up skills. But we must also do more to strengthen the ties which bind us together. We should ensure that people coming here from abroad learn our language so they can succeed and that people in public-facing public sector jobs have good standards of English.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ed-miliband-interview-we-put-your-questions-to-the-labour-leader-9003108.html

I think that's usually called "Hedging your bets".

All the evidence is that there are some essential services which Britons simply refuse to do. Their reasons are irrelevant to the simple fact that foreigners are required to perform such tasks as gathering crops, cleaning toilets and staffing Care Homes. Long may they continue to offer their support.

'Little Englanders' like Nigel Farage, who don't care if curtailing immigration might make us poorer, never seem to have much to say about the movement in the other direction:-


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BdIXVdBIYAAZ654.jpg

Who can blame 2.2 million Brits fleeing abroad when the likes of that rubber-faced idiot Farage lives here. What have we all done to deserve to be inflicted with so many cranks, crackpots and snide self-serving specimens...?

"What have we all done to deserve to be inflicted with so many cranks, crackpots and snide self-serving specimens...?"

Maybe they enjoy the protective camouflage to be obtained by living amongst normal British cranks, crackpots &c....

I am surprised that Ivan allowed such a defamatory picture to be published. If I were Sam the Eagle I would consider suing...

If Britain were full, I can think of a list of people whose removal from these shores would assist our 'plight'. Farage and his loyal followers would be some, together with the entire Conservative Parliamentary Party. Add to them all the nation's racists and religious bigots ( of all colours, shapes and sizes), any passing LibDem and others of extreme political views ( of whatever party).

There - that's a start...

Phil Hornby wrote:If Britain were full...

In both cases our Nige was speaking as Britain. In the first we have 'full' and in the second 'not full'. I fail to see the conflict. Clearly he emptied his bowels in the interim. Lets face it the guy is full of shit (am I allowed to say that?   )

Lord McAlpine died in Italy today.

Lord Tebbit is reported as saying that  "He seemed to find a quite natural home in Italy in recent years."

I hope he passed their 'spaghetti test' or whatever they had instituted in the nature of the 'cricket test' which Tebbit recommends for foreigners who arrive here.

Or are British emigrants regarded as different, somehow, by the likes of the creepy and unpleasant Tebbit...?

Next time you eat chicken, just pause and reflect - there's a good chance the bird was slaughtered, butchered and prepared for the oven by someone from Portugal, Eastern Europe or maybe Iraq.
That person will work 12 hour shifts, with a 15 minute break, and will be performing the same identical movement up to 60 times per minute.
They will probably be employed via an agency, and if, as will inevitably happen, they develop a repetitive strain injury (back strain, carpal tunnel syndrome) that keeps them off work, they will find there is no work for them - no sick pay, no job to return to when they are better - just on the sick.
Well, we live in a Welfare State, don't we? They will get benefits, they will get their rent paid, they will have support from the State until they can get back on their feet?

For a while that's true, but we've had a little batch of cases this week that will become more common as time goes by.
At the end of a year on benefit, you lose your entitlement to contribution based benefit and go onto income based benefit.
Two things about that cause a BIG problem
1) DWP does not tell people they can claim an income related benefit - sometimes they will spend a month or so wondering if they are just expected to die until someone will tell them there is another benefit to ask for.
2) If you have a foreign sounding surname you will automatically have to undergo the Habitual Residence Test. You have to prove you live in England and expect to stay in England - there's a form to fill in that no-one tells you about until you ask why you have got no benefits; when you fill it in, it usually gets lost; when it finally surfaces, it gets sent to 'an office somewhere in Scotland' where they have up to 3 months to decide whether you are habitually resident in England. Meanwhile, you cannot claim ANY means tested benefits - no Housing Benefit, no help with Council Tax, no free prescriptions.

Today I saw a man who has got caught in this trap. His benefit stopped in January, and he has been living on charity since. His Habitual Residence paperwork only got sent to Scotland last week, after his ex wife made about a dozen calls to DWP to try and find out why he is not getting any money. He has been taken to court for non-payment of Council Tax and is about to lose his flat. He is unlikely to get a decision on his claim (which he made in February) until Christmas, by which time his life should be more or less completely in the toilet.

Where I live, it's axiomatic that kids from decent families don't want to work on the shop floor at the chicken factories, so this employment makes an obvious niche for people from abroad wanting to settle in England - without these people we don't get to eat chicken.
They work long hours, they live in the properties that are considered less desirable, often paying inflated rents; they pay their taxes, and on the whole make minimal demands on the health service, yet, having been worn out in performing work we would not do ourselves, this country behaves in this abhorrent way towards them - it makes me ashamed

A very interesting post, boatlady. I imagine that each passing line would give more and more pleasure to the vile Iain Duncan Smith , if he read it.

Were he a chicken, I would be only too pleased to ensure he was suitably butchered and prepared for the oven.

Actually he wouldn't have to be a chicken, come to think of it...

More than 6000 offices in the City of London alone require cleaning every morning. Not all the cleaners would have been born within the sound of Bow Bells.

And the same despicable rules will apply to them

I'm afraid most immigrants are used just to bring down the minimum wage too, long hours, short breaks, lowest wage possible.
They stay in Britain believe it or not because they are better off here than where they came from.

A side effect of The Peasant's Revolt of 1381 was a genocidal reaction against Flemish refugees in London.

Interestingly, the simmering public hatred of an incompetent and self-interested ruling class chimes with modern feelings.

The more things change, the more they are the same.

Labour and the truth about immigration

From a ‘New Statesman’ editorial:-

“Immigration brings pressures on housing, schools, maternity units and other public services. It presents challenges to social cohesion and fuels people’s insecurities. It would be foolish to deny that there are abuses of the immigration system. One problem concerns the government’s use of companies such as Serco to manage and house asylum seekers in parts of the country with low housing costs, creating conflict in struggling communities.

The notion that Britain can ‘clamp down’ on immigration is a fallacy. Open borders are a consequence of our membership not just of the EU but of the modern economy. Labour has pledged to scrap the Tories’ net migration target that has so angered businesses and universities. It has pledged tougher regulation of the labour market, to raise and enforce the minimum wage and so prevent foreign workers from illegally undercutting British workers. Recruitment agencies would be banned from advertising only for foreign workers. Accompanying this would be a reassertion of the contributory principle in welfare and a requirement for migrants to learn English.

Politicians should listen to the public mood but not be constrained by it. It should not be irreconcilable to address immigration’s problems while making a positive case for it. Immigration has, on the whole, been a force for good. Labour will never be believed if it attempts to mimic Farageist populism. Posturing such as this serves only to shift the debate on immigration to the right, further legitimising UKIP, the voice of dismal, small-minded English reaction.”

For the whole article:-
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/10/leader-labour-and-truth-about-immigration

Whilst the new leader of the SNP continues to believe in a wholly independent Scotland, it may yet come to pass that some English people might find themselves treated as refugees there.

Wait til the same vote crops up for Wales? the UK torn apart eh?

Why is there never an outcry from politicians or the public forgeigners coming and taking British jobs when a football team brings in a foreign player at high wages?

That Astradt is a very good question, maybe it is because it is because they are not forcing a normal working mans wage down to £2 an hour. what do you think mate?

I have heard people say (probably correctly) that the vast number of foreign footballers in the Premier League has denied indigenous players the chance to get experience at the top level, and that's the reason why the England team is so poor these days. If anything, the salaries of all footballers are stupendous – they are up there with the corporate and banking fat cats - and it's especially sickening when you hear that Ched Evans was paid £20,000 a week by Sheffield United during the two and half years that he was in jail for rape. But that’s another story…..  

The Tories hated the minimum wage when it was introduced in 1998, saying that it would cause a recession that winter, which it didn’t. Multimillionaires like Michael Heseltine saw no problem in people being paid just £1 an hour to push refreshment trolleys through trains - if that was what ‘the market’ deemed they were worth. This vile government has sought to chip away at the principle of the minimum wage, first with ‘workfare’ and now it seems with the idea of paying disabled people (just some to begin with) much less than the going rate, which is currently £6.50 an hour (or £5.13 if you’re aged 18-20).

Nobody can legally be paid £2 an hour, so nobody can force anyone’s wages down to that level. What Labour plans to do is to stop agencies from advertising for foreign workers only, and also to increase the minimum wage from 54% to 58% of median earnings by 2020. That doesn’t sound much, but I guess the idea is to increase low pay in a way which won’t lead to massive job losses.