Let's be honest about immigration – it's about work, not benefits
Despite their demonisation, Britain needs immigrants to do the jobs we don't want to, writes Henrietta Moore
A boat carrying migrants arrives at the port of Lampedusa Photo: EPA
3:47PM GMT 19 Feb 2015
It must be the most notorious eight square miles in the entire world.
I am talking, of course, about the Italian island of Lampedusa – increasingly
a magnet for African migrants trying to cross from Libya into the El Dorado
of the EU.
The numbers of migrants involved are truly staggering.
Some 2,700 people have been rescued from the Mediterranean in the past week
alone, following the shocking drowning of around 300 migrants earlier this
month.
The numbers add to a grim total. Around 3,500 people died in 2014 trying to
traverse the treacherous waters separating the two continents.
There is a direct, but little acknowledged, connection between this situation
and our own immigration debate in Britain – not least because many migrants
that reach Italy are often seeking to head further north.
For the past five years, we’ve watched David Cameron’s Government struggle to meet the self-imposed target to get net migration down to the "tens of thousands" by the end of the current parliament.
But with a pall of economic gloom still hanging over much of Europe, jobseekers from every corner have flocked towards the only beacon of recovery – us – like moths to a flame.
During the same period – and partly as a consequence – we’ve witnessed the meteoric rise of Nigel Farage’s Ukip as a major political force. The blind panic this has induced among Tories and Labour alike has led to ever more shrill proposals to deter migrants.
Unsurprisingly enough, the Government is still far from its goal. The latest figures, published by the ONS, showed annual net migration running at 260,000.
According to the last census, immigrants now make up around 13 per cent of the UK’s population – around 7.5 million people.
From reports in the media, you’d think nearly all our immigrants came from Poland or Romania. In fact, there is huge variety and even the single largest immigrant group – the 770,000 people born in India – account for only 9.8 per cent of the total.
More surprisingly, there are 206,000 US citizens here – double the number of Romanians - not to mention 210,000 Aussies and Kiwis and perhaps 270,000 French.
So why do we get so upset about Eastern Europeans and not Americans? Clearly, it’s to do with the perception that the former are coming and taking low-skilled, low-wage jobs while the latter are generally in higher-skilled occupations.
But there’s a bigger question that almost never gets asked in the public discourse on this topic: why are so many people globally on the move?
This is really where we need to start our debate in the UK, because trying to limit the numbers who eventually make it to our shores – especially non-EU migrants – is a bit like trying to plug a hole in the Hoover Dam with Blutack. The sheer number of people on the move around the world is enormous – around 232 million people lived in a different country to the one they were born in at the last count, according to the UN.
Patterns of migration globally are changing. Where before most migration was from poor to rich countries to seek economic opportunities, now around 40 per cent is from one developing country to another in the "global south".
These people generally aren’t moving to better themselves. Very often, they’re fleeing war, persecution or the effects of climate change, from floods to drought. In the case of the Lampedusa migrants, many are from Somalia, Libya, Nigeria and other countries that have been torn apart by mayhem which often has a geopolitical or socio-economic cause.
Within the EU, meanwhile, we’ve seen a transfer of labour from the poor countries – overwhelmingly those states that joined after 2004 – to the richer ones like Britain.
And Britain is perhaps the most attractive proposition of all – but not for the reasons of "benefits tourism" touted from many quarters.
In most cases, the migrants are looking for work and it just so happens that in the UK we’re in the process of turning ourselves into a low-wage service economy where poorly-paid, insecure jobs with long hours and little respect are relatively easy to come by.
And the greatest paradox of it all is, despite their demonisation in much of the media, we need those immigrants. Who else is going to get up at 3am and do 12 hours picking lettuces in Lincolnshire? How else will we get enough nurses and carers to look after our ballooning population of elderly people?
But if we really want them to stop coming, we need to be asking our leaders not to impose arbitrary caps, but to address the root causes of why people would be willing to uproot their whole lives and move to a strange land in the first place.
That means doing more to mitigate the effects of climate change, international diplomacy to end wars and targeted investment to tackle diseases and help businesses thrive and create jobs in the developing world. And it also means focusing on creating the high-skilled jobs here that can’t simply be filled by someone from abroad who may have few skills but is willing to work for less.
Business itself has a key role to play here – it alone holds the key to long-term, sustainable global prosperity. But it has to be the right kind of investment, because simply seeing developing nations as places to exploit for raw materials exacerbates the other problems they face. If we can harness the opportunities of technology and the human potential out there, we can create flourishing environments that people don’t feel they have to escape from.
In the long run, that’s the only way we’re going to create a less restless world than the one we have today.
For the past five years, we’ve watched David Cameron’s Government struggle to meet the self-imposed target to get net migration down to the "tens of thousands" by the end of the current parliament.
But with a pall of economic gloom still hanging over much of Europe, jobseekers from every corner have flocked towards the only beacon of recovery – us – like moths to a flame.
During the same period – and partly as a consequence – we’ve witnessed the meteoric rise of Nigel Farage’s Ukip as a major political force. The blind panic this has induced among Tories and Labour alike has led to ever more shrill proposals to deter migrants.
Unsurprisingly enough, the Government is still far from its goal. The latest figures, published by the ONS, showed annual net migration running at 260,000.
According to the last census, immigrants now make up around 13 per cent of the UK’s population – around 7.5 million people.
From reports in the media, you’d think nearly all our immigrants came from Poland or Romania. In fact, there is huge variety and even the single largest immigrant group – the 770,000 people born in India – account for only 9.8 per cent of the total.
More surprisingly, there are 206,000 US citizens here – double the number of Romanians - not to mention 210,000 Aussies and Kiwis and perhaps 270,000 French.
So why do we get so upset about Eastern Europeans and not Americans? Clearly, it’s to do with the perception that the former are coming and taking low-skilled, low-wage jobs while the latter are generally in higher-skilled occupations.
But there’s a bigger question that almost never gets asked in the public discourse on this topic: why are so many people globally on the move?
This is really where we need to start our debate in the UK, because trying to limit the numbers who eventually make it to our shores – especially non-EU migrants – is a bit like trying to plug a hole in the Hoover Dam with Blutack. The sheer number of people on the move around the world is enormous – around 232 million people lived in a different country to the one they were born in at the last count, according to the UN.
Patterns of migration globally are changing. Where before most migration was from poor to rich countries to seek economic opportunities, now around 40 per cent is from one developing country to another in the "global south".
These people generally aren’t moving to better themselves. Very often, they’re fleeing war, persecution or the effects of climate change, from floods to drought. In the case of the Lampedusa migrants, many are from Somalia, Libya, Nigeria and other countries that have been torn apart by mayhem which often has a geopolitical or socio-economic cause.
Within the EU, meanwhile, we’ve seen a transfer of labour from the poor countries – overwhelmingly those states that joined after 2004 – to the richer ones like Britain.
And Britain is perhaps the most attractive proposition of all – but not for the reasons of "benefits tourism" touted from many quarters.
In most cases, the migrants are looking for work and it just so happens that in the UK we’re in the process of turning ourselves into a low-wage service economy where poorly-paid, insecure jobs with long hours and little respect are relatively easy to come by.
And the greatest paradox of it all is, despite their demonisation in much of the media, we need those immigrants. Who else is going to get up at 3am and do 12 hours picking lettuces in Lincolnshire? How else will we get enough nurses and carers to look after our ballooning population of elderly people?
But if we really want them to stop coming, we need to be asking our leaders not to impose arbitrary caps, but to address the root causes of why people would be willing to uproot their whole lives and move to a strange land in the first place.
That means doing more to mitigate the effects of climate change, international diplomacy to end wars and targeted investment to tackle diseases and help businesses thrive and create jobs in the developing world. And it also means focusing on creating the high-skilled jobs here that can’t simply be filled by someone from abroad who may have few skills but is willing to work for less.
Business itself has a key role to play here – it alone holds the key to long-term, sustainable global prosperity. But it has to be the right kind of investment, because simply seeing developing nations as places to exploit for raw materials exacerbates the other problems they face. If we can harness the opportunities of technology and the human potential out there, we can create flourishing environments that people don’t feel they have to escape from.
In the long run, that’s the only way we’re going to create a less restless world than the one we have today.
