Some truths about immigration
Aug 7th 2003, 6:55 pm
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Posts: n/a
Some truths about immigration
Some truths about immigration
The Spectator (UK) 2 August 2003
Some truths about immigration
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.p...ent&issue=2003
-08-02&id=3363
Anthony Browne says Britain is already overcrowded, and that
pro-immigration arguments are almost all flawed.
Something strange is happening when a left-wing government publicly
accuses the BBC, riddled with institutionalised political correctness,
of can you think of a more wounding insult? a Powellite
anti-immigration agenda. The Pope publicly denouncing one of his
cardinals as a Satanist would hardly be more surprising. It is not
just cats of the postwar fractured Left scratching each other's eyes
out; David Blunkett's intemperate outburst was in reality an admission
that he is losing the most important political argument of the day. It
is not only that Britain doesn't want mass immigration but that,
despite the government's attempts to persuade us that we need it, even
parts of the BBC are finally waking up to see that there are real
problems.
The fact that the BBC found the courage to reflect the concerns of its
licence-fee payers is a clear sign that the tide has turned in the
immigration debate. The presenter of the programme, John Ware,
declared in the Daily Mail that the BBC could no longer sew up its
lips on the issue, and that anyone with an open mind has to face up to
it.
Unfortunately for the government, more and more people on both the
Left and the Right are becoming open-minded on the problems of the
government's policy of actively encouraging mass immigration. The
pro-immigrationists trusty tactic of suppressing all inconvenient
truth and debate by denouncing all critics as racist, fascist or
xenophobic just isn't working: there are too many intellectually
honest people who can see that baseless insults aren't answers to real
problems.
The subject of immigration has been taboo in Britain since Enoch
Powell's infamous speech a third of a century ago: there has not,
until a few months ago, been one debate in Parliament about the
optimal types and scale of immigration, only debates on the minutiae
of immigration laws. Everyone agreed to that silence so as to promote
good community relations. But the government took advantage of the
taboo to overturn 30 years of policy which aimed for zero primary
immigration, claiming that it wants about 150,000 immigrants a year.
Labour, in its self-righteous arrogance, performed this remarkable
U-turn confident that no one would break the taboo. When I started
writing in the Times about the economic and demographic consequences
of mass immigration, Blunkett denounced me by name in Parliament as
bordering on fascism. I was contacted by Sir Andrew Green, the former
ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who had just set up a lobby-group,
Migration Watch UK, to curb immigration, and wrote a profile of his
new group. Ever since, Blunkett has been denouncing it as right-wing
and tin-pot, despite the fact that its advisory council consists of
former ambassadors, former heads of the government's immigration
service, several professors, a Sri Lankan law lecturer and a Sudanese
businessman.
The trouble for the government is that while promoting mass
immigration might make people feel cosmopolitan and modern, and
calling critics racist may make people feel virtuous, few of the
consequences of mass immigration have been thought through. The long
immigration silence has meant that all negative consequences of
migration have been suppressed, and only the positive aspects talked
about. If you blind yourself to all negative consequences of a complex
policy, you are bound to conclude that it is a thoroughly good thing
and want as much of it as possible. Civil servants sat with ministers
discussing all the good things about immigration without anyone daring
to think any of the bad things, and they concluded that the borders
should be pushed wide open.
This state of immigration denial has led the government to develop an
ostrich attitude to many of the damaging consequences of its
open-border policy, where it and the left-wing media normally
including the BBC are psychologically almost incapable of being
intellectually honest. It was only after the continued, hysterical
screaming of most of the tabloid media that the government and other
pro-immigrationists conceded there might be a problem with widespread
abuse of the asylum system.
Likewise, the government refused to accept that mass immigration from
disease-prone countries brings in diseases until a piece I wrote for
this magazine caused a storm of protest (and the usual smearing), and
the government was provoked into reviewing the need for immigrant
health tests. But there are many other issues that the government
still refuses to face up to:
1. Mass immigration hugely exacerbates the housing crisis. When
Migration Watch produced a report last week saying that levels of
immigration would require 1.8 million extra homes by 2021, the
government threw insults, said the figures were plucked out of thin
air and refused to produce its own forecasts. In fact, Migration Watch
simply used the government's own housing methodology, and the
Housebuilders Federation says immigration is a leading driver in the
demand for new housing. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister,
responsible for housing, is taking away the rights of communities to
refuse to have housing imposed on them, and yet refuses to admit that
there is any connection between immigration and housing demand. The
amount of housing needed is so vast that it will be impossible for the
government to build its way out of this crisis. Like importing an HIV
epidemic from Africa, this is an issue that won't go away.
2. Britain is already overcrowded: it is one of the most densely
populated islands in the world; twice as densely populated as France
and eight times as densely populated as America and increasing
population density damages quality of life. Already, we can't find
space for new airports, roads, prisons and asylum centres. It is not
just millions of new houses, but the new infrastructure of roads,
hospitals, schools, water supplies and other utilities. Our public
transport system is ridiculously overstretched and roads are
excessively congested. The government has embarked on a programme of
population growth through immigration that will push the population up
from 60 million to 66 million by 2031 but it refuses even to talk
about the consequences of this.
3. Mass immigration as opposed to limited immigration of skilled
workers to meet shortages damages the employment prospects of those
already here, particularly the unskilled. The Home Office commissioned
an economic study on the impact of immigration, which found that an
increase in immigration amounting to 1 per cent of the non-immigrant
population would lead to an increase of 0.18 percentage points in the
non-immigrant unemployment rate. However, in an extraordinary act of
politically correct immigration denial, the immigration minister
Beverley Hughes issued a press release saying, The research shows that
it is simply not true that migrants take the jobs of the existing work
force. However, London, where most immigrants come, has become the
unemployment black spot of Britain, with 7 per cent joblessness,
higher than any region of the UK. There is such a large pool of cheap
labour that, for the first time ever, national chains such as
McDonald's and Burger King are no longer paying their highest rates in
central London. Shop shelf-fillers now earn 10 per cent less in London
than the average for the rest of the country. The world's leading
expert on the economics of migration, Professor George Borjas of
Harvard University, complains that everyone is happy to accept that
increasing labour supply reduces wages in all circumstances except
when it comes to immigration, when they enter denial.
4. Imposing mass immigration on a society that doesn't want it damages
relations between the communities that are already here. If people are
opposed to the immigration policy, they are likely to be opposed to
the people it brings in and will often confuse immigrants with those
born here. The old wisdom that a firm but fair immigration policy is
essential for good race relations has been forgotten by the
government. Refusing to address legitimate concerns forces voters into
the hands of extremist parties such as the British National party.
5. Mass immigration increases inequality in society by increasing the
wealth of those who employ immigrants (who tend already to be rich)
and reducing that of those who compete with them (who tend to be
poor). The US government has estimated that half the rise in income
inequality in the US is due to mass immigration.
6. Mass immigration is no solution to an ageing society, because
immigrants grow old at just the same pace as non-immigrants. One of
the country's top pension experts, Professor David Miles, said that
trying to solve the pension crisis by importing more people is
madness.
7. Mass migration of unskilled workers promotes low-skilled, low-wage
industries and reduces economic productivity. Alan Greenspan told the
Senate earlier this year that labour shortages in the US in the last
century, when immigration was very low, forced companies to innovate
and was the main reason why productivity in the US overtook that of
Europe. Importing unskilled labour did nothing to save the textile
mills of the north of England, and this disastrous policy has left
behind impoverished, bitterly divided communities.
8. Much if not most of the supposedly temporary migration such as
student visas, holiday working visas and seasonal agricultural workers
is permanent because the dream of life in the West is so powerful for
so many from the poor parts of the world. The government has no
controls to ensure that those it invites in actually leave.
9. White flight is ghettoising Britain's cities and fragmenting
communities. A totally unpublicised report commissioned by the Office
of the Deputy Prime Minister last year found that white flight was now
a leading cause of internal migration in the UK. In London as a whole,
white Britons account for just 60 per cent of the population, and for
fewer than half the population in six London boroughs. Mass
immigration from the Third World to the cities exacerbates white
flight, but the government refuses to face up to the consequences.
Professor Robert Putnam, author of the celebrated Bowling Alone, which
is about the decline of community spirit in the US, has found that the
more ethnically diverse a population, the less sense of community
there is.
The government may not face up to these issues, but an increasing
number of people are doing so. Bob Rowthorn, the left-wing professor
of economics at Cambridge, dismisses all the economic arguments and
opposes mass immigration on the grounds that all people have a right
to decide their culture; Geoff Dench of the left-wing Institute of
Community Studies in London's East End opposes mass immigration
because of the welfare loss to the white working class, and because it
is so damaging to race relations; Professor Lord Layard, the designer
of Labour's welfare-to-work programme, has warned of the damaging
impact on the unskilled; Ruth Lea, the head of policy at the Institute
of Directors, has called on government to reduce immigration. She
insists businesses must look beyond the short-term profits of cheap
labour, and look at the long-term social and economic consequences.
As the taboo about immigration is broken, more people are becoming
more open-minded about it. The government will eventually be forced to
face reality and to curb its addiction to mass immigration. It is just
a question of how much pain it puts the country through and how much
it sacrifices the working classes and race relations before it does
so.
Anthony Browne is environment editor of the Times.
The Spectator (UK) 2 August 2003
Some truths about immigration
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.p...ent&issue=2003
-08-02&id=3363
Anthony Browne says Britain is already overcrowded, and that
pro-immigration arguments are almost all flawed.
Something strange is happening when a left-wing government publicly
accuses the BBC, riddled with institutionalised political correctness,
of can you think of a more wounding insult? a Powellite
anti-immigration agenda. The Pope publicly denouncing one of his
cardinals as a Satanist would hardly be more surprising. It is not
just cats of the postwar fractured Left scratching each other's eyes
out; David Blunkett's intemperate outburst was in reality an admission
that he is losing the most important political argument of the day. It
is not only that Britain doesn't want mass immigration but that,
despite the government's attempts to persuade us that we need it, even
parts of the BBC are finally waking up to see that there are real
problems.
The fact that the BBC found the courage to reflect the concerns of its
licence-fee payers is a clear sign that the tide has turned in the
immigration debate. The presenter of the programme, John Ware,
declared in the Daily Mail that the BBC could no longer sew up its
lips on the issue, and that anyone with an open mind has to face up to
it.
Unfortunately for the government, more and more people on both the
Left and the Right are becoming open-minded on the problems of the
government's policy of actively encouraging mass immigration. The
pro-immigrationists trusty tactic of suppressing all inconvenient
truth and debate by denouncing all critics as racist, fascist or
xenophobic just isn't working: there are too many intellectually
honest people who can see that baseless insults aren't answers to real
problems.
The subject of immigration has been taboo in Britain since Enoch
Powell's infamous speech a third of a century ago: there has not,
until a few months ago, been one debate in Parliament about the
optimal types and scale of immigration, only debates on the minutiae
of immigration laws. Everyone agreed to that silence so as to promote
good community relations. But the government took advantage of the
taboo to overturn 30 years of policy which aimed for zero primary
immigration, claiming that it wants about 150,000 immigrants a year.
Labour, in its self-righteous arrogance, performed this remarkable
U-turn confident that no one would break the taboo. When I started
writing in the Times about the economic and demographic consequences
of mass immigration, Blunkett denounced me by name in Parliament as
bordering on fascism. I was contacted by Sir Andrew Green, the former
ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who had just set up a lobby-group,
Migration Watch UK, to curb immigration, and wrote a profile of his
new group. Ever since, Blunkett has been denouncing it as right-wing
and tin-pot, despite the fact that its advisory council consists of
former ambassadors, former heads of the government's immigration
service, several professors, a Sri Lankan law lecturer and a Sudanese
businessman.
The trouble for the government is that while promoting mass
immigration might make people feel cosmopolitan and modern, and
calling critics racist may make people feel virtuous, few of the
consequences of mass immigration have been thought through. The long
immigration silence has meant that all negative consequences of
migration have been suppressed, and only the positive aspects talked
about. If you blind yourself to all negative consequences of a complex
policy, you are bound to conclude that it is a thoroughly good thing
and want as much of it as possible. Civil servants sat with ministers
discussing all the good things about immigration without anyone daring
to think any of the bad things, and they concluded that the borders
should be pushed wide open.
This state of immigration denial has led the government to develop an
ostrich attitude to many of the damaging consequences of its
open-border policy, where it and the left-wing media normally
including the BBC are psychologically almost incapable of being
intellectually honest. It was only after the continued, hysterical
screaming of most of the tabloid media that the government and other
pro-immigrationists conceded there might be a problem with widespread
abuse of the asylum system.
Likewise, the government refused to accept that mass immigration from
disease-prone countries brings in diseases until a piece I wrote for
this magazine caused a storm of protest (and the usual smearing), and
the government was provoked into reviewing the need for immigrant
health tests. But there are many other issues that the government
still refuses to face up to:
1. Mass immigration hugely exacerbates the housing crisis. When
Migration Watch produced a report last week saying that levels of
immigration would require 1.8 million extra homes by 2021, the
government threw insults, said the figures were plucked out of thin
air and refused to produce its own forecasts. In fact, Migration Watch
simply used the government's own housing methodology, and the
Housebuilders Federation says immigration is a leading driver in the
demand for new housing. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister,
responsible for housing, is taking away the rights of communities to
refuse to have housing imposed on them, and yet refuses to admit that
there is any connection between immigration and housing demand. The
amount of housing needed is so vast that it will be impossible for the
government to build its way out of this crisis. Like importing an HIV
epidemic from Africa, this is an issue that won't go away.
2. Britain is already overcrowded: it is one of the most densely
populated islands in the world; twice as densely populated as France
and eight times as densely populated as America and increasing
population density damages quality of life. Already, we can't find
space for new airports, roads, prisons and asylum centres. It is not
just millions of new houses, but the new infrastructure of roads,
hospitals, schools, water supplies and other utilities. Our public
transport system is ridiculously overstretched and roads are
excessively congested. The government has embarked on a programme of
population growth through immigration that will push the population up
from 60 million to 66 million by 2031 but it refuses even to talk
about the consequences of this.
3. Mass immigration as opposed to limited immigration of skilled
workers to meet shortages damages the employment prospects of those
already here, particularly the unskilled. The Home Office commissioned
an economic study on the impact of immigration, which found that an
increase in immigration amounting to 1 per cent of the non-immigrant
population would lead to an increase of 0.18 percentage points in the
non-immigrant unemployment rate. However, in an extraordinary act of
politically correct immigration denial, the immigration minister
Beverley Hughes issued a press release saying, The research shows that
it is simply not true that migrants take the jobs of the existing work
force. However, London, where most immigrants come, has become the
unemployment black spot of Britain, with 7 per cent joblessness,
higher than any region of the UK. There is such a large pool of cheap
labour that, for the first time ever, national chains such as
McDonald's and Burger King are no longer paying their highest rates in
central London. Shop shelf-fillers now earn 10 per cent less in London
than the average for the rest of the country. The world's leading
expert on the economics of migration, Professor George Borjas of
Harvard University, complains that everyone is happy to accept that
increasing labour supply reduces wages in all circumstances except
when it comes to immigration, when they enter denial.
4. Imposing mass immigration on a society that doesn't want it damages
relations between the communities that are already here. If people are
opposed to the immigration policy, they are likely to be opposed to
the people it brings in and will often confuse immigrants with those
born here. The old wisdom that a firm but fair immigration policy is
essential for good race relations has been forgotten by the
government. Refusing to address legitimate concerns forces voters into
the hands of extremist parties such as the British National party.
5. Mass immigration increases inequality in society by increasing the
wealth of those who employ immigrants (who tend already to be rich)
and reducing that of those who compete with them (who tend to be
poor). The US government has estimated that half the rise in income
inequality in the US is due to mass immigration.
6. Mass immigration is no solution to an ageing society, because
immigrants grow old at just the same pace as non-immigrants. One of
the country's top pension experts, Professor David Miles, said that
trying to solve the pension crisis by importing more people is
madness.
7. Mass migration of unskilled workers promotes low-skilled, low-wage
industries and reduces economic productivity. Alan Greenspan told the
Senate earlier this year that labour shortages in the US in the last
century, when immigration was very low, forced companies to innovate
and was the main reason why productivity in the US overtook that of
Europe. Importing unskilled labour did nothing to save the textile
mills of the north of England, and this disastrous policy has left
behind impoverished, bitterly divided communities.
8. Much if not most of the supposedly temporary migration such as
student visas, holiday working visas and seasonal agricultural workers
is permanent because the dream of life in the West is so powerful for
so many from the poor parts of the world. The government has no
controls to ensure that those it invites in actually leave.
9. White flight is ghettoising Britain's cities and fragmenting
communities. A totally unpublicised report commissioned by the Office
of the Deputy Prime Minister last year found that white flight was now
a leading cause of internal migration in the UK. In London as a whole,
white Britons account for just 60 per cent of the population, and for
fewer than half the population in six London boroughs. Mass
immigration from the Third World to the cities exacerbates white
flight, but the government refuses to face up to the consequences.
Professor Robert Putnam, author of the celebrated Bowling Alone, which
is about the decline of community spirit in the US, has found that the
more ethnically diverse a population, the less sense of community
there is.
The government may not face up to these issues, but an increasing
number of people are doing so. Bob Rowthorn, the left-wing professor
of economics at Cambridge, dismisses all the economic arguments and
opposes mass immigration on the grounds that all people have a right
to decide their culture; Geoff Dench of the left-wing Institute of
Community Studies in London's East End opposes mass immigration
because of the welfare loss to the white working class, and because it
is so damaging to race relations; Professor Lord Layard, the designer
of Labour's welfare-to-work programme, has warned of the damaging
impact on the unskilled; Ruth Lea, the head of policy at the Institute
of Directors, has called on government to reduce immigration. She
insists businesses must look beyond the short-term profits of cheap
labour, and look at the long-term social and economic consequences.
As the taboo about immigration is broken, more people are becoming
more open-minded about it. The government will eventually be forced to
face reality and to curb its addiction to mass immigration. It is just
a question of how much pain it puts the country through and how much
it sacrifices the working classes and race relations before it does
so.
Anthony Browne is environment editor of the Times.
Aug 8th 2003, 12:41 am
#2
Guest
Posts: n/a
Re: Some truths about immigration
>Subject: Some truths about immigration
>From: Fred Elbel [email protected]
>Date: 8/7/03 2:55 PM Eastern Daylight Time
>Message-id: <[email protected]>
>Some truths about immigration
>The Spectator (UK) 2 August 2003
>Some truths about immigration
>http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.p...ent&issue=2003
>-08-02&id=3363
>Anthony Browne says Britain is already overcrowded, and that
>pro-immigration arguments are almost all flawed.
>Something strange is happening when a left-wing government publicly
>accuses the BBC, riddled with institutionalised political correctness,
Blah blah blah...
>From: Fred Elbel [email protected]
>Date: 8/7/03 2:55 PM Eastern Daylight Time
>Message-id: <[email protected]>
>Some truths about immigration
>The Spectator (UK) 2 August 2003
>Some truths about immigration
>http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.p...ent&issue=2003
>-08-02&id=3363
>Anthony Browne says Britain is already overcrowded, and that
>pro-immigration arguments are almost all flawed.
>Something strange is happening when a left-wing government publicly
>accuses the BBC, riddled with institutionalised political correctness,
Blah blah blah...
