The price of cutting Immigration

Immigration is a highly contentious issue in British politics as well as the politics of a lot of other developed Western nations. Trump, Le Pen and UKIP all have risen to prominence on the simple promise of reducing it.

In the UK many people are in favor of substantially reducing immigration, mainly UKIP and Tory voters. However, as was shown by Brexit a lot of other supporters of other parties such as Labour want to reduce immigration significantly to. Now voting for Brexit may not necessarily mean a person is in favour of substantially reducing immigration but nonetheless there is a clear and strong correlation between supporting Brexit and wanting to reduce immigration.

Now in the recent general election, the Conservatives pledged to reduce net immigration to 100,000 in their manifesto and UKIP pledged to reduce it to zero in their manifesto. The Conservatives pledged to reduce it to 100,000 because they had become committed to a “hard Brexit”. The Tories wanted to lure UKIP voters and a lot of Brexiters (including some of the more traditional Labour voters) into voting for them by promising a hard-line on immigration to sate the dogmatic wishes of these people. UKIP voters flocked to the Conservatives on polling day as a result of this due to the fact that the Tories were finally embarking on such a radical position on immigration.

I digress, with all the negative anti-immigration rhetoric being spouted by the media in recent times it is important to remember why immigration is at its contemporary rate and why this is largely a good thing. Immigration provides the UK with several things.

Firstly, it provides much needed young people who work and pay taxes which supports the UK’s welfare state, thus provides for things like the NHS and pensions etc. Most immigrants are young and these young people are ever-increasingly needed because of the UK’s demographic crisis which is an ageing population. We will need migrant workers to pay for the pensions of our ever aging population.

Secondly, it plugs the UK’s skills shortage by bringing lots of skilled immigrants e.g. doctors and engineers etc who help ensure our country’s infrastructure remains running. EU immigrants contribute £1.34 in tax for every £1 they receive in welfare. Overall EU migrants provide £20 billion to the British economy. The stereotype that they come here to claim benefits and leech of the state is clearly nonsense, yet pushed constantly by our mainstream media. It is predicted with zero net migration, public sector debt would rise to 145 per cent of GDP by 2062-63, while with high net migration it would fall to 73 per cent. UKIP's promise is clearly not thought through, a simple attempt to pander to a scared population. Migration is excellent for our economy, a fact we must learn to understand.

Now, I understand that people have legitimate concerns about immigration. These concerns have been divided into mainly two categories. The first type of concern are practical concerns, some people view mass-immigration as creating structural issues for the UK, arguably immigration should be substantially reduced because that would be the pragmatic thing to do. The other concerns raised include social/cultural concerns, some people view the effects of mass-immigration as negative due to increasing erosion of British culture and less social-cohesion due to the fact that immigrants are not being integrated enough.

Practical concerns raised are usually about overpopulation and a lack of housing in the UK. Things like rent prices have soared over the years and the UK has the highest population density in Europe. I personally feel that our current net migration rate is too high (300,000 per annum) however, what one has to realise is that the our housing crisis is definitely not mainly the result of immigration. What has really caused our housing crisis is poor administration on the behalf of various successive governments in the UK. Previous governments have not built nearly enough houses to accommodate for our population growth.

Corbyn and Labour will address this without scapegoating immigrants.

The Labour Party has committed itself to building an additional 1 million homes. In their manifesto they claimed that by the end of the next Parliament they would be building 100,000 council and housing association homes per year for a genuinely for affordable rent or sale. Labour will be addressing the root cause of the housing crisis which is the fact not enough houses are being built.

Social/cultural concerns raised are the facts that in a lot of immigrants are not being integrated enough i.e. can’t speak English and wanting to impose their culture instead of adopting British culture. A lot of people feel that British culture is being eroded, scaremongering is in large part to do with this. For example talk of Sharia courts/laws being implemented and the ever-increasing “Islamisation of Britain”.

In conclusion no matter what system you think immigration should be based on such as a points-based skilled-immigration system etc, it is a fact that in many ways immigration is a positive thing. Personally I believe in a points-based system because of the fact that we can ensure that all the immigrants brought in under the points system can:

1. Speak English, this is practical as they can function in society which improves their chance of integration, also they are much more likely to find a job.

2. Be a skilled worker, we are in desperate need for skilled professionals in STEM fields to plug our skills shortage and support things like our NHS etc.

3. Are young, this helps to correct our demographic problem of too many old people in contrast with young people. We need young working-age people to work and pay taxes. Under a points system we can ensure that an individual has to work in the system for decades before retiring and getting a pension.

Some people argue that we need unskilled immigrants too. We need jobs done which nobody will do, this is true. We can still get unskilled immigrants too though. We will get immigrants in other ways even if a points system were implemented. For example, spouses who marry British Citizens may not be skilled etc. The thing is though we need skilled-immigrants more than anything. I believe that the points-based systems are pragmatic and that it is the best system of immigration to meet a country’s needs.

Nonetheless, I view the Conservative Party’s pledge on reducing net migration to 100,000 per annum as being completely dogmatic in nature and it was promised for no other reason than to satisfy the anti-immigration ideologues. Reducing our net migration rate to 100,000 would have serious ramifications for our economy. As for the more radical proposes i.e. zero net migration which was promised by UKIP, their promise was completely ludicrous. Net migration of zero would completely wreck the British economy. The last time the UK had zero net migration was in the 1970s back when we were “the sick man of Europe”, back then our economy was in dire straits which is why not many people immigrated here and a lot of Britons emigrated abroad. Quite frankly though, in the contemporary globalised world zero net migration in the UK would just not be feasible. Foreign workers are needed to keep the economy afloat.

To conclude, I personally think that a net migration rate of around 150,000–200,000 per annum with figures leaning more toward the latter is the best net migration rate for the UK. I believe this based on the statistics which show that the UK needs to have a net migration rate of 200,000 to ensure we avoid catastrophic economic damage. 200,000 is double the net migration rate the Tories want. Right now the net migration rate is 300,000 per annum, this is the population of Hull and in roughly three and a half years it is the population of Birmingham (one million) which is the UK’s 2nd largest city after London. Overall though, immigrants in general contribute immensely to the UK, they strengthen our economy, they maintain our industries and they enrich our society by providing diversity

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