In the main on this blog I have steered clear of immigration subjects, it is far too easy to be branded xenophobic or racist in order to undermine the real message.
However now I do so with the intention of pointing out the duplicity of the British governments handling of the issue of economic immigration from Eastern EU members and to question why a government elected by the British people with a duty to stand up for Britain would renege on the commitment.
Foolishly I believed the government spin that fundamentally immigration was a net benefit to the Nation state of Britain, but am now inclined to accept that the beneficial affects depends on the scale of immigration. “Labour immigration can be good as long as it doesn’t dramatically undercut the position of the workers in relation to their employers”
I have not tried to argue against the quality or the motivation of the immigrants, by first hand experience, government and media reports, I understand the people coming here are coming to work, and by the vast majority have no intention of sponging off the nation state, they are intelligent hard working people who have seen and seized an opportunity offered to improve their lot in life, and who could blame them. Of course ther will always be a few bad apples
The Figures
Originally the British government forecast an expected 5,000 to 13,000 people would take the opportunity to work in Britian, when those figures were challenged, the government its supporters and EU apparatchiks accused the challengers of scaremongering with undertones of Xenophobia and racism.
But now government figures that show 427,095 people have registered under the governments Worker Registration Scheme (WRS).
That figure alone is alarming because it shows a compleate failure of the governments initial forecasting methods, so much so that it would appear to have been an exercise in propaganda if not a direct falsehood.
The government is now making the claim that this error was due to the fact that only Ireland, Sweden and Britian opened their doors to the new EU members, obviously the other nation sates preferring to protect their work force and their economy from the benefits of immigration?.
Although it was well known by all at the time which nation state would and which would not open their doors fully. http://www.ukimmigration.com/news/uk14.htm
But even now the government is hiding the real figure of immigrant workers because the WRS does not include self-employed workers of whom there is an estimated 100,000 possibly many more Further the WRS scheme only shows those people who have gone to the bother and expense of joining the WRS scheme, neither do the figures include dependents and non-workers or the number of workers ‘posted’ by foreign companies. Also people who have been in the UK for more than a year are no longer required to register in the WRS.
There is also other evidence to indicate that the WRS scheme figures do not show anything like the true picture; The chair of the Commons Home Affairs select Committee John Denham has suggested that “The number of people at the local level is often estimated at between two or three times the number the Government thinks are on the Worker Registration Scheme.”
Research conducted for Defra and the Home Office in 2004 showed that labour providers are supplying over 100,000 Accession State workers a year to agriculture and food processing. But in the first year of the WRS only 29,970 workers registered to work in agriculture and 11,385 in food processing, suggesting nearly 60,000 workers (or 60% within this industry)are “missing”.
International Passenger Survey show that since EU enlargement over 4.5 million citizens from the accession countries have visited the UK. In the equivalent period of time going back to January 2002 there were 1.4 million visitors to the UK from the accession countries, that is and increase of 3.1 million visitors.
The argument for immigration
The claims for the benefit of immigration generally: it has a tendency to press prices down, improve international competitively, clear bottle-necks, improve profitability and attract foreign investments. We currently lack professional plumbers, painters and other assorted professional workers. By importing these types of workers from the Baltic States, we clear crucial bottlenecks for our building sector, cooling the housing market and building more than what otherwise would have been possible. A larger population will require more services and businesses will be sprouting up to accommodate the new arrivals, this would create even more jobs.
The government claims that this immigration has benefited the country to the tune of 2.5 Billion. Of course there is also the added benefit of the education and skills introduced by the immigrants.
The arguments against
I would suggest that this immigration is perhaps not as beneficial as normal immigration, where people move into the country with the intention of making a new life for themselves.
In the first place we need to consider the vast scale of this particular immigration, which I belive is the largest round of immigration we have ever witnessed. It has already become obvious that the benefits of immigration are very much reliant on the scale
“David Frost, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said that the recent rise in unemployment to a six-year high was flashing a warning signal about the impact of migration of the indigenous workforce. “We have seen unemployment rise in the UK and clearly we don’t want to be in a position where we are seeing migrant labour coming in and getting the jobs and supporting the great number of local people have not got jobs,”
Dr John Philpott Chief Economist CIPD said “With demand for labour improving, the continuing rise in unemployment is now clearly driven by strong growth in labour supply as more immigrants enter the jobs market and the government gets better at getting the economically inactive jobless to look for work. This is helping to keep the lid on pay rises overall, with pay pressure dropping markedly in the public sector.”
Government figures show the number of people in employment increased by 42,000 over the three months to March 2006 and is up 240,000 over the year. The number of people in employment has increased but the employment rate has fallen. The claimant count, which is the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance benefits, rose to 957,000 in July 2006.
The number of people out of work and claiming benefits in the UK increased for a sixth month in a row in July, the longest stretch of rises for 13 years.
Richard Layard of the LSE, who helped to design Labour’s welfare to work programme, said in a letter to the Financial Times: “There is a huge amount of evidence that any increase in the number of unskilled workers lowers unskilled wages and increases the unskilled unemployment rate.
John Denham, a former minister, says that the new arrivals have halved wages for builders in his Southampton constituency.
However the government claims that this immigration has benefited the country to the tune of 2.5 Billion, but in order to arrive at that figure they have not included any of the cost involved more propaganda perhaps ?
There is another aspect of this immigration which raises questions: what we have is a very large pool of mainly young economic workers, who are coming here for a short time and want to earn as much money as possible, but they also want to save as much as possible in order to improve their prospects back home.
Their intention is not to settle in this country but to return home with their earnings, I would suggest in that instance there will not be an increase in business activity to accommodate the new workers, in fact there could well be a decrease in business especially the smaller ones, because those local workers who are displaced or who have faced increased costs but cannot offset those with higher wages, will be spending less as more of their money goes to meet their costs of living increased taxation etc.
Figures announced yesterday indicate that the rising levels of missed mortgage payments is evidence that many families’ finances have become extremely tight, so tight in most cases that banks refuse to fulfil payment orders. Personal bankruptcies have also soared, Official statistics, which record mortgage arrears of six months or more, also show that more and more homeowners are getting into trouble. More than 35,320 mortgages were in arrears in June this year, the highest since 2001, the Council for Mortgage Lenders said. Repossessions have risen to 8,140 in the past six months, their highest since 2001.
Tax is taking a higher percentage of average incomes, mainly because tax thresholds have fallen behind pay. Gas and electricity bills and transport costs, items that are important to most families’ budgets, have all risen strongly. Many families’ fuel bills are up nearly 30 per cent in a year. Costs of food, housing, fuel and light, taken together, are up 6.2 per cent in the year to August. Average inflation, as measured by the all-items retail prices index, rose to 3.4 per cent in August, the highest since the beginning of last year.
I am not blaming all this on the polish plumber, but the arguments that importing a cheap work force would push down wages and make Great Britian PLC more competitive on the world stage, even if it were true would have the affect of placing a greater burden on the British work force. An increase in the nation states GDP in not the same as an increase in GDP per capita.
Basically to improve EU employment prospects the British worker is being asked to take a cut in wage increase his productivity and accept an increase in costs; to in short to accept a lower standard of living worse working conditions, longer working hours, and a longer working life with retirement age being increased. In Britain, the unskilled are four times as likely to be unemployed as the skilled, and non-whites twice as likely as whites. It is they who will suffer from an influx of unskilled immigrants.
This picture is perhaps far to one sided and simplistic, certainly it is for those who are backing more immigration to this country, but they only want to look at one side, I am offering the other.
I am suggesting that the British government by claiming this recent immigration from the Eastern EU is a net benefit to the nation, has arrived at that conclusion by ignoring all of the negative aspects. I am also suggesting that even if this immigration is a benefit to the nation state, it is not a benefit to the workers who are seeing their wages cut at the same time their costs rising.
That we lack professional plumbers etc. Is testament to the fact that these professions are undervalued by the British education system, which seems to require every one to be an IT specialist, and scorns the value of the worker; until that is their drains become blocked, then they scream about the shortage of plumbers, and now want to import some, whilst the British IT educated workers stand idle. Short term it might be beneficial to import these workers, but we should address our own education system to correct the skill gap and value our own workers.
Housing; The point has been made that one of the benefits of immigration is to help clear bottle necks in house building, but the flip side of that argument is that the immigrants themselves will require extra housing. So the question is do we actually need more housing or are the immigrants creating the demand for extra housing.
Welfare benefits: In 2004 the then Home Secretary David Blunkett promised that: “we will
require accession nationals to be able to support themselves. If they are unable to do so, they will lose any right of residence and will have to return to their own country… If people want to come and work in Britain openly and legally, that is right. If they want to come and claim our benefits, that is wrong.”
In reality the WRS has failed to restrict access to benefits for migrant workers. There have now been 42,057 successful benefit claims by workers from the accession states. It is important to stress that these are only the claims made by those individuals who are on the WRS, and does not cover those who are not on it or no longer on it.
The bottom line is that just possibly this immigration has been a net benefit to Britian, although some of the government claims made on the numbers and the benefits are based on such a one sided optimistic view which does not recognise any of the impediments it could better be described as propaganda than real information.
Yet we consistently read arguments for the benefits of this immigration, but the arguments seems to stop at the borders of the EU, my point is if it is good for the nation state within the EU to have open immigration and a mobile work force why are those benefits not enhanced by the EU itself adopting the same open border policy, what is good for the goose is good for the gander, if it is not then why is it so good for goose, that question still remains to be answered.
A further point would be that out of the original 15 EU member Nation states only three have opted for this open door policy, the other obviously cannot see the benefits, either that or the benefits are an illusion.
But if it is the case that this immigration is a net benefit to the country it is not a benefit to the work force, then why would the British government wish to create such an illusion, what does it have to gain by lying to us? Perhaps the real answer has already been supplied:
“One solution is to create international labour unions or at least an international labour movement, able to stand toe to toe with the strength of the fluid capital. Encouraging labour movement between European countries is a way to encourage such a formation. It will also increase the European integration, something that would be crucial if a European labour movement would be possible”
It would also increase European (EU) integration: so it might seem that first we create a problem by allowing open access to our jobs market, we then offer a solution, which by the by happens to increase EU integration.
The problem with that is the countries which are strongest proponents for integration do not seem to want to play ball, preferring instead to protect their national work force and their national economy. Perhaps the answer to that is that France and Germany only want to do what is good for France and Germany. If that is the case then I must ask the question again; what is the benefit to Britian and the British worker of being a member of a club which will have the affect of lowering their standard of living, does not do any of the things it was supposed to do and is so expensive.
We were told that membership of the Common Market’ would facilitate trade; but if we look at the balance of trade figures for the countries of the European Union we see that Britain has an accumulated trade deficit with the EU of £285 billion up to 2004, whereas we have a trade surplus of almost £29.5 billion with non EU countries. EU membership has certainly not increased our profitable trade with EU countries.
The EU is a customs union not a free trade area. As a customs union it tends towards protectionism. Membership of the EU has therefore distorted Britain’s trade patterns adversely, preventing us buying more beneficially on the world market.
The total combined direct and indirect cost to Britain of belonging to the EU by 2007 will be £52.4 billion per annum, or close to £100,000 per minute. And this figure will go on rising.
How many policeman` doctors’ nurses’ hospitals schools` could we get for that money Technorati
Tags: Immigration, xenophobic, eu, eu’s-policies, europe’s-political-union, further-integration, tax, the-eu, trade, vested-interests
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