Recent Immigration Articles

There’s still no conclusive evidence immigration causes unemployment

contribution by Matt Cavanagh

The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) yesterday published a report on the impact of immigration on unemployment.

There is a danger that its finding there is an “association” between immigration and employment – in particular that “an extra 100 non-EU migrants are initially associated with 23 fewer native people employed” – will be seized on as ‘gotcha’ moment confirming the view that immigrants take jobs off British people.

But a number of cautionary points need to be made.
continue reading… »

How suspicious of foreigners are the British? #MyTramExperience

The appalled reaction to the racism of the woman on the Croydon tram suggests that such attitudes are no longer accepted in Britain. But then that reaction was expressed first and most prominently on Twitter, which is hardly representative of wider society.

Indeed it’s barely 18 months since the Mail on Sunday printed one of the most xenophobic headlines of recent years: “His wife is Spanish, his mother Dutch, his father half-Russian and his spin doctor German. Is there ANYTHING British about Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg?”.

But recent polls suggest that most Brits are far less suspicious of foreigners than the Mail on Sunday’s headline writers would have us believe.
continue reading… »

Leftists cannot deal with immigration just as an economic issue

contribution by Marley Morris

Like it or not, for significant numbers of people across Europe, immigration is a major concern.

In the past two decades a new wave of European populist parties and street movements have had considerable success. Rather than expounding anti-Semitic rhetoric like the inter-war right-wing extremists, this new breed focuses on immigration.

A common response on the left is to extol the economic virtues of immigration, hoping that they will realise it is in their economic interest after all and come back into the fold.
continue reading… »

UK Border Agency: let’s sign up to Schengen

One of the few political positions that sections of the far left and the free market right alike hold dear is opposition to immigration controls. But I am still not quite sure whether it was the Socialist Workers’ Party or the Adam Smith Institute that sneakily managed to take over the UK Border Agency while no-one was looking this summer.

Even though I also back a policy of open borders, I never once imagined that the Coalition would implement the idea quite so literally.

continue reading… »

Housing shortages don’t always have lead to tension over immigration

contribution by Nancy Kelly

On Wednesday. the Migration Observatory published a briefing on the impact of migration on the social housing system in the UK. Two days earlier, Migration Watch had also published a briefing on migrants and social housing, that raised concerns.

Despite being very different in tone, both reports agree that 90% of social housing tenancies are held by people born in the UK, and only 10% by people born outside of the UK.
continue reading… »

Anders Breivik wasn’t a “lone wolf”, he was part of a movement

Right-wing pundits are now very keen to tell us that the Norwegian terror attacks were not caused by right-wing anti-multicultural ideology.

The fact that Anders Breivik quoted Daily Mail articles in his manifesto and forged links with the same anti-immigration groups lauded by our tabloid press is apparently neither here nor there. 

He was just a lone nutter okay? And besides, if it wasn’t for multiculturalism, then there wouldn’t have been a problem there in the first place.
continue reading… »

Even MigrationWatch think Maurice Glasman is over the top

Maurice Glasman recently called for a moratorium on all migration to the UK, as part of his Blue Labour project. Sir Andrew of Migration Watch UK called this “over the top.”

Yeah, they of “as seen in the Mail and Express” fame, oft also seen spurting bile against migrants. They think he is being “over the top.
continue reading… »

Yes, we do need a ‘new patriotism’

Last week Labour MP Jon Cruddas and academic Jonathan Rutherford wrote an article for the Guardian titled ‘Labour must fashion a new patriotism‘. They said:

We are an immigrant nation. There is no going back and we must find ways of living together and creating a new vision of England. We demand that migrants must be like us. But who actually are we? They must share our British values. But what are they? Newcomers must answer correctly the citizens test. But could we?

I think this is spot on.
continue reading… »

Do voters really want Labour to be more right-wing?

The Guardian reports that “voters want a tough responsibilities agenda, similar to that of New Labour”, based on submissions to Labour’s policy review process. Respondents want to cut crime and anti-social behaviour, reform welfare and reduce immigration, protect wage levels, cut international aid to “look after our own first”, be more Eurosceptic, reform banks and cut bankers’ bonuses, reduce tuition fees, reverse police cuts, increase apprenticeships and expand youth services.

Some thoughts on this. continue reading… »

The government’s migration policy is failing

contribution by Sean Bamford

Figures release by the National Office for Statistics this morning shows net migration at its highest level in more than five years. A major factor in producing these figures is the decline in the number of people leaving the UK. 344,000 people left the UK in the year to September 2010, down 20% from its peak of 427,000 in the 12 months to December 2008,

By contrast the number of migrants coming in to the UK has remained broadly constant at 586,000, taking net migration to 242,000, up from 198,000 at the end of 2009 and 163,000 the year before.
continue reading… »