Surprise, surprise

The US government's much-touted E-Verify programme for detecting whether workers are authorised to work in the US detects fewer than half of illegal workers, while initially rejecting some legal workers. 

Technology is not a quick fix for the political problem of what to do with 12 million undocumented immigrants in the US.

Are immigrants stealing 'British' jobs?

In response to a "life-swap" television programme made by Today presenter Evan Davis that will be shown on BBC 1 tonight, I debated how immigrant workers are affecting the UK with Frank Field MP on BBC Radio 4's flagship news programme, Today. Listen to it here

Is Britain full?

The Times asked a number of people, including me, whether Britain is full. 

The country's supposed overpopulation is now the argument of choice for opponents of immigration, many of whose real objection to having more foreigners around is cultural. 

After all, Manhattan, Paris and Kensington & Chelsea are the most densely populated areas of the US, France and the UK respectively, yet they are hardly hellholes.

Read the full article here:

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article7028212.ece

Analysis: Who's Afraid of the BNP?

Listen to Kenan Malik's excellent Analysis programme on Radio 4 tonight

The economic benefits of migration

They remain as large as ever.

Read my pamphlet for CentreForum. It was published a year ago, but I forgot to post it on here until now,

The law of the jungle

British troops are dying in Afghanistan because the government deems the Taliban such a terrible threat.

Yet those who flee the Taliban and the war are denied asylum in this country.

This is an outrage.

With the closure of the Jungle, a makeshift refugee camp in Calais, children as young as 3 are among the desperate people left to fend for themselves.

Scoundrels such as Andrew Green of MigrationWatch suggest they are gathered in Calais because Britain is seen as a 'soft touch'.

He also claims Britain is full up and cannot accommodate any more people.

Those were the arguments used by the Daily Mail to justify keeping out German Jews fleeing the Nazis in the 1930s.

If the government has any shred of humanity, it will give the young victims of the Taliban asylum in Britain.

Iconoclasts: Why we should abolish immigration controls

On September 16 I appeared on BBC Radio 4's Iconoclasts programme to make the case for abolishing immigration controls.

Listen here: Download Radio4-part1 Download Radio4-part2

EU migration to the UK is working

By Tim Finch of IPPR. Excellent. Read it here.

Sharp fall in Mexican migration to the US

The New York Times reports that:

about 226,000 fewer people emigrated from Mexico to other countries during the year that ended in August 2008 than during the previous year, a decline of 25 percent. All but a very small fraction of emigration, both legal and illegal, from Mexico is to the United States.

Opponents of immigration tend to assume that people want to move from poor countries to rich ones irrespective of the economic circumstances - perhaps to languish on welfare, for instance.

This is nonsense, of course. Most people who uproot themselves to another country do so in order to better themselves by working hard.

When there are jobs to be filled, they come. When there aren't, they don't.

Immigrants? Not us - we're British

There is an interesting article in The Times about Brits who had been living in Spain returning home because of the economic crisis.

Tellingly, though, they are referred to as "expats" throughout.

It seems that British people abroad aren't migrants, or worse still immigrants.

That's a term we reserve for nasty foreigners.

Paranoid fantasies about immigration in Europe

Christopher Caldwell is an intelligent and educated man. His columns for the FT are often perceptive and original. But his views on immigration in Europe, presented in his new book, "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West", are paranoid and delusional.

Caldwell's book is a cocktail of projected fears: Europe is in decline, its population ageing and falling, its citizens decadent and weak; immigrants are a threat, Islam an even bigger one, and Muslim immigrants are multiplying like rabbits; ergo, Muslim immigrants are a united force bent on conquering a continent that has lost the will and the means to fight. I simplify, but only a little.

Caldwell's book tells us more about Caldwell himself than it does about immigration in Europe. But sadly, it will get huge play, because it plays to the prejudices of all sorts of people.

Read a full review of Caldwell's book in the FT by Mark Mazower here.

Dozens dead, hundreds missing

Three, perhaps 4, boats laden with migrants people heading from Libya to Italy sink. As many as 300 people could be dead.

Europe's border controls claim more lives. The official response? We need tougher controls.

Kenan Malik on the UK government's multicultural policies

Rather than appealing to Muslims as British citizens, with a variety of views and beliefs, politicians of all hues prefer to see them as people whose primary loyalty is to their faith and who can be engaged only by other Muslims. Should we be surprised then if, as a consequence, many Muslims come to see themselves as semi-detached Britons? Last week the government published Contest 2, its new anti-terrorism strategy. But it has still not understood the extent to which its own multicultural policies have helped fan the flames of Islamic radicalism.

Citizenship has no meaning if different classes of citizens are treated differently, whether through multicultural policies or through racism.

Read the full article in the Sunday Times.

On a march against the US Border Patrol

Our biggest domestic menace never was waiting outside Home Depot, hoping to clean your basement. Unauthorized immigrants are not about to destroy anything, not even when they get angry and loud and march in large groups. On the contrary, they are inspiring. Their ethic of self-reliance and hard work is one that Americans should recognize and celebrate.

Exhibit A: Riverside, Calif., where I went recently to watch immigrant advocates march against the Border Patrol.

Read the full article in the New York Times

American jobs for American workers

As more Americans lose their jobs, the U.S. government is actively discouraging the recruitment of foreign workers, from dude ranchers and fruit pickers to lifeguards and computer programmers. Full article in WSJ.

In the NYT, Casey Mulligan points out how that preventing foreigners working to save American jobs is as absurd as the "marriage bars" which proliferated during the Great Depression. These prevented married women getting jobs, or led to women being fired when they got married. But since then, as the share of women working has soared, the share of men working has remained unchanged.

There isn't a fixed number of jobs to go around. Women don't take men's jobs, and immigrants don't take local workers'. Full article here.

Remittances at risk

Jenny Abura on the benefits of migrants' remittances to Uganda

Remittances to Latin America are falling Ecuador, which receives most of its remittances from recession-hit Spain, suffered a 22% fall in the last three months of 2008.

Finland's former finance minister on the need to protect the world's poor from the consequences of falling remittances

Gardening is still a step up for US immigrants

Hispanic immigrants who work in construction, hotels and other blue-collar jobs have suffered from the brutal economic climate. But immigrant gardeners appear to be weathering the harsh conditions well.

"Gardening isn't like working at a factory, where you depend on one employer," says Manuel Quezada, a 54-year-old veteran gardener, as he and his team put down sod in the front yard of a house here. "If I lose one house, it doesn't hurt that much."

The full article is in the Wall Street Journal.

Frost over the World Interview on Immigration

I was interviewed on Frost over the World on 20 February. They won't be making a film about the interview, but it was a great opportunity to meet a living icon.

Review of Immigrants in the Observer

Very kind review by Michael Englard in the Observer:

Legrain's book makes a timely case for the benefits of migration and crisply counters the views of its prominent critics

Legrain is able to communicate complex ideas through impressively chiselled prose.

Thanks

If I was king for a day...

Download P46_YAH2_TBIL_833

A speck in the night

A vessel overladen with migrants, near the Italian island of Lampedusa.
Photo by Mashid Mohadjerin/ Reporters, from the World Press Photo Awards.

Foreigners aren't grabbing "British" jobs

As the recession bites, unemployment soars, and protests against foreign workers proliferate, the publication of Office for National Statistics figures (pdf) showing that the number of foreign-born people in work rose last year would appear to confirm what opponents of immigration have been saying all along: foreigners are taking "British" jobs. But the picture is far more complex than that.

Note, for starters, that critics would single out immigrants whatever the statistics showed. When immigrants are in work, they are taking our jobs; when they are out of work, they are a burden on the welfare state. Immigrants can't win: they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Second, opponents of immigration (and others, including myself) have previously pointed out – correctly – that ONS migration figures were deeply flawed. In particular, they did not accurately count the number of migrants from central and eastern Europe, who as EU citizens can come and go freely. If many of the Poles taking up jobs in Britain were not counted in the boom times, they are unlikely to be counted if they have since lost their jobs or left now we are in a bust. Foreign-born workers may thus not be faring as well as the ONS figures suggest.

Third, the category that the ONS has highlighted – foreign-born people – includes British citizens born abroad and immigrants who arrived as children and are only now entering employment after finishing school or university. In fact, 40% of the UK's foreign-born workers are now British citizens. On what grounds would the wildcat strikers and opponents of immigration object to their employment?

The other category that the ONS provides figures for – non-UK nationals – includes people who have been in this country for decades but have never taken up British citizenship. Again, what would be wrong if more of them were now working? What we would really like to know is whether the number of recent migrants in work is rising, but unfortunately those figures are not available. We would also need more research into what is driving the employment trends, which again we don't have.

Digging a little deeper in the ONS statistics that we do have, one finds that the 175,000 rise in the number of non-UK nationals in work (which is subject to a margin of error of plus or minus 111,000) comes from an unexpected source. Employment among east Europeans has not risen, it has increased (subject to big margins of error) among Indians (up 24,000), citizens of the 14 other countries that were EU members before 2004 (up 25,000), South Africans (up 27,000), and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis (up 31,000). At the same time, figures released to parliament last month show that the number of work permits granted to Indians last year rose by 24,000 to 50,000, while those granted to South Africans rose by 2,000 to 4,900 and those to Pakistanis by 1,700 to 3,300 (a mere 725 were granted to Bangladeshis). Together, this suggests that nearly all of the rise in the number of South Africans and Pakistanis in work last year is due to people who were already in Britain finding jobs, not new arrivals. Since the employment rate among Pakistanis, particularly Pakistani women, has historically been low, it is surely a good thing that more of them are now working.

The bigger point, which bears repeating again, is that there is not a fixed number of jobs to go around, so that making divisive statements about one group of people taking jobs off another is not only invidious, it is also inaccurate. Everyone who works creates jobs for others when they spend their wages as well as in complementary lines of work. Women who work are not taking jobs off men; black employees are not depriving white people of work; people from outside London who work in the capital are not nabbing jobs off those who were born there; and foreigners are not grabbing British jobs. The debate we should really be having is how to create more jobs. Investing more in our rickety infrastructure would be a good place to start.

Foreigners aren't grabbing "British" jobs

As the recession bites, unemployment soars, and protests against foreign workers proliferate, the publication of Office for National Statistics figures (pdf) showing that the number of foreign-born people in work rose last year would appear to confirm what opponents of immigration have been saying all along: foreigners are taking "British" jobs. But the picture is far more complex than that.

Note, for starters, that critics would single out immigrants whatever the statistics showed. When immigrants are in work, they are taking our jobs; when they are out of work, they are a burden on the welfare state. Immigrants can't win: they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Second, opponents of immigration (and others, including myself) have previously pointed out – correctly – that ONS migration figures were deeply flawed. In particular, they did not accurately count the number of migrants from central and eastern Europe, who as EU citizens can come and go freely. If many of the Poles taking up jobs in Britain were not counted in the boom times, they are unlikely to be counted if they have since lost their jobs or left now we are in a bust. Foreign-born workers may thus not be faring as well as the ONS figures suggest.

Third, the category that the ONS has highlighted – foreign-born people – includes British citizens born abroad and immigrants who arrived as children and are only now entering employment after finishing school or university. In fact, 40% of the UK's foreign-born workers are now British citizens. On what grounds would the wildcat strikers and opponents of immigration object to their employment?

The other category that the ONS provides figures for – non-UK nationals – includes people who have been in this country for decades but have never taken up British citizenship. Again, what would be wrong if more of them were now working? What we would really like to know is whether the number of recent migrants in work is rising, but unfortunately those figures are not available. We would also need more research into what is driving the employment trends, which again we don't have.

Digging a little deeper in the ONS statistics that we do have, one finds that the 175,000 rise in the number of non-UK nationals in work (which is subject to a margin of error of plus or minus 111,000) comes from an unexpected source. Employment has not risen among east Europeans, it has increased (subject to big margins of error) among Indians (up 24,000), citizens of the 14 other countries that were EU members before 2004 (up 25,000), South Africans (up 27,000), and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis (up 31,000). At the same time, figures released to parliament last month show that the number of work permits granted to Indians last year rose by 24,000 to 50,000, while those granted to South Africans rose by 2,000 to 4,900 and those to Pakistanis by 1,700 to 3,300 (a mere 725 were granted to Bangladeshis). Together, this suggests that nearly all of the rise in the number of South Africans and Pakistanis in work last year is due to people who were already in Britain finding jobs, not new arrivals. Since the employment rate among Pakistanis, particularly Pakistani women, has historically been low, it is surely a good thing that more of them are now working.

The bigger point, which bears repeating again, is that there is not a fixed number of jobs to go around, so that making divisive statements about one group of people taking jobs off another is not only invidious, it is also inaccurate. Everyone who works creates jobs for others when they spend their wages as well as in complementary lines of work. Women who work are not taking jobs off men; black employees are not depriving white people of work; people from outside London who work in the capital are not nabbing jobs off those who were born there; and foreigners are not grabbing British jobs. The debate we should really be having is how to create more jobs. Investing more in our rickety infrastructure would be a good place to start.

Berlusconi's noxious immigration crackdown

First they went after the gypsies... and now the vile Berlusconi government is trying to crack down on immigrants more generally.

Under a proposed new law, doctors would be able to snitch on illegal immigrants they treat, while foreigners who fail to leave Italy after receiving a deportation order could be imprisoned for up to 4 years, reports El Pais.

During his various terms in office, Berlusconi has pushed through all manner of legal reforms to protect himself against potential criminal proceedings. Opinions may differ as to who belongs in jail. I couldn't possibly comment.

The Independent reviews updated paperback of Immigrants

With the X-word currently dominating the headlines, there could be no better time for this intelligent, wholly persuasive defensive of immigration. Scourging the xenophobia that sprouts at times of economic downturn, Legrain insists that clamping down on immigration is "morally wrong, economically stupid and politically unsustainable".

He points out that immigrants, who usually only wish to work abroad temporarily, make their host nation "more interesting and culturally rich". Legrain might have added that they bring a wonderful variety of culinary riches. As JK Galbraith said of immigration, "What is the perversity in the human soul that causes people to resist so obvious a good?"

Link here. Thank you.

Two more American immigration fiascos

What do you get when you mix inhumanity with bureaucratic targets? Immigration raids that make up the numbers by rounding up the easiest targets rather than the most dangerous fugitives.

The New York Times reports that:

Federal immigration officials had repeatedly told Congress that among more than half a million immigrants with outstanding deportation orders, they would concentrate on rounding up the most threatening — criminals and terrorism suspects.

Instead, newly available documents show, the agency changed the rules, and the program increasingly went after easier targets. A vast majority of those arrested had no criminal record, and many had no deportation orders against them, either.

Meanwhile, America's border wall is proving to be another fiasco, the Wall St Journal reports:

Opponents of the fence have petitioned the Obama administration to halt construction. Environmentalists are demanding a top-level review of the route, which they say would block such rare species as the ocelot from critical habitat. Property owners are contesting federal seizure of their land. Engineers are struggling to address flooding concerns.

And all the while, drug smugglers and illegal immigrants continue to breach the fencing that is up, forcing Border Patrol agents and contractors to return again and again for repairs. The smugglers build ramps to drive over fencing, dig tunnels under it, or use blow torches to slice through. They cut down metal posts used as vehicle barriers and replace them with dummy posts, made from cardboard.

Texas state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh gets it right:

What we see is a muro del odio [wall of hate]. Simply put, it doesn't work. We hope Obama will take the wall down.

Overturn the barricades

The economy is shrinking, unemployment is soaring, insecurity is rife - no wonder people are angry. As wildcat strikes against foreign workers spread across Britain, people who fear for their own jobs may feel sympathetic. But however understandable the strikers' emotions may be, they have got it all wrong.

Foreign workers are not responsible for the mess we're in; the financial crisis is. Blame bankers (British and foreign), finger blase regulators and blinkered politicians, spread responsibility among everyone who piled on debt and gambled on house prices - but don't scapegoat Italian oil workers.

Nor would kicking out foreign workers create more jobs for British people. The notion that there is a fixed number of jobs to go around is a nonsense. Workers (foreign or otherwise) not only take jobs, they also create them. Gordon Brown should have known better than to legitimise the old National Front canard of "British jobs for British workers" in his 2007 conference speech. He should eat his words.

Fewer foreigners around would mean even less spending in the shops, and so cost British people their jobs. Chucking foreign employees out would cause further dislocation to businesses already struggling with shrivelled credit and collapsing demand. It would play havoc with public services, depriving patients of doctors and nurses, the elderly of carers, and children of teachers. It would plunge the economy into an even bigger hole - and we'd end up with fewer jobs for British people, not more.

Let's be clear: if British workers are being discriminated against in Lindsey or elsewhere, that is unacceptable. It would be a breach of both British and EU law. But there is no evidence of that. What the strikers appear to want is that foreign workers be discriminated against - and that too is unacceptable.

The free movement of labour is not only economically beneficial and morally right, it is a legal requirement of EU membership. If Britain were to discriminate against other European workers, what is to stop other EU countries discriminating against British ones? Some 2 million Brits are thought to work in another EU country - do we want to put their jobs at risk too?

During the boom years when the pound was overvalued, Britain attracted workers from around the EU. But with the UK economy now predicted to be hardest hit by the global recession, Brits may feel tempted to seek work on the continent. That's what happened when unemployment reached 3 million in the 1980s, as workers similar to the brickies who featured in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet sought work in Germany and elsewhere.

Pundits and politicians are forever intoning that we must not fall prey to protectionism. Barricading ourselves off from outsiders leads not to salvation, but to economic depression and political extremism. That's one reason why the EU, with its single market, impartial regulations and common political institutions, is so important. Reverting to a policy of each to his own, beggar-thy-neighbour, and devil take the hindmost, would cause the EU to unravel.

That would delight Europhobic Tories, Ukip, the BNP, MigrationWatch and a host of rancid fellow-travellers. But the trade union and wider Labour movement should have no truck with it. Solidarity does not stop at the water's edge. The EU is a champion of workers' rights. And if the flaws of financial globalisation are to be fixed - and climate change curbed - it will be in partnership with Europe, not against it.

Now of all times Derek Simpson, Jon Cruddas and others on the left should not be making common cause with what Peter Mandelson has rightly called "the politics of xenophobia".

Overturn the barricades

Free movement of labour makes economic and moral sense. Without it the EU would unravel
Read my article in today's Guardian

Why Britain still needs immigrants in a recession

Speaking on Five Live Breakfast News this morning, with Andrew Green of MigrationWatch. Listen here

Paperback edition of Immigrants out on 5 Feb

The updated and revised paperback edition of Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them will be published in the English-speaking world outside the US on 5 February.

It is available for pre-order on Amazon.co.uk here.

Thank you to everyone who visits this website for your support.

Immigration round-up

In Britain, the government is today publishing its long-awaited citizenship, immigration and borders bill. It proposes that prospective citizens should have to "earn" British citizenship after going through a probationary period. I have written a critique of the earned-citizenship proposals here.

I debated whether Britain still needs immigration in a recession of Radio Five Live this morning, with Andrew Green of MigrationWatch. The audio clip will be posted once it is available on the BBC website.

In France, immigration minister Brice Hortefeux has been replaced by Eric Besson, an ex-Socialist who quit Segolene Royal's presidential campaign last year to support Nicolas Sarkozy.

MigrationWatch is twisting the truth

Are immigrants taking our jobs? It is an explosive issue, especially with Britain sinking into recession and unemployment rising. So opponents of immigration will doubtless seize on a new report by the independent thinktank MigrationWatch UK, which claims that those dastardly foreigners who have the cheek to look after your granny or pick English strawberries are stealing jobs from British people. Yet the claims of Sir Andrew Green's thinktank are flatly contradicted by figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

MigrationWatch claims that nearly all the jobs created in the UK since 2001 have gone to immigrants. But figures from the labour force survey (xls), show that employment among British-born people actually rose by 378,000 between the second quarter of 2001 and the second quarter of 2008, the dates arbitrarily chosen by MigrationWatch. If one excludes the recent fall in employment due to the financial crisis and instead compares the last three months of 2000 with the last three months of 2007, the number of UK-born people with jobs has risen by just over half a million (520,000).

MigrationWatch also claims that employment among UK-born people has fallen by 230,000 since the second quarter of 2004, when Britain opened its labour market to the Poles and other eastern Europeans joining the EU. But this too is contradicted by ONS figures. These show that the number of British-born people in jobs actually rose by 43,000 between the second quarter of 2004 and the same period of 2008. Excluding the impact of the financial crisis, employment rose by 175,000 between the second quarter of 2004 and the last three months of 2007.

MigrationWatch says that "there has been no progress at all in getting British-born unemployed workers into work" since 2001, and blames immigrants for this. But ONS figures suggest otherwise. They show that the employment rate among British-born people – the proportion of UK-born people of working age in employment – rose sharply in Labour's first term, from 73.5% in the second quarter of 1997 to 76% in the third quarter of 2000. Since then it has remained roughly steady: it was 75.6% in the second quarter of 2004 when Britain opened up to east European workers and 76% in the last quarter of 2007. In other words, the employment rate stopped improving well before eastern European migrants started arriving in large numbers, and has not worsened since.

The bigger point is this. As even MigrationWatch is forced to concede, there is not a fixed number of jobs in the economy. Immigrants don't just take jobs, they also create them, as they spend their wages and fill roles in complementary lines of work. If Britain threw out its Polish workers there wouldn't suddenly be more jobs for British people – just as throwing women out of work wouldn't provide more jobs for men.

Whichever way you look at it, immigrants are not taking British people's jobs. On the contrary, they are helping to provide vital public services and keep small businesses going. Not for the first time, MigrationWatch's xenophobic prejudice is causing it to twist the truth. Andrew Green should be ashamed of himself.

Migrationwatch are wrong: immigrants aren't taking "British jobs"

Are immigrants taking our jobs? It is an explosive issue, especially with Britain sinking into recession and unemployment rising. So opponents of immigration will doubtless seize on a new report by Migrationwatch which claims that those dastardly foreigners who have the cheek to look after our granny or pick English strawberries are stealing jobs from British people. Yet Migrationwatch’s claims are flatly contradicted by figures from the Office of National Statistics.

Migrationwatch claims that nearly all the jobs created in the UK since 2001 have gone to immigrants. But figures from the Labour Force Survey show that employment among British-born people actually rose by 378,000 between the second quarter of 2001 and the second quarter of 2008, the dates arbitrarily chosen by Migrationwatch. If one excludes the recent fall in employment due to the financial crisis and instead compares the last three months of 2000 with the last three months of 2007, the number of UK-born people with jobs has risen by just over half a million (520,000).

Migrationwatch also claims that employment among UK-born people has fallen by 230,000 since the second quarter of 2004, when Britain opened its labour market to the Poles and other eastern Europeans joining the EU. But this too is contradicted by ONS figures. These show that the number of British-born people in jobs actually rose by 43,000 between the second quarter of 2004 and the same period of 2008. Excluding the impact of the financial crisis, employment rose by 175,000 between the second quarter of 2004 and the last three months of 2007.

Migrationwatch say that “there has been no progress at all in getting British-born unemployed workers into work” since 2001 and blame immigrants for this. But ONS figures suggest otherwise. They show that the employment rate among British-born people – the proportion of UK-born people of working age in employment – rose sharply in Labour’s first term, from 73.5% in the second quarter of 1997 to 76% in the third quarter of 2000. Since then it has remained roughly steady: it was 75.6% in the second quarter of 2004 when Britain opened up to east European workers and 76% in the last quarter of 2007. In other words, the employment rate stopped improving well before eastern European migrants started arriving in large numbers, and has not worsened since.

The bigger point is this. As even Migrationwatch are forced to concede, there is not a fixed number of jobs in the economy. Immigrants don’t just take jobs, they also create them, as they spend their wages and in complementary lines of work. If Britain threw out its Polish workers, there wouldn’t suddenly be more jobs for British people – just as throwing women out of work wouldn’t provide more jobs for men.

Whatever way you look at it, immigrants are not taking British people’s jobs. On the contrary, they are helping to provide vital public services and keeping small businesses going. Not for the first time, Migrationwatch’s xenophobic prejudice is causing it to twist the truth. Andrew Green should be ashamed of himself.

Boris is right!

I never thought I'd say this, but here goes: Boris Johnson is right.

Right to support an amnesty for the hundreds of thousand of illegal migrants in London and the rest of the UK. The reality is that most work hard, pay their taxes and contribute to Britain's economy and society, but they are forced to live in the shadows, bereft of rights, vulnerable to exploitation, and living in perpetual fear of deportation. Many have been here over a decade; some have British-born children growing up here. Just imagine the consequences of trying to uproot them.

The government's policy: talk tough, "crack down" on illegal immigrants, and deport those they can is a sham policy: it is economically, politically, logistically and humanely impossible for the police to round up half-a-million people and expel them from Britain. Since the government's policy is a phoney policy, it causes suffering, fragments the economy and society, and yet fails to achieve its aim.

Far better, irrespective of what you think about immigrants in generally, to face up to reality and regularise their situation. It worked for the US in 1986. It worked for Spain in 2006. It's likely to happen under an Obama presidency. And it will one day have to happen in Britain too once lily-livered short-sighted politicians finally realise that it is the only viable option. So why not do it now?

Justice finally prevails in Australia

A German doctor whose family was twice denied permanent residency in Australia because of his son’s Down syndrome has been allowed to stay after the immigration minister intervened on his behalf.

Dr. Bernhard Moeller moved to Australia with his wife and three children nearly three years ago when he was hired to work as a specialist at a rural hospital in the southern state of Victoria.

The family decided to apply for permanent residency, but were appalled when their application was rejected this month because Dr. Moeller’s 13-year-old son, Lukas, has Down syndrome.

Australia has a longstanding policy of weighing medical conditions in its residency decisions. Any applicant deemed to have a condition that would incur significant costs to the state-run health care system must be rejected under Australia’s immigration laws.

The Moellers appealed the ruling to the Migration Review Tribunal, the immigration department’s appellate court, but it upheld the decision. As a final resort, the family took the case to the federal immigration minister, Sen. Chris Evans.

Do you think the Moellers would have been allowed to stay if John Howard was still in power?

Full story in the NYT

      

Debating migration, skills and the job market

at the Royal Geographical Society with Khalid Koser and Andrew Green, chaired by Jonty Bloom.

Watch it here

The Poles are going home (cont.)

Immigration to Britain from eastern Europe continues to fall.

In the third quarter of 2007, 59,000 people from the A8 countries registered to work in Britain; in the same period this year, only 38,000 did. The decline was mostly due to fewer Poles applying to work: their numbers almost halved from 41,000 to 23,000.

We shall miss them when they are gone.

Many are filling vital gaps in our public services. In the twelve months to September, 3,400 A8 nationals registered as care workers, 840 as teachers, researchers and classroom assistants, 75 as dental practitioners (including hygienists and dental nurses), and 835 as GPs, hospital doctors, nurses and medical specialists.

Read the latest Home Office Accession Monitoring Report in full here.

Attitudes to immigration in America and Europe

The latest Transatlantic Trends survey of attitudes towards immigration in America and Europe finds that 47% of Europeans and 50% of Americans think immigration is more of a problem than an opportunity.

But young Europeans (aged 18-34) are much more positive about immigration than older ones. In both the US and Europe, the better educated people are, the more positive towards immigration they are. While 52% of Europeans and 55% of Americans who have not completed secondary school think immigration is more of a problem, only a third of Europeans with a university degree think so. Among those with a post-graduate degree, the figure is 28% for Europeans and 27% for Americans.

People who actually have contact with immigrants are also much more favourable towards immigration. Whereas 54% of Europeans and 61% of Americans without immigrant friends or colleagues said that
immigration is more of a problem, only 42% of Europeans and 43% of Americans with at least a few personal or professional immigrant contacts said likewise.

There was also a strong left-right divide, with Democrats, independents and Europeans who identify as being on the left or centre much more positive about immigration than Republicans and right-wing Europeans.

While the overall picture is not particularly cheery, the fact that those who are younger, better educated and have contact with immigrants are more positive is a good sign. Generational change, improvements in education and contact with real people can make a difference.

Immigranti - Perché abbiamo bisogno di loro

I'm delighted to say that the Italian edition of Immigrants is out in January 2009.

The book is published by Baldini Castoldi Dalai editore and is available for pre-order from shop.it

27 children in a boat

Photo by Sergio Betancort © Prisacom S.A. From El Pais.com

They came from North Africa and reached Europe: the Canary Island of Lanzarote, Spain

Spain attracts most immigrants in EU in 2007

Net immigration to the EU - immigrants less emigrants - was 1.9 million in 2007, according to Eurostat. Since the EU population is just shy of 500 million, the immigration rate was 0.38%.

Spain had the highest level of net immigration: 702,000; Italy was second, with 494,000; Britain third, with 175,000. The Netherlands experienced net emigration, with 1,600 more people leaving than arriving.

Spot the difference

In a bid to reverse the brain drain out of Europe and attract talented foreigners to come work here, the EU is proposing to introduce a Blue Card visa, in a deliberate echo of the US's much-coveted Green Card.

The Green Card grants the holder the permanent right to live and work in America.

The Blue Card would give highly skilled workers with at least 5 years' relevant experience who have found a job that pays more than 1.7 the average wage in that European country a two-year visa that would allow them to live, work and travel in Europe.

Several European governments, notably Germany, think the proposal is too generous.

Prejudice in Europe is more than skin deep

From the country that elected a former Nazi as president comes another outrage:

In an extraordinary on-air outburst, Klaus Emmerich, the veteran Austrian television pundit, declared: “I would not want the western world to be directed by a black man.” When invited to retract, Mr Emmerich stood by what he had said, adding that “blacks aren’t as politically civilised” and pouring fuel on to the fire by hinting that Mr Obama’s “rhetorical brilliance” and ability in organising a movement made him comparable to infamous demagogues from the past. America’s choice, Mr Emmerich concluded, was as misplaced as a Turk becoming the next chancellor of Austria...

A comment such as Mr Emmerich’s would be political suicide in the US; in Austria it earned little more than a slap on the wrist. How is it that while both places have their fair share of racism, one finds such contrasting public and political responses?

One difference is that in Europe today truly to belong still means being white. “Do you feel yourself to be British?” BBC journalist Jeremy Paxman asked a young black London rapper after Mr Obama’s victory. Europeans find it hard adjusting to a colour-blind world. Indeed their hesitancy is growing. In Austria, the extreme right carved out big gains in September’s general elections. Pope Benedict weighed in over the summer to warn against a possible resurgence of fascist values in Italy. Europe as a whole, according to recent polls, has become significantly more xenophobic over the past few years. Fears of Islamic terrorism and anxiety about globalisation have fed this trend. So has fervent anti-European Union sentiment, strongly correlated to populist anti-immigrant rhetoric. By contrast, Mr Obama’s story is that of the immigrant dream, a tale of upwardly-mobile success that cut decisively across race lines. Immigrant voters played a decisive electoral role in Mr Obama’s win, yet immigration – for all the prior public debate – figured little as a campaign issue.

Read the full article by Mark Mazower in the FT.

Spain to toughen immigration laws

Spain's Socialist government is planning to tighten the country's immigration laws. It wants to limit the right of immigrants who are not yet permanent residents to bring their parents to live in Spain and to extend the length of time illegal immigrants are detained from 40 days to 60.

The right-wing opposition, the Partido Popular, wants to impose even stricter limits on family reunification, raise the detention of illegal migrants to 70 days, and force immigrants to sign up to an integration contract obliging them to learn Spanish and respect Spanish customs.

Full story, in Spain, in El Pais.

Prospects for US immigration reform

The upside: Many Republican anti-immigration extremists will no longer be members of the incoming House of Representatives. Nine or 10 have lost their seats; their leader, Tom Tancredo, is retiring, as is Duncan Hunter.

The downside: Leading reform advocate Ted Kennedy is fighting cancer, and John McCain watered down his reform commitment during his election campaign. The priority for the foreseeable future will be coping with the economic and financial crisis. And when unemployment is rising, opposition to immigration is likely to strengthen.

But immigration doesn't cost jobs. On the contrary, immigrants tend to create them.

A new study suggests immigrants are far more likely than non-immigrants to start and own businesses. It finds that immigrants start about 17% of the 484,000-some businesses created each month, and are 30% more likely than non-immigrants to start businesses each month, according to the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy.

Hat tip: WSJ.

Sheap shearers welcome, midwives not

The British government's lunacy knows no bounds. Irrespective of how open to immigration you think Britain should be, the notion that the Home Office, advised by a committee of wise men and women, is capable of identifying the specific occupations where job shortages exist is ludicrous.

According to the government's new list, Britain will allow in:

• sheap shearers (but only if they hold the British Wool Marketing Board bronze medal or equivalent);
• frozen fish filleters (but only in Scotland);
• theatre nurses (but not midwives);
• veterinary surgeons (but not other veterinarians);
• chefs (but only those paid at least £8.10 an hour);
• ballet dancers (but not choreographers, or other dancers).

For the full list, click here.

It’s absurd. The government simply doesn’t have the information to second-guess the employment needs of the UK economy now, let alone in future.

Think how hard it is being the human-resources manager for a big company. It's nonsense to think that any committee, let alone the Home Office, can do that job for a complex modern economy made up of tens of thousands of businesses, each with its own ever-changing employment needs. The 1970s and the Soviet Union proved conclusively that manpower planning doesn’t work.

The government wouldn’t dream of applying such a policy between England and Scotland. Why on earth should it work between Britain and the rest of the world?

Breach in the fence

A section of the border fence around the Spanish enclave of Melilla in North Africa has been torn down by a violent storm.
Perhaps the elements don't look favourably on this unnatural barrier.

Migrants feel the mortgage squeeze

Undocumented immigrants in the US can no longer get mortgages - even though their default rates are low.

Previously, established migrants could get mortgages with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, but now they need a US Social Security number.

"If you want to buy a house and you're here without papers, now you can forget it," says Jesus Benitez, a real-estate agent who caters to Hispanics in Brooklyn.

From the WSJ.

One airline is (unfortunately) booming

ICE Air provides one-way flights home for immigrants that the US is deporting. Story at the WSJ. More photos here.

Absurd comment of the day:
"For a lot of these immigrants, it has been a long journey to the U.S.," said Michael J. Pitts, chief of flight operations for deportations and removals at ICE. "This is going to be the last impression they have of the United States. We want to provide good service."

What it takes to be British

Read it here