There’s plenty of issues in politics that leave everyone divided. It’s part of the appeal of the subject for me, and I find it interesting to hear everyone’s take on some of the big debates in our society. I’m a rather opinionated person, as you may be able to tell, and I’m definitely partisan when it comes to the sort of discussions that dominate current affairs. With this post, I’ll kick off a series on some of my own political opinions and try to explain them along with the current political context.
I’ll start with immigration. It’s a subject that is still talked about almost exclusively negatively in both political discourse, the popular media and by people in general. In the 21st century, I can’t believe that people are so ignorant and narrow-minded when they claim that immigration is a terrible thing for our country.
The entire idea of immigration is to improve an economy, on one level or another, and that should be something that is welcomed. Whether it is someone moving abroad to take a high paid job in, say, a finance firm or someone changing countries to work in a field for less than the minimum wage – if they are moving it is with an aim of improving their economic situation and that of their families by sending money back to their home country. If enough people do this, the world’s financial situation improves a little bit. If you disregard national competition, which is something that doesn’t and shouldn’t exist economically in this new global age, then immigration is the best action an individual can take if there is a better job and better standard of living for them abroad.
Many of those who oppose immigration also tend to oppose foreign aid. I believe that immigration is a more effective way of getting money to flow to the people of other countries than simply giving foreign governments lump sums to spend and that the goal of aid is to make other countries better trading partners. If other countries, and people from other countries, can spend more money on the goods and services that we provide, then we will make more money ourselves. Although in the short-term their immigrants might cause a flow of capital away from Britain, in the long run it will come back to us. Immigration is for the long-term benefit of our economy.
These ideas are also presuming that no-one will move to a country where they will make relatively less money without some motivation to improve the economy of their destination. It simply doesn’t happen. Volunteering is perhaps the only real way in which people leave their nation for less compensation for their work, but this is almost always going to help the destination country with infrastructure projects, education, new technologies etc. Immigration, no matter which way you look at it, will always help an economy somewhere.
The worst criticism of immigration I hear is when people complain about the number of asylum seekers that are allowed into the country. Can we really consider ourselves to be a kind, forward-thinking and overall “good” country if we turn away people who have gone through hell on Earth and are looking for some respite? We’re not putting them up in the Ritz; we’re giving them the basic human needs of shelter, food, water and safety. Surely that’s not too much to give out to a few thousand people a year from a nation of over sixty million. As one of the most economically and socially stable nations on the planet we’re privileged to be able to help those in need and we should never lose sight of the fact that just because people might be from another country they are still people too.
People that move to this country always have to put up with the idea that they are ‘stealing’ someone’s job, as though capitalism works on a basis of giving out jobs fairly to the people that ‘deserve’ it by birth-right. It’s nonsense in principle, but also in practice. Another claim that’s thrown in the faces of immigrants is that they are all benefit-scroungers that move here just to sit around on the dole. That’s not true either.
Immigrants have been proven to have made a net contribution our economy, with a November 2013 study by the University College of London showing immigrants to the UK from inside the EEA (European Economic Area) provide 34% more in taxes to our treasury than they receive in benefits. Even from outside the EEA, they contribute 2% more than their “fair share”. Immigrants arriving here after 1999 were 45% less likely to claim benefits between then and 2011 than UK natives. Immigrants are also 3% less likely to live in social housing than our indigenous population.
These facts are backed up with another 2013 study by the Central European University showing that immigrants to the EU are “less likely to live on benefits” than the “native population”. The UK is 16th out of 18 developed countries in the study when ranked by unemployment benefit spending (UBS) on immigrants, which stands at just 1.13% of GDP. There’s no factual basis at all for saying that immigrants come here to live off the welfare state. They come here to work, and that is exactly what you would expect someone leaving their families, heritage and homes behind for a foreign land, and they are good at it. This is why the average wage of immigrants is actually higher than the UK average. Don’t listen to the Daily Mail spin in that article when they bemoan the fact that people are seeing our country as a fantastic place to live the lives they want to. We want Britain to be one of the best places in the world to live. We’re not worse off because people see our country as a place where they can make their dreams come true. These immigrants are actually making our lives much better.
Aside from economic factors, there’s so much that immigrants have brought to this country that we don’t give them nearly enough credit for. Our culture isn’t being overtaken but improved by those that come in. There’s plenty of examples where cultural imports have made our lives richer. If you think of takeaways, these are now staples of everyday British life. There aren’t many families that can resist the odd Chinese or Indian takeaway every now and again. These are fantastic culinary imports from a completely other land, brought in by immigrants. Even the British icon of the fish and chip shop was pioneered by different groups of immigrants depending on which home nation you are in. If these were all to disappear along with the immigrants that run them, there would be national disaster. What if all the footballers from overseas were to stop playing here? Would people be as interested in the game then? Our Royal Family, perhaps the most iconic symbol of Britishness around, are originally from Germany. Immigrants are central to the very things that we consider to be British, and this country would be much poorer culturally without them.
In the north of Scotland here, outsiders from other shores settling here is quite a modern phenomenon in the grand scheme of things. There are now small Eastern European communities here, whereas no such community of any note existed at all before the end of the Cold War. This immigration has attracted some criticism from some locals, who are unaccustomed to this change. I find it particularly ironic when I hear people from the Highlands complaining about immigrants. As a percentage of population, the Highlands has probably one of the largest diaspora of any race on Earth as a result of the infamous Highland Clearances – where people were forcibly removed from their homes and their land by a variety of socio-economic factors. Highlanders populated the New World, from Canada and America to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. We were a large percentage of the people who settled massive tracts of land in these countries for our own use, even though there were indigenous people there already. You have to have a brass neck to complain about new people coming into your towns and ‘taking over’ when your surname is MacDonald or MacKenzie. I’m sure some Native Americans would have said the same about some of your relatives generations ago, and they wouldn’t have received as much goodwill or as much economic growth from the new settlers at all. They’d have been lucky to get anything more than disease, in reality. Emigration was a last resort for thousands of Highlanders over the years, and you would be a fool to forget a recent century’s worth of hardship when you criticise immigrants today.
Immigration is perhaps one of the most hotly contested topics in UK politics at the moment, especially with the European elections just weeks away. On the left, parties such as the Lib Dems, SNP and Labour all support immigration. The Lib Dems perhaps go the furthest, although their efforts in government to promote it have been drowned out by the Tories. The Conservatives aren’t anti-immigration per se, but are very much in favour of limiting it to protect British jobs and British values, to conserve our way-of-life. At the moment, net migration levels are at 212,000 and the Government would like to see this reduced to 100,000 by next year – a target that is unlikely to be met. Further to the right, the UKIP platform is heavily based on admonishing the idea of immigration – saying it is part of what is “breaking Britain” economically and culturally and that it should be stopped altogether to help our country develop and prosper.
With the economic climate that’s existed over the last few years, and the lack of jobs that has come along with it, there has been a shift to the right among the British public when it comes to their attitudes towards immigration. 3 out of 4 Brits believe that immigration levels are too high at the moment. Seeing immigrants in jobs when you are out of work is a relatively valid excuse for feeling let down by your government, who aren’t protecting you as a citizen as much as they perhaps should. I get that. But when it comes to those immigrants working difficult jobs with long hours for little job satisfaction, I don’t grudge them their chance to earn a living. Perhaps if the effects of the economic recovery were spread more evenly among our population then our attitudes to immigration would soften a little, but at the moment we have a country where many believe that we should shut our borders to those looking to come to Britain.
Immigration is a vital part of what makes our country what it is, and keeps our economy ticking over in the way it has for centuries. Capping immigration only makes our job of having a strong economy with plenty of jobs and opportunities for all even tougher, as they contribute more than they take. Immigration and its’ cultural diversity are things to be cherished, not attacked. Immigration is something we need.