Control Immigration?

The latest little spat about immigration in the UK is revealing - not just about the issue itself, but about the confusion of those who take a position on it. Especially, in my view, the increasingly vaguely-defined collection of people who nowadays call themselves 'the left' (or, if you read the Guardian or are American, the 'progressives' - sounds so much less threatening, don't you think?)Here's the news: new immigration minister Phil Woolas has, for the first time since Labour came to power, publicly declared that immigration levels are too high. He has linked this to the economic downturn - because there will be fewer jobs, he says, the government should make sure more of them go to British people. Also, and significantly in my view, he has linked immigration, again for the first time, to our rapidly rising population. The UK's population is currently almost 61 million. But it's predicted to rise to a staggering 77 million by 2051 if current levels of immigration continue. Immigration is the main cause of population increase in the UK; nearly two thirds of a million people arrived here last year alone.I don't know what's going on in the Labour party at the moment. It seems as if the financial crash has given them permission to excitedly start slaughtering all their sacred cows. Suddenly it's all bank nationalisation, 80% climate change targets, Keynesianism on the international stage and even - who'd a thunk it? - a public discussion about immigration.Not before time on any of these things, in my opinion. On immigration itself, whatever your view on the matter it is hard to deny that the way it has been handled over the last decade has been deeply undemocratic. The number of people expressing concern about immigration has shot up in the last decade; coinciding with the largest rise in immigration in British history. Call them all racists if you like (though it would be lazy, and wrong), but if you call yourself a democrat you have to question the right of any government to carry out, over such a long period, a policy which results in such significant social change, against the wishes of its people. Still, that's British 'democracy' for you.It's worth noting the stunning hypocrisy of Labour's volte-face on this one. For a decade they have engineered a situation in which public discussions about immigration are taboo, by hinting darkly at the motivations of anyone who tries to hold them. Not uncoincidentally, BNP support has shot up to record levels over the same period. You can blame the government directly for that. Over the same period, too, pressures on housing, schools, hospitals, roads and even entire towns have become in some places extremely significant as a result.Why is this happening? For the same reason that immigration always happens - people move to make a better life for themselves. Nobody can complain about this - we'd all do it if we had to, and some of us already have. But that doesn't mean its wider impacts are always harmless. The government has actively encouraged immigration into the UK, but not for humanitarian reasons. It has encouraged this because the logic of globalisation requires it. A corporate economy needs cheap labour. Where do we get it? From elsewhere, now that British workers are no longer willing to be exploited.Hence we have a Labour government - a Labour government - shipping in millions of cheap foreigners ripe for exploitation in order to keep the markets happy, at the same time leaving the indigenous working classes - who, remember, founded the bleedin' Labour party in the first place - high and dry and thinking of voting for the BNP. Nice one, New Labour. Very humanitarian. Very internationalist.But the wider left - and you'll excuse a few generalisations in pursuit of a deeper truth - seems equally confused in its response. For a long time now, the left's position on immigration has been one of the reasons it has become so cut off from popular sentiment, and largely irrelevant in what were once its heartlands: the working class areas of Britain, where immigration is extremely unpopular. That position has always been pretty simple: racists don't like immigration. Therefore, people who don't like immigration are racists. Therefore we are against them and in favour of all immigration, at all times.For a few decades this seemed to get them through. They didn't bother following the logic any further. But things are reaching a crunch point with the current crash, and we're going to have to do better than this. Particularly when many of the people most opposed to new immigration are, er, Britain's ethnic minorities.The predictable reactions to Woolas's statement have highlighted some of the contradictions. Let's have a look at what some of those reactions say about the politics of immigration:1. This is 'pandering to the right.' So says annoying former minister Denis McShane. 'At a time of economic downturn Britain should be a welcoming country for foreign investment', he says, ignoring the fact that this is precisely not about investment, it's about cheap labour for the investors. And 'pandering to the right'? A better way of doing that is to keep doing what Denis and his ilk have been doing for ten years - trying to shut down any discussion about the impacts of immigration. That way, the BNP, UKIP and even the Tories get the votes of frustrated people who are genuinely concerned about the impacts of immigration but keep being called fascists by McShane and his chums when they dare to mention it.2. This is basically racist. So says Labour MP Khalid Mahmood, who reckons this is really just code for preventing more South Asian immigration. This ignores Woolas's explicit statement that unlimited immigration, rather than immigration limits, is most likely to cause ethnic tension during a downturn (I suspect he's right about that). Others have claimed that Gordon Brown's famed 'British jobs for British workers' position is somehow an outrageously far-right sop. I can't see why. British workers employ (by voting for) the British government, and pay for it. What's outrageous about that government, in return, looking out for their economic interests before those of non-voters and non-taxpayers? If it doesn't do that, what's the point of the British government at all? On what foundation is our democracy based? Answers on a postcard, once you've actually thought about it.3. This is bad for the economy. According to the Immigration Advisory Service, we need immigrants because Britons are not prepared, or even allowed, to do the really shitty jobs. Note how almost everyone, from opponents to supporters of the government's position, frames the issue in terms of that mythical beast 'the economy.' Remember: 'the economy' runs us, not the other way round. Therefore if 'the economy' needs a million new migrants a year, it should get them. Never mind the wider consequences - of which the Immigration Advisory Service curiously has nothing to say at all. Listen to their chief executive arguing that immigrants are needed to debone our fish or pick our vegetables and ask yourself what kind of 'humanitarian' argument that is? Here is a prime example of the left using neoliberal arguments if they happen to suit its cause. Very principled.4. We can't stop the population growing. This is the one that really gets my goat - and it's a great example of where the left's cannibalising of the environmental movement is coming a cropper. Population growth is a disaster for Britain. We are already, in my view, overcrowded and overdeveloped - especially in southeast England. The idea of allowing, or encouraging, the population to grow by almost a million a year in the name of propping up global capitalism is a painful joke. If you are in favour of unlimited immigration you need to be able to explain where all the new houses and roads will go. And the new schools, hospitals, power plants, superstores and call centres. You need to be able to explain the impact on our climate change targets. And what the country will look like at 77 million and rising. Environmental arguments are always predicated on the existence of limits. What is the limit here? When should population growth - and thus immigration - stop? If you can't answer that, you are wasting our time.Personally, I think Woolas is onto something - as I thought Frank Field was earlier this year. I am in favour of immigration - I think it has certainly made the country a more interesting and more open place. Some critics are obviously right to point out that immigrants often get scapegoated during hard times - and we need to ensure they don't. But we also need to make sure that understandable caution about fanning the flames of xenophobia does not translate - as it has for too long - into a refusal to even discuss what has become a big issue; especially since refusing to discuss it tends to fan, rather than dampen, those flames in any case.But while I am in favour of both immigration and the judicious use of language, I am also in favour of preventing further population growth, and I'm in favour of moving away from an economic system predicated on endless growth and providing for corporate 'needs.' Thus, in my view, immigration and emigration should be pretty much balanced. This means a big cut in immigration from the present numbers - perhaps less hard than it sounds now that many Eastern Europeans are returning home, where their economies may end up doing better than ours (do we even have an economy? Discuss).We need to take things more slowly and - crucially - to understand that the current immigration debate is couched almost entirely in the terms of the demands of a rampant neoliberal economy; and that the wider left have fallen for it hook, line and sinker, because they haven't bothered to ask where their positions will ultimately take them.
Posted by Paul at 10:50 AM