Labour's immigration pains | Progress | News and debate from the ...

There are still some senior Labour politicians, and a significant section of the liberal media, who continue to deny that immigration is one of the issues that most damages the Left.? Indeed, until the last couple of years, the standard response to any suggestion that immigration itself was problematic was to imply that this was racist. No debate was permitted, even as the number of arrivals continued to grow.

Immigration was a ?good thing?. Immigrants helped a dynamic economy become even more competitive, they filled jobs that nobody else wanted to do, and they kept inflation and wage rises at low levels even when the economy was buoyant.

Even today, barely a week goes by without the IPPR, or Jonathan Portes arguing that immigration has been good for the economy, and that the benefits of mass immigration far outweigh the costs.

The assertion that such a huge increase in the number of workers coming to the UK has had any effect on wages or employment has been repeatedly denied. This is rather astonishing as it will, after all, be the first time in economic history that an increased supply (of labour) has had no impact on the price (that is, wages).

So, have the fundamental laws of economics changed? Either there has been a paradigm shift or, more likely, the effect on wages have been ignored because it hasn?t (yet) concerned the affluent middle class

In any case, there are alternative interpretations. A House of Lords report found that there has been a downward effect on wages, especially for those at the bottom rung of the labour market. And the recent report by the Migration Advisory Committee, confirmed that immigration does have an effect on wages, decreasing those of lower-paid workers. In particular, the MAC estimated that: ?an extra 100 non-EU migrants are initially associated with 23 fewer native people employed?.

After losing the wages and employment argument, however, the same centre-Left pro-immigrationists argue that GDP has increased. Again, the House of Lords report pointed out that GDP, which measures the total output created by immigrants and pre-existing residents in the UK, is ?an irrelevant and misleading measure for the economic impacts of immigration on the resident population. The total size of an economy is not an indicator of prosperity or of residents? living standards.?

To put it bluntly, increasing numbers of voters are not prepared to pay the price of over-crowding, a diminished green belt and public services stretched to breaking point for an additional percentage point of GDP growth. The Left ignored the broader effects on quality of life, with increasing demands on housing provision, classroom sizes, traffic congestion or for health and social services. But there was no planning at all for the arrival of such large numbers as policy makers seemed to forget that migrant workers also need somewhere to live, that they travel, that they have families, and that they get ill.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the former editor of Prospect magazine, David Goodhart, was right when he argued that there is an increasingly acute dilemma, ? for progressives who want plenty of both solidarity (high social cohesion and generous welfare paid out of a progressive tax system) and diversity (equal respect for a wide range of peoples, values and ways of life).?

Now, as draconian spending cuts are being implemented the answer to these questions is becoming increasingly acute. At its heart is a problem that Michael Young and Peter Willmott?s Family and Kinship in East London highlighted half a century ago. Should the (possibly greater) needs of newly arrived immigrants trump the greater ?entitlement? of those who have lived longer in a community?

Who deserves a share of the cake, and how large should their share be? Is social housing allocation, for example, a matter of long term residency, nationality or hardship? Should benefits depend on how much one has contributed to society? What?s fair?

The last Labour government failed to introduce restrictions on the citizens of the new members of the European Union coming to work in the UK until it was far too late. In thrall to the demands of business for cheap and flexible labour, a nominally left of centre government lost control of its borders. And for too long, too many on the Left did not permit an open political debate about immigration, denouncing any criticism as racist.

Immigration remains a huge issue for voters, which is only likely to grow as recession deepens (which it will). Labour lost almost every seat in the south-east outside London and needs to win them back if it wants to regain power. But this does not mean that the people of Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire and Sussex are racist, or even Little Englanders. Britain is a hugely tolerant country which believes in fairness. It also has great ? and legitimate ? concerns about immigration. It is time for Labour and the Left to admit that too much immigration, too quickly, requires new answers rather than continuing to defend old nostrums.

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Rob Williams works in public affairs and as a journalist

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Photo: David Sim

immigration, ippr, Labour

Source: http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2012/09/28/labour%E2%80%99s-immigration-pains-2/

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