Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

This week a measured study by the IPPR found that it is mainly communities with no discernible immigrant population who express the greatest fears about immigration. At the same time, Tory grandee Norman Tebbit urged David Cameron to ditch his “big society” idea and play to the party’s strengths, such as fear of immigrants.

Tories blame Labour for opening the floodgates to immigrants and for being weak on the issue. Yet civil liberties groups and various other voluntary and pro bono agencies would argue Labour has been quite repressive and that the system is skewed to frustrate new arrivals seeking to settle here.

The biggest single influx in recent decades was from the 2004 new accession countries such as Poland to the European Union. Net migration figures for 2007 showed 450,000 new arrivals, the vast majority of whom have been economically active.

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas says that, while immigration peaked at 240,000  in 2004, the figure is now closer to 50,000 a year and continues to fall because of the outgoing Government’s points-based policy of managed migration. Mr Woolas says the Government, through the use of fingerprint visas and national identity cards, has succeeded in breaking temporary and permanent migration. In turn, housing and benefits are now only available to UK citizens.

Rightly or wrongly, non-EU migrants have been finding it harder and harder to get into Britain and restrictions have been placed on the kinds of jobs for which they are eligible. It is only going to get harder.

The government is also following the example of EU neighbours in response to Romania and Bulgaria by availing itself of a transition period which temporarily restricts their rights as EU citizens to enter and work here.

Recent ONS figures that showed up to “one in nine” people in Britain were born overseas show upon closer examination that 370,000 undergraduates and British nationals born overseas (including 250,000 born to armed forces personnel overseas).

Net migration to this country has jumped in the last 13 years: the single biggest source of net migration to the United Kingdom since 1991 is students: a total of 1.34 million since 1991, 1.15 million of whom arrived under Labour.

A 2007 British Council report, Global Value, estimated the total export value of education to the British economy in 2003/4 was £27.71 billion of which £8.6 billion came from educating foreign students in the UK and overseas via distance learning programmes. Above all, it should be noted that Britain is actually a net exporter of its own citizens: 811,000 between 1997 and 2007.

Last, but not least, there are more British nationals living and working in other EU states than there are EU citizens in this country.

Sources:

See: British Council Global Value (2007)
See also: ONS website