Post by Carl LaFong on May 9, 2024 10:58:18 GMT
www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-to-fix-britains-migrant-crisis-quickly/
Conventional wisdom has it that Britain faces an awkward dilemma on legal immigration: either we cut migrant numbers to keep faith with voters (more than 60 per cent of whom say immigration has been too high over the last decade), or we keep the economy growing by allowing net migration to continue at levels well beyond anything the country has ever seen. But this is a false dichotomy. The government is not facing a choice of either/or.
Let’s start with a bit of historical perspective. For centuries, Britain was a country of net emigration, not immigration. Annual net migration only exceeded 100,000 for the first time in 1998. In fact, in the 25 years up to the election of Tony Blair in 1997, cumulative net migration totalled just 68,000. Over the next 25 years, 1998-2022, it totalled at least 5.9 million – almost a hundredfold increase.
Britain experienced economic growth before the era of mass migration – much more growth, as it happens. Since 1997, GDP per capita growth has averaged just 1.2 per cent per annum, barely half the long-term trend over the preceding half-century. Meanwhile, we have entered the deepest productivity slowdown in Britain since the onset of the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago.
This isn’t to say that unprecedented immigration is definitely a factor in our unprecedented economic stagnation – correlation is not causation. But the economic boom times promised by the proponents of mass migration have conspicuously failed to materialise.
Indeed, while immigration can undoubtedly be enriching in many ways, there are several plausible reasons why the economic benefits of mass migration might have been less than hoped for. The sheer scale and pace of migration is one factor. As immigration-driven population growth outpaces our ability to build enough houses, roads, railways, GP surgeries, our capital stock is diluted. Prices rise, queues lengthen and congestion builds.
As I’ve highlighted previously, England’s already cavernous housing deficit widened by 1.34 million homes in the decade from 2013, with net migration accounting for 89 per cent of this increase. And as we all know, the housing crisis is probably the single biggest drag on economic growth and living standards in Britain.
Another factor is the composition of migration. We have failed to prioritise the kinds of migrants who would do most to benefit Britain. Out of net migration of two million non-EU nationals over the last five years, only 15 per cent came principally to work – something of a rejoinder to those who argue that immigration is the only thing keeping the economy ticking over right now. And while there are parts of the public services that have become reliant on migrant labour – especially the NHS – this largely reflects the fact that we have failed to train enough staff at home.
The immigration debate in the UK all too often devolves into a question of whether migration is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But a far better framing is to ask: ‘immigration of who, under what circumstances, and to what end?’
Accordingly, we need to think about the massive variation between migrant groups. Indian migrants, for example, typically earn around 70 per cent more than migrants from Bangladesh, but roughly 15 per cent less than migrants from America. Working-age migrants from the Middle East are twice as likely to be economically inactive as someone born in the UK. A migrant from North Africa is three times as likely to be living in social housing as a migrant from Kenya.
In other words, if we are more selective in our migration policy, we can cut overall numbers – as per the 2019 Conservative manifesto – while making migration more economically and fiscally beneficial for British citizens. Lower numbers mean less pressure on the capital stock, and selectivity should mean a higher proportion of high earners, so more tax revenue to offset distributional impacts.
In fact, we can and should go further than that – by reaffirming David Cameron’s ‘tens of thousands’ net migration pledge. The difference is that when that promise was initially made, Britain was unable to fully control its borders due to EU freedom of movement. There is no such obstacle now.
Of course, promises are cheap. That is why the new Centre for Policy Studies paper I have co-written with former ministers Robert Jenrick and Neil O’Brien – Taking Back Control – contains over 30 further recommendations on how to implement an entirely new approach to migration policy while reforming specific visa routes.
At the heart of the new system we recommend would be a cap on overall numbers, and an annual migration budgeting process, overseen and voted on by parliament, in order to ensure an honest conversation about the trade-offs between different types of migration. We need to re-anchor the system and provide confidence to the public that there is overall control after 30 years of broken promises.
The majority of these reforms can be set in motion right now, without the use of primary legislation, during the remainder of this parliament. And it is imperative that we do so. Despite the government having tightened visa requirements, official projections only have annual net migration falling to 315,000 by the end of the decade – still 30 per cent higher than 2010-19 levels. On this trajectory, net migration will amount to annual population growth of over 0.6 per cent across the 2020s – double the rate of the last three decades, and six times the rate of the 1990s.
After the last 25 years, there is little reason to think that this would do much good for living standards, and still less to think that it would do anything at all for trust in politics. Or, for that matter, the Conservative party.
Conventional wisdom has it that Britain faces an awkward dilemma on legal immigration: either we cut migrant numbers to keep faith with voters (more than 60 per cent of whom say immigration has been too high over the last decade), or we keep the economy growing by allowing net migration to continue at levels well beyond anything the country has ever seen. But this is a false dichotomy. The government is not facing a choice of either/or.
Let’s start with a bit of historical perspective. For centuries, Britain was a country of net emigration, not immigration. Annual net migration only exceeded 100,000 for the first time in 1998. In fact, in the 25 years up to the election of Tony Blair in 1997, cumulative net migration totalled just 68,000. Over the next 25 years, 1998-2022, it totalled at least 5.9 million – almost a hundredfold increase.
Britain experienced economic growth before the era of mass migration – much more growth, as it happens. Since 1997, GDP per capita growth has averaged just 1.2 per cent per annum, barely half the long-term trend over the preceding half-century. Meanwhile, we have entered the deepest productivity slowdown in Britain since the onset of the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago.
This isn’t to say that unprecedented immigration is definitely a factor in our unprecedented economic stagnation – correlation is not causation. But the economic boom times promised by the proponents of mass migration have conspicuously failed to materialise.
Indeed, while immigration can undoubtedly be enriching in many ways, there are several plausible reasons why the economic benefits of mass migration might have been less than hoped for. The sheer scale and pace of migration is one factor. As immigration-driven population growth outpaces our ability to build enough houses, roads, railways, GP surgeries, our capital stock is diluted. Prices rise, queues lengthen and congestion builds.
As I’ve highlighted previously, England’s already cavernous housing deficit widened by 1.34 million homes in the decade from 2013, with net migration accounting for 89 per cent of this increase. And as we all know, the housing crisis is probably the single biggest drag on economic growth and living standards in Britain.
Another factor is the composition of migration. We have failed to prioritise the kinds of migrants who would do most to benefit Britain. Out of net migration of two million non-EU nationals over the last five years, only 15 per cent came principally to work – something of a rejoinder to those who argue that immigration is the only thing keeping the economy ticking over right now. And while there are parts of the public services that have become reliant on migrant labour – especially the NHS – this largely reflects the fact that we have failed to train enough staff at home.
The immigration debate in the UK all too often devolves into a question of whether migration is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But a far better framing is to ask: ‘immigration of who, under what circumstances, and to what end?’
Accordingly, we need to think about the massive variation between migrant groups. Indian migrants, for example, typically earn around 70 per cent more than migrants from Bangladesh, but roughly 15 per cent less than migrants from America. Working-age migrants from the Middle East are twice as likely to be economically inactive as someone born in the UK. A migrant from North Africa is three times as likely to be living in social housing as a migrant from Kenya.
In other words, if we are more selective in our migration policy, we can cut overall numbers – as per the 2019 Conservative manifesto – while making migration more economically and fiscally beneficial for British citizens. Lower numbers mean less pressure on the capital stock, and selectivity should mean a higher proportion of high earners, so more tax revenue to offset distributional impacts.
In fact, we can and should go further than that – by reaffirming David Cameron’s ‘tens of thousands’ net migration pledge. The difference is that when that promise was initially made, Britain was unable to fully control its borders due to EU freedom of movement. There is no such obstacle now.
Of course, promises are cheap. That is why the new Centre for Policy Studies paper I have co-written with former ministers Robert Jenrick and Neil O’Brien – Taking Back Control – contains over 30 further recommendations on how to implement an entirely new approach to migration policy while reforming specific visa routes.
At the heart of the new system we recommend would be a cap on overall numbers, and an annual migration budgeting process, overseen and voted on by parliament, in order to ensure an honest conversation about the trade-offs between different types of migration. We need to re-anchor the system and provide confidence to the public that there is overall control after 30 years of broken promises.
The majority of these reforms can be set in motion right now, without the use of primary legislation, during the remainder of this parliament. And it is imperative that we do so. Despite the government having tightened visa requirements, official projections only have annual net migration falling to 315,000 by the end of the decade – still 30 per cent higher than 2010-19 levels. On this trajectory, net migration will amount to annual population growth of over 0.6 per cent across the 2020s – double the rate of the last three decades, and six times the rate of the 1990s.
After the last 25 years, there is little reason to think that this would do much good for living standards, and still less to think that it would do anything at all for trust in politics. Or, for that matter, the Conservative party.
