The soundbite being used is thus:
"the big point is that without the immigrants, our taxes or public sector borrowing would be measurably higher. Which, at a time when the government is failing to reduce the UK's unsustainable large public sector deficit at the speed it would like, seems of some relevance."
Robert Peston, BBC
Why is this so partial? Well the study is on a specific time period that ended 3 years ago for a start. In effect, it is measuring not quite the first 6 years on labour increase. Migration Watch have countered that if you use the information that is up to date, all of their conclusions change - the overall net cost if much higher and there is no net benefit.
Worse though is that EU immigrants are of course only half the of the issue. Non EU immigrants in this time period are 40% of the total. These immigrants are ignored, but their employment levels are lower and they have more dependents - so its is inevitable that they will cost more. Plus the more EU immigrants there are, the less chance other immigrants will have of getting the jobs generated by the economy.
This single fact is enough to discredit the report entirely. using only half the pool for analysis and then selecting specific time periods to fit your own narrative is very shoddy work. It's helpful anti-UKIP conclusion suits many of a certain view to jump on; but really, what is the point of such partial analysis?
34 comments:
And I'll bet they didn't include the cost to us of the Labour governments that'll thereby gain office.
We've had immigration since 1066. We've had waves of immigration since.
What's the beef now? Is it a single issue party hoping to use racist language in the hope of getting their snouts into the Westminster trough as well as the Brussels one?
My usual lefty listen, mr James O'Brien did an hour in this this morning.
The conclusion was "why, when people are presented with the facts, do they just ignore them. "
He meant that here is unequivocally, irrfutible proof of the benefits of EU immigration. The argument is settled! We GAIN £20bn in taxation.
Yet Mr Ob would NEVER. Accept a report from, say, migration watch, that said the opposite.
But even a cursory glance through this report shows you what has been left out of the calculations.
School Class sizes that were 25 in 1995 are now 35, for instance.
Doctor waiting times, length of council house lists, numbers supplying for each available job, road traffic and rail traffic numbers. Just a few of the EFFECTS of immigration.
Generally, on this blog, we accept that EU migration has been a mild net benefit to the nation. But on an individual , especially a C1 c2 group, it can't have been felt much,.
"We've had immigration since 1066. We've had waves of immigration since."
Immigration levels have to fall for it to be considered a wave.
Sandalista - rubbish. Since 1066 - where did the romans come from then?
If your going to throw weak, ideological attacks into the mix, get your facts right!
We had little immigration between 1066 and 1945 - lots and lots before and after.
CU.
Generally agree, but of the immigrants we did have the Hugenots made a big impression and the Jews even more so.
If immigration is hard to achieve, then immigrants will necessarily be motivated and capable. If it's easy we'll also have the inept and indolent.
It's not immigration per se its the volumes and assimilation. In terms of total population immigration has always been tiny until the recent past.
Vaunted past immigrant groups such as Hugenots etc fit into the above pattern - small in number and they brought scarce skills. That said the motivation for accepting them - the idea that we are all homo-economicus is short sighted drivel.
That immigration is necessarily a good thing is the worst form of propaganda. Trying to frame the debate as binary is a trick of the pro lobby without willing to discuss substantive issues.
Also total volumes will not reflect regional circustances, and like all averages show a meaningless picture. Observationally as soon as levels of incomers reach above 25% then there is always trouble.
Btw check out Steven Oppenheimer who's work on genetic archeology goes against the narrative that we are a nation of immigrants. I am for a moment not saying his work is political, its reports findings and they simply don't fit the nation of immigrants narrative.
I meant to say:
"That said the motivation for accepting them was not economic - more politico-religious. The idea that we are all homo-economicus and that is all that drives the debate is short sighted drivel"
Also:
"I am not for a moment not saying his work is political..."
Yep, sums it up. Partial report, partial truth.
Jer - as others said, in relative terms the numbers were small.
As I posted last week, there is a stark reality facing us as global population explodes.
The UK is a great place to live if you are from Transylvania or timbuktu. Worth dying for to get here.
Morally it currently seems repgunant that we would rather people died than came to live here. But if 500 million people want to live in the UK one of two things will happen.
1) It will rapidly turn into a less desirable location. Good for lower future immigration, not so good for the natives.
2) We will have to take harder moral stances against immigration and the consequences of stopping it. People think UKIP are extreme, they are in fact just the beginning and in time will be seen to have been moderate and timid.
Dont forget the link I posted recently about the deal with Ireland.
UK immigration will fall precipitously from here on as those granted Irish visas are now entitled to enter the UK.
Dont say you werent told....
I don't think many people are fooled by it, CU.
Sandalista said:
"Is it a single issue party hoping to use racist language in the hope of getting their snouts into the Westminster trough as well as the Brussels one?"
Well.
We had the BNP for years but that was rejected by the general public (including me) so it's not racist language we want to hear.
I'm voting UKIP for the sole reason that I'm sick to death of people like you.
I infer that you mean I'm a racist and I'm deeply offended by it.
Uncontrolled immigration is now firmly on the agenda. Get used to it.
Your bullying by calling us racists (a blatant lie) no longer works.
In fact the more you lie and bully the more people go to UKIP. Do you really not get that ? Better that you don't. Carry on as you are - you're doing a great job.
Exquisite !
CU - I must retract a comment. I wrote it in complete haste.
No. Not the one above (8.16) but the one I made at 7.55 - clearly Sandalista IS taken in by such shite.
It's pretty difficult to come up with an entirely impartial report and so many figures are going to achieved by either sticking your finger in the air, or extracting them out of your arse, so any report is going to have a heap of bias attached to it.
Now I'm cheerfully pro-immigration, and for me the main issues are how we've tackled the housing shortages and the complete lack of making immigrants pay a little extra to cover the additional costs. Most of them aren't going to stick around - this isn't the old days where converting your worldly goods to ready cash, travelling across the continent and starting afresh was a Herculean prospect. Now it's selling up on Ebay, a 3 hour EasyJet flight, online estate agent and buying new/used from Amazon. 6 months hard work compressed to a few hours on your well padded arse in front of a laptop - so no pensions, old age care or the like except for a few outliers.
In return they pay taxes, buy from UK business, pay rent, etc.
Now I have no idea if we end up quids in on this, or somewhat out of pocket, but realistically I doubt the amount of gain/loss will be that much either way.
In return the NHS has lasted a little longer - one of the reasons neither the Tories nor Labour are really anti-immigration is that the Pride of the World (tm) is overly reliant on it, and the first party to really make a dent in it will discover the people may dislike immigration, but they really love having the NHS - and we get some good workers with a range of skills (and non-skills) that we would probably not be able to source from the population.
Without a major tackling of the education and indolence problems in the UK we're going to have immigration for a long time, and since no party seems pretty keen on telling the nation quite a lot of its kids are useless feckless bastards, let alone do something about it.
Anonymous - The NHS would run perfectly well without uncontrolled immigration.
We gift home trained doctors and nurses to richer commonwealth nations and take them from poorer commonwealth nations.
So Labour did mess up UK education then ? Thanks for the insight.
Mass immigration doesn't pay. Attested to by:
- the cost of living crisis
- the housing crisis
- the schools crisis
- the transport crisis
- the NHS crisis
- the prison crisis
- the security crisis
- the welfare crisis
- the slavery crisis
Then there are the billions spent on wars fought to 'keep jihadism off our streets' - a risk brought by our open borders.
The billion a year spent on dealing with foreign criminals
The rising national debt combined with the decreasing tax take.
Now.
I don't blame migrants for every single thing. But clearly bringing in 4 million people in 10 years has made an impact and it can't all be positive.
CU, I was going to disagree, on not much immigration between 1066 and 1948
- but using the power of google it seems the BBC agrees with you
Andrew, at last my history degree shows some value!
Don't you also have to take into account the numbers of natives who remain on benefits because the jobs they might have done are taken by immigrants? Thats a cost of immigration isn't it? If Joe Smith is sat on his *rse in his council house while Jan Polski is working for minimum wage in a warehouse (and paying income tax, NI and Vat etc) don't we have to add in the cost of keeping Joe Smith as well as the cost of educating Jan's kids, and his family's demands on the NHS etc?
Jan Polski won't be paying tax on minimum wage and if he has brought a family he will be in receipt of in-work top-ups as well as free services which he isn't contributing to.
It is an extremely expensive way of running a country - as the debt and low tax take suggests.
I was driven by a new arrival minicab driver the other day who told me he had six kids - I asked how on earth he managed, "Lucky for me the Government pay for my house and some bills."
Insane.
Further to Sandalista's comment - we may have had waves of immigration but we've never had subsidised immigration.
Subsidy through in-work benefits, subsidy through the unemployment benefits of displaced Brits.
Subsidy in all forms should be anathema to Tories - after all, they withdrew (correctly) subsidy from British industries and exposed our people to the rigors of global markets.
Yet they seem more than happy to subsidise the influx of workers to undercut us and would continue to do so without explanation were it not for UKIP.
One gets the distinct impression that they just love slapping us around. There is no other explanation.
The proposed lay-offs of Rolls-Royce engineers could be a good opportunity for the Tories to demonstrate that they are not anti English.
I'd like to see them subsidise skilled British workers (black or white, Sandalista) seeing as, thus far, they've been able to subsidise every other fucker.
As an immigrant myself I see no UK subsidy but rather the other way. I've seen well trained Indian doctors, nurses from South Africa, multi-lingual Spaniards and Dutch - all contributing to the UK economy - at the expense of their own country's taxpayers who educated them.
AFAIR remember you all live in the leafy suburbs with not an subsidised immigrant in sight.
The levels of hypocrisy of you Kippers is unbelievable. I'm just waiting for someone to come up with the patronising phrase "some of my best friends are....etc"
One of the things that worries me about the 'way things are going' is that as we need to work together more and more (global warming for some, globalisation for others), it seems we are less and less willing to make the compromises that allow us to work together well.
This is reflected in many areas
- The tea party ranters in the US
- Russel Brand whose position is that if there is no party he fully approves of, better to not vote all ('I'm not voting for second best, better to tear it all down and start again')
- Sandalista's comments
Until recently (ok - the 1770s) if you didn't like things as they are, you could always go somewhere else.
This is not an option anymore.
Both sides have enough facts to hang on to to be able to justify their positions to themselves.
Neither side has enough persuasive power to change the other sides mind.
We see the forces that drive these changes as things that are vast and impersonal against which we are powerless
This is reflected in many areas
- Speed cameras
- Immigration policy
- Drones dropping bombs on your family wedding
Life is complicated.
If you shut the door to immigration and throw the foreigners out, we are all poorer as (as Sandalista noted) lots of nurses and doctors and bankers and plumbers and and... are not from the UK or the EU
If you leave the door too open you end up with foreigners on benefits, primary schools where there are 20 different languages spoken by 60 children, (as EK noted) taxi drivers on tax credit etc etc etc, and we are all poorer.
Personally I think the State should be able to should be allowed to choose who is allowed to stay in the UK - as well as let in - so we can throw out the useless hangers on (foreigners and UK born).
The only trouble is that that might be me in 40 years time.
Underneath it all, the question that needs to be answered is
- if you were born somewhere, why do you have any more rights to be there than someone who just arrived.
Instinctively I think I do, but the reasons for any reasoned answer are not too wholesome.
Dear Sandalista,
My mother was an immigrant, my father was emigrated as a young boy, and returned. My wife is an immigrant, my step-son an emigrant.
I live in a working class town (one of few remaining) in the South East. English is a minority language in Tesco at 8:00 pm.
Not everything you say is total bollocks, but to deny that some areas have real problems with immigration is insane.
Firstly this is a much wider and deeper debate than individual immigrants circumstances, I see no way how anyone can believe that policy is rational, functioning and benefiting all concerned.
The immigration debate is not merely a wave of hysteria whipped up by golf club colonel blimps who populate UKIP in the mind of the pro immigration lobby.
This is a debate that has been brewing for at least 20 years, but which the body politic has swept under the carpet until as an issue there's no hiding. This is not a discussion UKIP own, they are are merely the one's who if I mix metaphors, have let the Genie out the bottle.
This is not binary debate of no immigration or open borders as fraed by some. It is one that says who should be allowed to live here and whom not.
Was it Friedman or someone else who famously said something along the lines of you can have unfettered immigration or a welfare state but not both.
As I have said before this is also not about economic benefits solely - besides these do not stack up no matter how are the word subsidy gets twisted.
It is more visceral, and bottling up such passions is not sensible thing to do. The political class have much to answer for.
@hovis
...bottling up such passions is not sensible thing to do. The political class have much to answer for.
+1
Sandalista - Your opening comment about UKIP was to declare them racist. Ergo you called people who support them racist.
About the worst thing you can accuse someone of these days.
It's something used to close down debate plus it's a complete lie.
My use of the word subsidy (repeating for the benefit of those who haven't heard it already):
Where work could be or should be done by someone already here then anyone else doing it is taxpayer subsidised in the form of:
- benefits to a displaced worker
- in-work top ups to a migrant worker
- provision of state services not paid for directly by that worker
Where the same open door policy:
- creates a bill for dealing with crime
- creates a bill for going to war to 'prevent terror on our streets at home' (politicians say it, not me)
- creates a bill for extra homeland security
then these costs need to be deducted from the economic 'benefits' attributed to open door migration.
But they aren't.
And of UKIP's hypocrisy (without going into Champagne Socialism and hypocrisies of the Left because I'd be here all day)
How on earth do the Left reconcile their carbon cutting credentials with increasing population ? Assuming that economic migrants have come here to improve their prospects for material consumption - including 'refugees' who have crossed safe borders to get to Britain.
Of doctors and nurses:
Australia, Canada and NZ take our better trained doctors and we take their lesser trained doctors.
What's good about that deal then ?
Central government spends £33,000 per household.
This means the average immigrant needs to have an income > £90,000 to be paying more in income tax than the government spends on his household.
If you think that is happening, you are nuts.
There are so very few seekers of truth.
Mark - You don't look the sort to be able to fix my car or my boiler.
I am with EK on this. And Sandalista is just regurgitating the bigoted Grauniad view - "UKIP is weally wacist" - a view that is so out of touch it actually helps UKIP.
The reality is that our youngsters have been short-changed by our crap schooling, so are often out classed by the Pole with a degree who is here for the fun and to learn English whilst taking a job he wouldn't look at in Poland.
We have had too much immigration, too quickly. It is not a matter of hating Poles or Pakistanis - the country is too small, too overcrowded, our infrastructure is groaning, and too many of our own children are denied the chance of meaningful work. We need a breather.
Women are very capable of giving time to analyze and have a good solution to some problems.
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