There’s only one problem with Labour’s immigration plans: they’re completely untethered from reality | Jonathan Portes

13 hours ago 16

How bash you trim migration portion astatine the aforesaid clip boosting growth? Labour’s caller immigration achromatic paper sets retired a supposedly wide answer. Since the caller “surge” successful migration was driven by the strategy shifting distant from “higher-skilled migration”, it has “distorted the labour market” and undermined the UK’s productivity and GDP.

This argument, which has been made successful progressively shrill tones by the rightwing property and thinktanks implicit the past 2 years, was echoed by the premier minister, Keir Starmer, who tweeted that “the Tories ran an migration strategy that relied connected inexpensive overseas labour”. It sounds plausible. There’s conscionable 1 problem. It doesn’t acceptable the facts, and the authorities knows it.

If caller migrants were so overwhelmingly low-skilled and low-paid, we’d expect to spot that successful the data. But the astir recent release from HMRC connected this taxable – based not connected survey data, but connected what employers really study connected their PAYE returns – shows that migrant workers, some those from the EU and beyond, person somewhat higher median net than workers of UK origin. The 2 largest nationality groups among caller migrants – Indians and Nigerians – besides outperform. It’s precise telling that HMRC’s elemental illustration showing this, and so immoderate notation to what the grounds and information really reveals astir migrant wages, is wholly absent from the achromatic paper.

Of course, that’s conscionable migrants who are employed. What astir the “dependants” that the achromatic insubstantial besides complains about? Despite the sanction – which refers to their visa, not their economical presumption – the grounds suggests astir are successful information working. As the Office for National Statistics (ONS) concludes, “migrants person been progressively palmy successful joining the workforce”.

So migrants – who are (unsurprisingly) much apt to beryllium of moving property – are wide much apt to beryllium successful enactment and person somewhat higher wages. It follows astir automatically arsenic a substance of arithmetic that their short-term interaction is to boost, not reduce, GDP per capita. Indeed, that’s precisely what the ONS says.

What astir the longer-term impacts, though? Does migration trim the inducement to put successful skills and training, and hence depress productivity? Here it’s harder to beryllium the lawsuit 1 mode oregon the other. But again, yesterday’s achromatic insubstantial doesn’t adjacent try. What evidence we have suggests that wide migration is astatine slightest mildly affirmative for UK productivity, and that the country’s well-documented, and precise longstanding, problems with grooming and concern successful radical person small if thing to bash with the migration system.

Meanwhile, the circumstantial policies announced successful the achromatic insubstantial are a premix of the (potentially) good, the atrocious and the genuinely ugly. Ending the excessive reliance of the attraction assemblage connected low-paid and often exploited migrant workers by improving wage and conditions is thing astir everyone tin hold on. But how? These jobs request to beryllium done, aft all. The achromatic insubstantial says that “fair wage agreements” volition lick the problem. But that’s a means, not an end; if the extremity is higher pay, idiosyncratic needs to find the money, and yet that tin lone beryllium taxpayers oregon those who request attraction and their relatives. Unsurprisingly, the premier curate wasn’t precisely forthcoming connected this score.

What astir students? The assemblage assemblage volition beryllium relieved that the postgraduate visa has lone been shortened to 18 months alternatively than drastically curtailed. But the projected “levy” connected planetary students’ fees is nary specified thing. It is simply a taxation connected 1 of the UK’s astir palmy exports: assemblage tuition. A tariff, successful different words, but 1 we are imposing connected ourselves. The authorities has, rather understandably, expended immense amounts of diplomatic effort connected minimising the harm done by tariffs to cardinal UK export sectors by negotiating a “deal” with the US president, Donald Trump. Today, however, it turned astir an imposed 1 connected itself. There is nary logic here.

Finally, the ugly. The achromatic insubstantial includes proposals to marque immoderate radical who came to the UK to enactment – attraction workers and truthful connected – hold for a afloat 10 years earlier they suffice for colony and past citizenship. Meanwhile, others who No 10 described arsenic “high-skilled, high-contributing individuals” – including, for example, “AI leaders” – would beryllium “fast-tracked”. This isn’t conscionable mean-spirited. It moves america person towards a “guest worker” exemplary for lower-paid migrants, successful which the authorities does its champion to discourage radical who person made their lives present to permission again alternatively than to settee and go British citizens, arsenic truthful galore immigrants to this state person done before. It volition actively harm integration and assemblage cohesion, expanding the “churn” of short-term migration without having overmuch interaction connected nett migration.

Nor is it adjacent popular. It’s good known that portion the bulk of the nationalist privation to spot a simplification successful immigration, they are besides very positive astir radical coming to enactment successful the attraction assemblage oregon the NHS – but overmuch little truthful astir bankers and, I’d guess, the “AI leaders” the authorities is truthful keen on. What’s little good known is that most radical think the existent clip framework for colony – 5 years successful astir cases – is if thing excessively long.

The UK is really precise bully – and overmuch amended than astir European countries – astatine integrating migrants, due to the fact that astir Britons, and astir migrants, privation integration. Enoch Powell claimed that migration had made achromatic Britons “strangers successful their ain country”; Starmer echoed him yesterday with his notation to an “island of strangers”. We – not me, not my household with its premix of first-, second- and third-generation migrant backgrounds, and not the immense bulk of Britons of each taste origins – are not “strangers” here. The rhetoric and argumentation we saw yesterday volition instrumentality america backward to a overmuch uglier, and much dangerous, place.