Letters

The Poorest do not Migrate

By Matthew Pollard
Executive Director, Migration Watch UK
The Independent, London, 8 September, 2010

Michael McGuffie (letter, 6 September) links immigration controls with people being kept in poverty in the third world. This is not the case.

Immigration controls on legal routes to the UK do not affect the poorest people, as they would be required to pay for flights, visas and, in the case of students, their study programme. Illegal immigration often requires a payment to exploitative traffickers. Lax enforcement of immigration controls encourages illegal attempts that can end in the sort of tragedy mentioned in Mr McGuffie's letter.

Opening up our borders is not the solution, because of the vast numbers of people involved. Better to have well-published strong controls that would deter would-be illegal migrants while taking firm measures to encourage development of a kind that will help the poorest in third-world countries.

Immigration Curbs Are Vital For Britain's Future

By Sir Andrew Green
Chairman, Migration Watch UK
The Sunday Times, London, 5 September, 2010

Dominic Lawson ("How Tories regret the immigration promise", Comment, last week) was right about the need for welfare reform but he seems to have entirely failed to grasp the significance of the present mass immigration for our society as a whole.

The reality is that we either integrate or we disintegrate, and integration is quite simply impossible with a migrant arriving every minute. The latest figures for net immigration confirm that the UK population is on course for 70 million in 20 years and 80 million in mid century. We must get immigration under control and economic migration must play its part. Not all current economic migrants are essential. Why, for example, are we allowing every year about 25,000 foreign graduates of British universities so stay on for two years competing for jobs against British graduates who face an unemployment rate of nearly 10%? Nor is immigration the long-term answer to skills shortages, as employers recognise.

Net immigration from the European Union has averaged only about 27,000 a year over the past five years while flows to and from the new east European members are coming into balance. This means that EU migration is only about 15% of net foreign migration. The long-term pressures will come from the Third World; tough action is needed on bogus studentsand marriages designed to circumvent immigration controls.

The public feels helpless. It wants action. For the first time we have a government committed to a clear objective to reduce net immigration. All strength to its arm.

Comment

Migrationwatch Response to the IPPR on Immigration and Unemployment

Our briefing papers 3.10 on immigration and unemployment, and 3.11 on immigration and youth unemployment attracted criticism from the IPPR.

In suggesting that we were claiming that correlation between unemployment and immigration also proved causation, the IPPR were attacking a straw man. We made no such claim.

Briefing paper 3.10 reported "A distinct linkage" (paragraph 7). This is clearly true, especially for London where over 30% of the variation of employment is associated with net international migration (paragraph 8). Furthermore, the press release made it clear (final paragraph) that "This is a complex area and other factors such as skills levels and the operation of the Benefit System are important".

Curiously, the IPPR seemed to agree with our main point. On page 7 of their "Anatomy of a Media Story" they say "The fact that employment rates for UK Nationals seem to be falling, or at least not rising, is a concern. The fact that employment rates for non UK Nationals are rising at the same time tells us something about incentives and barriers to work that it is worth taking seriously…" They continue… "Just because there isn't any evidence that immigration is harming employment in the UK doesn't mean that more immigration would be a good thing".

We recognise, and said explicitly in our press release on youth unemployment, that correlation is not proof of causation. However, we would argue that the absence of statistical "proof" does not mean the absence of any causation.

This point was best made in evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs by Professor Rowthorn, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Cambridge (paragraph 83):

He disagreed with the clear conclusion that the government had drawn from the DWP study and the previous study by Professor Dustmann. He pointed out that both studies did find relatively large but statistically insignificant effects of immigration on unemployment. He argued that finding effects that are statistically insignificant "does not mean that they are small. It simply means that there is too much noise in the system to estimate them accurately".

It remains our view that it is right and necessary to bring these matters to public attention.

As for the more technical issues, the IPPR's specific criticisms of the approach taken by Migrationwatch in the research in these two papers do not stand up. The principal point the IPPR makes is that the findings only show "that local authority areas with higher populations have both more migrants and more young unemployed people" thus accounting for the strength of the relationship found. This is simply not true, as a cursory analysis of any data shows. For example, Eastleigh in Hampshire and Slough in Buckinghamshire have approximately similarly sized populations, but vastly dissimilar rates of net international migration (a fall of 100 for Eastleigh compared with an increase of 10,200 for Slough, over the period 2003-2009) and very different rates of unemployment.

Because Migrationwatch wished to analyse differences in youth unemployment and net migration at local authority level, it was necessary to measure youth unemployment by the claimant count method (data on a youth unemployment 'rate' at local authority level is generally not available), but in the London Boroughs the relationship between the overall unemployment rate and the rate of immigration from abroad is strikingly similar to the relationship found by Migrationwatch for young unemployed numbers and numbers of immigrants. The consistency of the relationship found is clearly significant.