Migrants come to the UK to find jobs, not to claim benefits

Until there is concerted action to revive the failing economies of southern and eastern Europe, there is little hope that the government’s net migration target will be met.

Until there is concerted action to revive the failing economies of southern and eastern Europe, there is little hope that the government’s net migration target will be met

As expected, net migration – immigration minus emigration – into the UK has shown an increase, up from 182,000 in the year to 30 June 2013, to 260,000 in the year to June 2014.

It is not surprising that Theresa May admitted the government was far from achieving its target of bringing net migration down to the tens of thousands by the end of this parliament.

Today’s statistics from the ONS will further intensify the debate about EU migration. All the media attention has focused on conditions in the UK – pull factors.

But if politicians were serious about addressing migration they might also look at push factors within eastern and southern European countries – the unemployment that causes people to move.

Today’s quarterly migration statistics are in two parts. There is a release of administrative data from the Home Office, on work visas, student and family migration, asylum applications, extensions of stay and removals.

The ONS also publishes demographic data on immigration and emigration trends, from which the net migration statistics are drawn.

The Home Office data is precise because it is based on real events – visas that have been issued, asylum cases that have been processed and so on. It shows little that is surprising.

A few more work visas have been issued in the year to 30 September 2014 – mostly for skilled workers who have come through the Tier 2 visa routes to fill vacancies that cannot be filled by UK workers.

Student migration under Tier 4 is up by 2 per cent, due to a small increase in those coming to study in UK universities. Asylum applications are steady, more or less the same as the previous year, with the biggest number of applications coming from Eritrea, Pakistan, Iran and Syria.

It must be noted that the number of asylum-seekers arriving in the UK is small, compared with overall migration flows and routes such as student migration.

The ONS statistics are estimates of overall immigration and emigration. These numbers are based on the International Passenger Survey, which samples about 4,000 migrant arrivals and departures as part of a larger survey of travellers.

There have been many criticisms of the survey, from a wide range of individuals. It is a small sample and many of those approached do not complete the survey.

Nevertheless, the government has chosen to base its flagship migration policy on this survey.

The migration estimates showed that 583,000 people came to the UK as migrants in the year to June 2014 and 323,000 people emigrated. Of those coming into the UK, 39 per cent were from the European Union.

While much of the focus of the migration debate has centred on those from the EU’s newest member states, under half (46 per cent) of EU immigration (and 18 per cent of all immigration) came from countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007.

Some 15 per cent of immigration into the UK in the year to June 2014 was returning Brits.

Missing from today’s debate has been any discussion of why EU migrants leave their home countries and come to the UK. While small numbers of people come to study or for family reasons, the overwhelming number of EU migrants come to work.

They come because jobs are hard to find in Spain (unemployment rate 25 per cent), Greece (27 per cent) and Poland (9.6 per cent).

All studies that examine the reasons for migration show that push factors – poverty, unemployment and organised violence – always play a greater role in people’s decisions to move than do pull factors in countries of destination.

Migrants come to the UK for jobs and not because of our benefits. Until there is concerted action to revive the failing economies of southern and eastern Europe, to address youth unemployment and austerity, there is little hope that the government’s net migration target will be met.

It is economic cooperation we need, not xenophobic rhetoric.

Jill Rutter is a contributing editor at Left Foot Forward

57 Responses to “Migrants come to the UK to find jobs, not to claim benefits”

  1. CGR

    They come to take the jobs of British workers !!!

  2. scandalousbill

    “Some 15 per cent of immigration into the UK in the year to June 2014 was returning Brits.”

    Are you going to tell them to go back from where they came from?

  3. swat

    These figures would make any decent Home Secretary resign in embarassment.

  4. madasafish

    This article could read like a UKIP recruiting drive.. leave the EU to avoid inward migration

  5. Alan Middleton

    We now know that migrants contribute more to the British economy than they take out and that most people have a fairly nuanced understanding of migration: most people recognise that there are both costs and benefits.

    Since 2008, however, more overseas-born workers have found work in the UK than the number of jobs created; and almost 60% of the 1.5 million jobs created since the
    General Election have gone to people born outside the UK (See the paper on the Governance Foundation website).

    It is true that push factors are important and that very little attention is paid to them,
    but it is also true that little attention is paid to pull factors that are embedded in the way the UK labour market is now operating.

    A migration policy that acknowledges the positive contribution of migration would also insist on the enforcement of existing employment laws and the creation of new ones – which would serve both natives and immigrants but would raise the cost of immigration. Actions would include dealing with: rogue employers who fail to pay the minimum wage; agencies who contract only overseas workers; workers who falsely claim to be self-employed; the uninhibited use of zero hours contracts; unregistered self-employment as a means of workers avoiding income tax and NIC and employers avoiding NIC and other costs; agencies who deduct housing, food and transport costs directly from wages; and so on. They would, of course, have to be combined with policies to raise local skill levels, particularly amongst the young, to ensure that UK workers could easily meet the demand for labour.

    Backing these policies with changes to the benefits rules and implementing policies to
    control unscrupulous private landlords would help to raise local standards and raise the cost of employing immigrant workers. They would also raise the tax take and reduce expenditure on services.

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