Divisive rhetoric will not improve practices that put migrants' lives at risk
The day after George Osborne announces massive public spending cuts that will impact on the working poor, decimate councils and reduce police numbers, David Cameron plays the populist card with a speech on immigration.
Portrayed as a ‘one nation’ speech, it is a clear attempt to divert attention from the cuts and today’s immigration statistics.
Although details will not be set out until the Immigration Bill is published after next week’s Queen’s Speech, the highlights we have been shown are, at best, meaningless rhetoric. They also reproduce Labour’s mistakes of tough talking and over-promising – and can only act to reduce the public’s trust in the ability of politicians to deliver on immigration policy.
The prime minister’s proposals include:
- New powers for councils to crackdown on unscrupulous landlords and evict illegal workers/migrants more quickly. Councils already have a legal framework to regulate the private rental sector and tackle bad landlords. But housing regulation has been cut and this proposal will be meaningless without funding.
- Creating a new offence of illegal working and enabling the police to seize wages as proceeds of crime. Employers face civil penalties and since 2006 it has been a criminal offence to knowingly employ on irregular migrant. Most irregular migrants work below the radar in a low-waged cash economy and send money home at the soonest opportunity. Giving the police powers to confiscate wages is pure dog-whistling.
- Creating a new labour market enforcement agency to crack down on the worst cases of labour market exploitation. What is wrong with extending the powers of the Gangmasters Licencing Authority and increasing the numbers of National Minimum Wage inspectors?
Worryingly, Cameron’s proposals also included extending the ‘deport first, appeal later’ measures to all immigration appeals and judicial reviews. This already happens in immigration appeals that are not asylum and human rights cases. It seems that the government proposes to remove refused asylum-seekers to their home countries, where they can then appeal.
In the three months to 31 March 2015, 2,242 asylum appeals were handled by judges, of which 29 per cent were upheld in that the appellant was granted asylum or leave to remain in the UK.
Nearly one in three of the Home Office’s initial decisions are wrong, a figure that is higher for Afghan nationals (40 per cent of appeals upheld) and Eritreans (45 per cent of appeals upheld).
Sending someone back home when a wrong judgement has been made puts lives at risk.
Unsurprisingly, the Cameron speech made little reference to today’s migration statistics, which comprise administrative data from the Home Office on asylum and visas, as well as demographic estimates on net migration from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The Home Office statistics show that visas for family and student migration are steady, but a 9 per cent increase in work visas in the year to March 2015, compared with the previous year.
Asylum applications are also steady, with 25,020 applications in the year to March 2015, of which the largest numbers came from Eritrea, Pakistan and Syria.
Work, student, family and student immigration from outside the EU make up under half of immigration to the UK. The ONS migration estimates suggest that in the year to December 2014, 42 per cent of immigration to the UK was from other EU countries.
Continued immigration from the EU has meant that the target to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands has been missed yet again. In the year to December 2014, it is estimated that 318,000 more people came to the UK than left as emigrants. Unsurprisingly, announcements from Downing Street and the Home Office did not mention the missed target.
Overall, there was little positive in today’s announcements. There were no proposals to promote integration which might help us live together better. Rather, today’s proposals are distracting rhetoric which create a vicious circle of ‘tough talk’ that reinforce negative public attitudes.
These, in turn, prompt ever more uncompromising statements. So, no change from the nasty party.
Jill Rutter is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward.
44 Responses to “Tough talk but no real change on immigration shows the Tories are still the nasty party”
stevep
There is plenty for us all to think about if we want to live peacefully, happily and as abundantly as possible. Respect and tolerance of other cultures and of our different colours is part of it. In an age of instant global communication we are discovering that our differences are less than what previous generations imagined. We all live and breathe, need to eat and drink to survive, we all shit, build homes, have children etc. Where we live, what our resources are and what we do with them are the deciding factor. We can choose to deny them to others or share them with others and that determines our humanity and whether we live in peaceful co-existence or whether we choose permanent war with each other.
damon
Yes of course. I agree with you. (I’ve been editing that last post of mine btw – I don’t know how much you agree or disagree with it).
We’ve seen from the election what kind of people the Brits are. Or the English anyway.
When push comes to shove, they are a conservative bunch and err on the side of caution and self interest. The idea of making a brave new world of open borders and some kind of Star Trek ”world federation” is too much of a leap for the majority.
If you’ve got nothing better to do, you could have a look at this blog post by Kenan Malik, where he suggests that open borders are just what we need.
I made a number of replies, but there isn’t much of a conversation going to happen on that site.
Still interesting ideas though.
https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2015/05/14/the-price-of-fortress-europe/
If an extra ten million people moved to the UK, it could certainly be argued that our lives here would suffer as a result. Some people say the opposite though and say we’ve got plenty of room and only need to build greater capacity.
That can only ever be an argument between different camps, because there are valid points on both sides. An argument for greater third world immigration is one for more places in Britain that now have a population like Brighton or Cambridge becoming more like Southwark and Newham in London. Not everyone is going to be enthusiastic about that prospect. As it would mean those places would also develop London’s problems of poverty etc. Gang culture – Operation Tridant etc.
More beds in sheds and more Islamic fundamentalists.
ArthurPendragon
It is a problem of human psychology unless you have vigilance of continuous revolution as proposed by Mao nothing can be done. The Cultural revolution failed. Religion always fails to achieve similar things. It will be solved when the robots take over.
stevep
The world population issue, particularly in smaller, more crowded countries is a hot potato that few people want to grasp. A serious, balanced debate between all societies and their leaders is long overdue, particularly about the science/religion divide, it should reflect all of us, not just the few. In the meantime all we can realistically do, as human beings, is to have hope and to have the courage to see ourselves as we are, accept the imperfections we see and strive to build a more tolerant world.
stevep
In the current state of things, if it ever comes to pass that robots could replace humans beings as servants and slaves of the wealthy, then God help us.