80 per cent of the people arriving in the UK over the last year for work had a visa tied to a job to start when they got here
For years, immigration has consistently ranked among the top concerns in surveys of the British public. In response, political leaders have repeatedly made efforts to show that they can bring it under control.
During the last election, the Conservative Party reiterated its ‘ambition’ to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands and it has since made attempts to make the UK a less appealing destination for migrants by reducing their access to health, welfare or education services.
And yet the views expressed in public opinion surveys are often based on misinformation and false assumptions. This matters because it restricts the available space for envisioning and debating different approaches to the issue.
For over 15 years, a majority of respondents to public opinion surveys from Ipsos Mori have considered there to be ‘too many immigrants’. Yet the same organisation has also found that on average people also over-estimate the amount of migrants that there are in the country by double.
Similarly, the British Social Attitudes survey from 2013 found that a majority of the British population considered that the costs of EU and non-EU workers outweighed the benefits. In contrast, research has found that between 2000 and 2011 immigrants have made a net contribution to the country’s finances, paying in more in taxes than they use in services and benefits.
A further range of myths, such as that there is a vastly greater number of asylum seekers in the UK than is the case, is addressed in the latest publication from Class and Migrants Rights Network, Changing the debate on migration.
However, the problem is not just that people don’t know the facts: it is that they don’t trust political leaders to tell them the truth. Policies that are based on being tough and in control, such as setting targets, have failed. As a result, the British public has been consistently dissatisfied with the way its governments have tried to deal with immigration.
The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats suffered from declining public confidence on the issue and polling after their term in government has found half the population to consider immigration to still be the most important issue facing the country today. Attempts to be tough and in control have neither reduced immigration levels nor raised public confidence in our political leaders.
In a global era, international migration is an inescapable reality. Furthermore, migration, particularly between parts of the world with long-established historical connections, cannot be easily switched on or off.
For this reason immigration policies often fail at meeting their declared objectives. But that is not to say that immigration is out of control. For example, the latest migration statistics showed that of the people arriving in the UK over the last year for work, 80 per cent were arriving with a visa tied to a job to start when they got here.
Over the last parliament, the slight decline and more recent rise of net migration to Britain could be more easily explained by the national economy and availability of jobs than by government efforts to manage the phenomenon. As noted by Philip Legrain, those who arrive often do the jobs that locals don’t want, or start their own businesses which contribute further to the economy.
At the moment, false assumptions and distrust mean that few public figures openly consider what our country might look like without an overbearing focus on being tough and getting the numbers down. A constructive debate need not push for open borders, but at least should provide a chance to imagine the pros and cons of alternative ways of living with migration.
Simon McMahon is a research fellow at Coventry University
To download a copy of the pamphlet by Class and the Migrants Rights Network, click here
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34 Responses to “Too often public opinion about migration is based on false information”
Giles Farthing
London is cracking under the strain, tubes are massively overloaded, you can’t see a GP for weeks, forget trying to get a dentist, getting your kid into an already overcrowded school in itself is a total nightmare, the roads are clogged to breaking point the hospitals are at breaking point, house prices through the roof. the left tell us its because of austerity. its not its toooooo many people, how is that hard to understand! then you say oh yeah no its fine, we need more immigration
GhostofJimMorisson
It really angers me when leftwing academics and journalists, who have never done a days’ hard/physical graft in their lives, pontificate about ‘lazy’ Brits who won’t do ‘immigrant’ work. Then they lecture us about how hard working Eastern Europeans are. Having worked alongside many I wouldn’t disagree; but I worked alongside just as many hardworking Brits, doing physical jobs Phillip Legraine wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. Then there’s the issue of hundreds of thousands of UK jobs being advertised only in Poland and other Eastern European countries. I think it’s pretty appaling that our young people are now having to directly compete with 500 million people across the EU for jobs
GhostofJimMorisson
There were a dozen Romanians actually living in the basement of the building site he told me. They had driven up directly from Romania in a couple of vans.
Blatant exploitation. There’s much handwringing from the left about this, but they will not accept that mass immigration and freedom of movement is grossly exacerbating this problem. Unscrupulous employers will always find ways to reduce labour costs, and so long as there’s an army of people willing to work for much less than native British then it will never end. But being nice, tolerant, embracing diversity and welcoming foreigners is clearly more important for the left, not to mention the trade unions, who have done sod all to stop this and protect British workers.
GhostofJimMorisson
You’re living in a fantasy land. I’ve banged on hundreds of doors in staunch Labour areas and almost always the number one issue for them is mass, uncontrolled immigration. People don’t need Tory propaganda to see how it is affecting their communties. And we know all about the numbers – 330,000 this year alone, or a city the size of Liverpool. Too much, too fast, too soon.
Godfrey Paul
Uncontrolled immigraiton has put British workers out of jobs, kept their wages low, increased rents, lengthened queues for NHS services and put greater pressure on our social services.
And on top of that are the cultural costs of immigration