The new immigration orthodoxy will mean immigration at levels significantly below those of 1997 - 2009.
What does this mean in practice, how will this be achieved? Given that immigration from other parts of the EU has abated naturally, from now on when we talk of immigration we will mean immigration from outside the EU.
Each year thousands are allowed to come to UK to look for a job. It's called Tier 1 immigration. In the new era the right to come here without a job will be limited to a small number of individuals: entrepreneurs setting up businesses here or investors bringing significant resources into the country. Hundreds of people rather than tens of thousands will come here via this "Tier 1" route. This does not mean that only the rich will be allowed in. It does mean that, with these few exceptions, everybody under the "Points Based System" must have a job offer before they can apply to come.
Tier 2 allows in migrants who have a job offer. Again, tens of thousands have come via this route each year to fill vacancies that "could not" be filled from within UK. For example, the critical shortage of doctors (caused by years of low pay) was solved by Indian doctors. But doctors' pay was then hugely increased and as a result enough are now entering the profession. "Could not" in quotes because although sometimes jobs really can't be filled by a UK worker, sometimes nobody tries particularly hard to find a UK worker.
That example tells a tale: shortages are created when wages are too low. There is a shortage of care home workers in UK. Why? Simply because British people are not being offered enough money to be care home workers. Would you want to be a care home worker for £5 an hour? Possibly not. But for a million pounds a year? Of course you would. Somewhere in between is a level at which care home worker will be seen as a well enough paid profession for people to want to do it. So they'll train and very quickly the shortage will disappear. Just as it did with doctors. The consequence though is higher wages which means higher charges for care home places. Individuals or the State have to be prepared to pay up: this is the cost of reducing immigration. Though this cost is more than offset: if the Brit who takes a care home job would otherwise have been unemployed, the Government saves the unemployment benefit. Further, UK plc does not have to build a place for the immigrant to live (the people who would have built that house could instead, for example, be employed making things to sell abroad and so help reduce the National Debt).
If care home wages are permanently held too low by the use of cheap immigrant labour, there will never be an incentive for Brits to go into that occupation and so there will always be a shortage which must be filled by migrants.
A less emotive example might be Bangladeshi restaurants. A shortage of Bangladeshi chefs in UK allows restaurant owners to bring in chefs from Bangladesh. If they couldn't what would happen? They would have to pay higher wages to persuade people in UK - Bangladeshis or others - to train as chefs. That would mean higher prices in Bangladeshi restaurants, and it would mean that some would close down: a shame but hardly the end of the world - restaurants close all the time.
At the moment in parts of the NHS it has become a habit to hire non-EU immigrants. Once recruiters learn how to do it, and they see how keen the immigrant workers usually are, they try to hire non-EU immigrants if they can. And who is brave enough to say "nonsense" to an NHS manager who says he must have non-EU workers to keep a vital public service operational? The numbers of non-EU immigrants will only grow as more managers find out how to do it.
There will always from time to time be occupations where there is, for whatever reason, a genuine skills shortage in UK and vital jobs for which no UK worker can be found - despite really trying. If these jobs are vital (unlike chef jobs) and the training period is long so vacancies cannot be filled quickly that way, then it can be appropriate to bring in migrant labour. But should that migrant settle here permanently or come on a fixed term contract? If you get enough applicants who will do the job on the basis of a fixed term contract then return home, that's great - no permanent immigration results. If you really can't fill the job on that basis then you might decide it's appropriate to offer the prospect of permanent residence. But only then.
We really do have to make up our minds whether we have migrant workers primarily for the benefit of this country or whether our work permit policy is a covert act of charity. Charity to would-be immigrants - people who live in other countries who would like to come and live here.
So we have four measures: very few people allowed to come without first having a job offer; coaxing British workers into shortage occupations via higher wages and/or the prospect of benefit cuts; allowing migrant workers in only to do vital jobs; and as a rule offering migrant workers temporary contracts rather than permanent residence. We can retain much of the benefit of migrant labour with low levels of permanent immigration.
That is the new paradigm.
Around 35,000 (2008) migrants come to UK each year to marry UK residents. Two thirds are wives, one third husbands. The practice is most common amongst, but not exclusive to, Asians. The minimum age at which a UK resident can bring in a spouse, and the minimum age of the incoming spouse, has recently been raised to 21. It remains to be seen what effect this will have.
Further raising the age for the UK resident who is bringing in the spouse to 24 (but leaving the threshold
for the incoming spouse at 21) would result in a further reduction in spouse immigration.
By 24 a person is sufficiently mature to make an informed choice; at 24 they are more likely to be
free of influences so the choice is more likely to be theirs rather than others';
and of course there is every chance that by the age of 24 they will have found a suitable partner within the UK.
Bringing in a spouse tends to preserve the "old country" culture and immigrant communities' separateness.
Marrying a UK spouse is more likely to improve integration and social cohesion.
The numbers have fallen considerably in recent years.
In 2008 31,000 claimed asylum, 12,000 were deported, so 19,000 remained, legally or not.
More remains to be done to ensure those granted asylum are seen to be granted it justifiably, and more needs to be done
to remove those whose claims for asylum fail. But in the context of the number entering via other routes
the asylum figures are not that large.
Most illegals probably do not come in on the back of trucks. Each year well over 200,000 students come here to study. Most go home, but some remain and thus become illegal immigrants. And of course some "students" are no such thing: their application was fraudulent and once in the country they simply disappear. "Family visits" allow close family of UK residents to visit and large number do. But again, nobody knows how many people use this as a means of gaining entry with no intention of return.
Over the next few years systems for tracking entry and exit will at least help identify those who overstay.
Whether anything will be done to remove them is a question of political will.
Certainly a great deal more could be done to remove illegal immigrants. Perhaps when the number entering legally
declines, resources will be freed up and brought to bear here. But the problem of illegal immigration is one requiring
action on many fronts including better vetting of visa applications, action against smuggling, biometric passports,
exit tracking systems and removals.
At the time of writing, late 2009, we are entering the new immigration era. In future significantly lower levels of immigration will mean the pressures that give rise to social problems and anger will diminish.
A couple of things sometimes get inappropriately drawn into the immigration debate:
Everyone knows someone who they regard as completely British but who is not ethnically British.
The fact that that person has different features or skin colouring doesn't register any more.
If immigration now slows to a trickle, in 20 years time there may well be 10 million or more people here who
aren't ethnically British but there will be very few "immigrants".
Those 10 million people will be as British as that friend of yours.
Specific Proposals for reducing non-EEA immigration
Migration Watch
contact: mike at hraconsulting-ltd.co.uk
january 2010