Hysteria, hypocrisy and the world's immigrant hordes

Hysteria, hypocrisy and the world's immigrant hordes
By Gideon Rachman
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Published: September 12 2006 03:00 | Last updated: September 12 2006 03:00



Walking into the corner shop near my house in west London the other day, I found the Kashmiri woman behind the counter absorbed in a book. Its title was Teach Yourself Polish. Behind her was an array of Polish delicacies - imported to cater for the newest wave of migrants to arrive in Britain.

The Kashmiris, along with other south Asians, arrived in force in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. The latest big wave of immigration to the UK is from central Europe. The British government estimates that some 600,000 people, the majority of them Polish, have moved to Britain to work since 10 new countries joined the European Union in 2004.

By and large, they are regarded as model immigrants. As a UK government adviser puts it with politically incorrect bluntness: "The Poles are great. They all work, they don't want to kill us and their women don't wear bags over their heads."

Even so, a backlash against unlimited immigration from central Europe is growing. Next January Bulgaria and Romania are almost certain to join the EU. An unlikely coalition of British opinion, ranging from big business to leftist politicians, is now calling for the imposition of temporary restrictions on free movement of labour, before Bulgaria and Rumania join. Last weekend Gordon Brown, presumed to be prime minister-in-waiting, gave an interview in which he endorsed a policy of "British jobs to British workers".

The British debate reflects rising global anxiety about immigration. The German Marshall Fund's annual transatlantic trends survey published last week showed that 79 per cent of Americans and 76 per cent of Europeans now regard "large numbers of immigrants coming into their countries as an important threat".

The US Congress has spent much of the past year arguing bitterly about a new immigration bill, designed to deal with the fact that America currently plays host to some 12m illegal immigrants, and that about 900,000 new illegals are thought to enter the country every year - mostly across the Mexican border. The current political hysteria is accurately captured by the title of a new book by Pat Buchanan, once a presidential candidate. It is called State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America.

Over in Europe, there is a similar sense that immigrants from the third world are massing on the borders. José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, has just called for a co-ordinated European response to the growing number of illegal immigrants from Africa washing up on Europe's shores. On one recent weekend almost 2,000 Africans landed on the Spanish-owned Canary Islands. There are now thought to be 5m-8m illegal immigrants across the EU.

Tony Blair, still just about the British prime minister, argued in a recent speech that "immigration is the toughest political issue in Europe and the USA right now". He thinks that if mass immigration is to remain politically acceptable, "it needs to be controlled". "There have to be rules."

But that is the problem. From west London to the Rio Grande to the Canary Islands, people no longer really believe that politicians have the ability or the will to make and enforce rules on immigration.

There is plenty of reason for scepticism. In the US, increased border security has made it more difficult, dangerous and costly to enter the country illegally - but does not appear to have affected overall numbers much. In 2005, Spain granted an amnesty to more than 500,000 illegal immigrants. That appears to have encouraged even more desperate people to strike out for Spanish shores. So now the Spanish are talking about mass deportation.

In Britain, the government estimated that an annual 13,000 new workers would come legally to Britain after EU expansion in 2004 - so the arrival of 600,000 or more since then has come as something of a shock. There is no way to put the genie back into the bottle. Even talk of restrictions on Bulgarians and Romanians is a bit of a con - since all such restrictions would have to be phased out within seven years anyway. Those EU countries that have tried to place temporary restrictions on Polish workers have not found them particularly effective. For all EU citizens are still free to enter another EU country as tourists - and then to find their way into the underground labour market.

As Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, argues: "Illegal immigration is part of the vital lubricant of our societies. It wouldn't be happening if so many people's interests were not served by the status quo." Businesses benefit because they can employ cheap labour. Middle-class householders benefit because they can afford more help with childcare and cleaning.

The correct response to all this is not to continue hypocritically demanding a crackdown on illegal immigration. It is to create more avenues for legal immigration for workers of all types. Without really meaning to, this is what the EU did with its latest enlargement to take in the countries of central Europe.

The Australian and Canadian points systems, which favour immigration from high-skilled workers, are often cited as models for all developed countries to imitate. But the reality is that the rich world also has a huge appetite for cheaper, lower-skilled labour in industries such as hotels, catering and agriculture. It is simply hypocrisy to say that all the people coming across the Rio Grande or the Mediterranean are unwanted immigrants. Somebody wants them or they would not keep coming.

But there are also more attractive emotions than hypocrisy involved in the rich world's confusion about immigration. For it is not true that nothing can be done to control the phenomenon. The real problem is that the things that would need to be done are so harsh that people rightly shy away from them.

Does the US really want to build an Israeli-style security fence along its border with Mexico? Could Europeans or Americans really stomach the site of millions of illegal immigrants - and their children - being rounded up and deported? Do EU countries really want to get rid of one of the most attractive aspects of the European venture - the right for EU citizens to live and work legally across the continent?

So far, the answer to these questions is no. The free movement of people, like the free movement of goods, does not always benefit everybody all of the time. But the world is a better place for it, all the same.