Immigration

Thursday

Matt Cavanagh

Net migration starts to fall – but the real questions remain unanswered

From our UK edition

The latest immigration figures published by the ONS today, for the calendar year 2011, show net migration falling for the first time under the coalition – but nowhere near fast enough to give ministers confidence that they will hit their target by 2015. The ONS estimates that immigration last year fell by 25,000, and emigration rose by 11,000, resulting in a drop in net migration of 36,000 – from 252,000 to 216,000. This is in line with my earlier prediction, though the ONS warn that the fall is not statistically significant, and the target of 100,000 still looks a long way away.

Monday

Douglas Murray

Why would Conservatives want to pass the ‘Danny Boyle’ test?

From our UK edition

So the Conservative party’s immigration minister, Damian Green MP, has introduced the idea of the ‘Danny Boyle test.’  In today’s Telegraph he argues that the Conservative party must resist ‘nostalgists promoting a better yesterday’ and that since the Olympics opening ceremony was a demonstration of ‘modern Britain’ it is therefore a ‘test’ that Conservatives must pass. And so the Labour MP Paul Flynn who described the opening ceremony of the Olympics as ‘a Trojan horse’  for the Conservative Party has been proved precisely right.

Fraser Nelson

The Tory timewarp

From our UK edition

'If we don’t like modern Britain, then it is very unlikely that modern Britain will like us' says Damian Green, in a piece for the Daily Telegraph today. I’m not sure if this is a piece of pre-reshuffle positioning or a cri de coeur, but his analysis is about ten years out of date. Green is not a Notting Hill Tory, he’s part of the group whom Rachel Sylvester once described as the 'Blueberry Hill' Tories — a generation born about the same time as the Fats Domino hit, who got into parliament early enough to see their party spanked by Tony Blair in three general elections. This gave rise to the ‘modernisers’, whose analysis was right for the time. But now, this group seem to be focused on providing ever-better ways to win the 2001 election.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

May and Green put up the barricades on migration targets

From our UK edition

David Cameron is already going to struggle to hit his target of taking net migration from 250,000 to the tens of thousands. But I understand that the Home Office is nervous that other Whitehall departments could undermine that target further, seeing immigration as one sinew that could be strained as they begin to panic about growth. Look closely, and you can see an inter-governmental battle being fought. Theresa May and Damian Green have been on manoeuvres today, highlighting the government's progress in cutting net migration. The Home Secretary has an op-ed in The Sun on Sunday, where she also lists some of the areas which have been tightened to 'make life in the UK much more uncomfortable' for illegal immigrants.

Thursday

Shiraz Maher

Memoir of an Islamist

From our UK edition

It was a surreal experience to meet Maajid Nawaz for the first time. I had known of him for years and admired his bombast. He was a hero — not just my hero — but a hero to hundreds of young Islamist radicals. 'Woah, this is the brother in Egypt, isn’t it?' said an erstwhile comrade, listening to a cassette in my badly beaten Peugeot 106 as we drove through Bradford. That brother was Nawaz and it explained why neither of us had met him at that time. In late 2001 Nawaz had travelled to Egypt to learn Arabic as part of an undergraduate degree at SOAS but was now being detained in one of Mubarak’s notoriously brutal political prisons.

Saturday

Martin Bright

Are you thinking what Aidan Burley was thinking?

From our UK edition

When you are not a part of the Tory tribe there are certain subjects you worry about mentioning as journalist, whether it's at a Conservative Party conference, or indeed, on a blog for the Spectator. One is Europe, another is immigration and a third is multiculturalism. These three interlocking bogies drive the Tory grassroots and emerge, from time to time, to trouble the party leadership. The views of constituency activists on these issues (and people who like to comment on the Spectator site) can be fruity, but I have been talking to Tories for long enough to know that they can be genuinely passionate about this stuff.

Wednesday

Matt Cavanagh

ONS blunder lets ministers blame falling real incomes on immigration

From our UK edition

Yesterday the ONS published a report showing average disposable incomes at their lowest level since 2003. This is difficult news for ministers: as Isabel pointed out, concerns about the cost of living – stagnant wages and rising prices – are one of the main reasons given by voters in recent polls for turning away from the Conservatives. Imagine, then, how pleased ministers must have been when they saw that the ONS had thrown them a lifeline: the chance to blame it all on immigration. The ONS report discusses the effects of wages and prices, and then adds that ‘finally, sustained population growth led to incomes being spread across a greater number of people, and therefore further reduced the growth of actual income per head over the period’.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Immigration and the cost of living

From our UK edition

The average disposable income is at its lowest point since 2003, according to figures released this afternoon by the Office for National Statistics. The statistics for the first quarter of this year show that take home income was an average of £273 a week, while real incomes per head fell by 0.6 per cent to £4,444 in Q1, which is the lowest since 2005. The ONS points to rising prices as the primary cause of these falls, and there are obvious points to be made here about the cost of living. It's currently one of the major reasons voters are giving for turning away from the Conservative party, and Labour's Chris Leslie has already used the ONS' stats to attack the government's tax and benefits policies.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

The UK Border Agency’s Bermuda Triangle

From our UK edition

Bringing the UK Border Agency to heel has been one of the mammoth tasks facing ministers since the coalition formed. Ministers have recently been rather keen to suggest that backlogs in claims and migrants disappearing without a trace were coming under control - Immigration Minister Damian Green said at the start of this month that 'we have gripped it and dealt with' the problem of people overstaying their visa, for instance.

Tuesday

Douglas Murray

Uncontrolled immigration

From our UK edition

So the 2011 census results for England and Wales are out. And sure enough it turns out that the last decade has seen the largest population increase in any decade since records began. Twice that of the previous decade. Woe betide anybody who does not welcome this with a punch in the air and a few ‘Woohoos’. Despite having no democratic mandate for this societal transformation — indeed acting against public opinion on the matter — the last Labour government oversaw an immigration system which either by accident or design went demonstrably out of control. Naturally, some people will welcome this. They will say that another city the size of Manchester springing up every year is exactly what this country needs. In which case I hope they live there.

Monday

Alex Massie

Britain is not full

From our UK edition

The census figures are out and you know what this means! Yes, the newspapers will be stuffed with articles complaining that this other Eden is now too teeming with foreigners for its survival to be considered a sure thing. The census reports that some 56.1 million souls are living in England and Wales. Add five million Scots plus some Ulstermen and the United Kingdom's population is at a record high. The population increase since 2001 is counted at 3.6 million people and some 55 per cent of that increase is attributed to net migration. The rest of it, roughly 1.6m people, is put down to an increase in the birth rate.

Interconnect

A crowded island – but mainly in the South East

From our UK edition

By Matt Cavanagh The 2011 Census, published today, shows that the population of England and Wales reached 56.1 million, up by 3.7 million since 2001, and slightly higher than previous estimates. The three facts which are likely to make the headlines are: that this is the largest ten-year increase since the Census began in 1801; that over half (55 per cent) of the increase was due to net migration; and that the population density of England, at just over 400 people per square kilometre, is higher than G8 countries and all major EU countries except the Netherlands. But there is more to the Census than these headlines suggest.

Friday

Douglas Murray

Britain does not need more mass immigration

From our UK edition

Jonathan has already mentioned yesterday’s Fiscal Sustainability Report from the Office of Budgetary Responsibility. He appears to welcome mass migration both now and as an inevitable part of our future. Perhaps I could put a dissenting view? Migration itself can be a good thing. But mass migration (in the numbers it has happened in recent years in Britain and many other Western countries) is a bad thing. It strains our welfare systems, encourages people to ghetto-ise rather than assimilate and creates not so much a multi-racial society as a country made up of different mono-cultural centres. It causes a breakdown in trust both between and among communities, and erodes the possibility of any collective history or common culture.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Ageing Britain needs more immigration

From our UK edition

Some generalisations hold good. Young people, for instance, tend to be less hostile to immigration than their elders. This speaks well of their decency but also, as today's report form the Office of Budgetary Responsibility makes clear, to an intuitive sense of their own self-interest. If there's one thing today's Fiscal Sustainability Report makes clear, it is that the under-40s are going to need some help if Britain's ageing population isn't going to cripple the country. Of course, the standard caveats need to be applied: the OBR makes projections and projections are vulnerable to events. The purpose of these reports is to help provide a context within which policy can be debated. Policy choices will have an impact on future projections.

Jonathan Jones

Cutting immigration would explode the debt

From our UK edition

Ever wondered what would happen to the British economy if net immigration were slashed to zero? Well today’s ‘Fiscal Sustainability Report’ from the number crunchers at the Office for Budget Responsibility provides a glimpse of what such a future might look like — and it is a grim picture indeed. They’ve put together projections for the economy — and the public finances — all the way to 2062. Of course such long-term predictions should be taken with a pinch of salt. As Pete says over at ConservativeHome, ‘today’s OBR figures will probably bear as much comparison to the 2060s as the Jetsons will’.

Tuesday

Matt Cavanagh

A U-turn on international students would be welcome

From our UK edition

If you have been confused over the last couple of days by the mixed messages emerging from Downing Street about the government’s policy on international students, you are not alone: the same applies to many figures inside Whitehall.  The Sunday Times reported a Number 10 source saying David Cameron is 'definitely considering a change in policy', 'fearing the UK could lose billions if students are caught up in the pledge to reduce net migration to below 100,000 by 2015'. The Mail followed up the story in its leader on Monday, endorsing it but suggesting it would be a mistake – and blaming it on the Lib Dems.

Saturday

Alex Massie

Scotland needs more immigrants

From our UK edition

I've written an article for the Scotsman today arguing that Scotland needs many more immigrants. Aside from all the usual arguments in favour of this kind of blood transfusion I should also have said that increasing the number of non-Scots in Scotland is a useful hedge against being governed by, you know, Scots should we ever get around to voting in favour of independence... Anyway, here's the gist of the damn thing: Though polling data says Scots are about as immigrant-friendly as Londoners – and, therefore, likely to be more relaxed about immigration than people in other parts of the United Kingdom – that still means some 70 per cent of respondents agree with David Cameron’s claimed determination to reduce the number of immigrants settling in Britain.

Friday

Samira Ahmed

Another voice: Casablanca state of mind

From our UK edition

‘I don’t buy and sell human beings,’ says Rick to the rival club owner hoping to get the pianist Sam. ‘Too bad,’ comes the reply, ‘that’s Casablanca’s leading commodity.’ Desperate men and women pay fortunes to people smugglers or have sex with them. Many are abandoned penniless, trapped and unable to return home, fearful of arrest. Police and cross border agencies monitor known people trafficking routes across the Mediterranean from North Africa. Passports are stolen and doctored, the price for the right papers is extortionate. There is no mercy if you cannot pay the price. Every so often the local police, under pressure from the powerful German authorities, smash a ring of traffickers.

Alex Massie

Miliband’s gutless speech

From our UK edition

Here we go again. Ed Miliband gave another speech about immigration this morning proving yet again that this is a subject about which no-one is ever permitted to talk. Any time a Labour politicians talks about immigration and the party's record in government I am reminded of Evelyn Waugh's acid observation on hearing the news that Randolph Churchill had successfully endured an operation to remove a benign tumour. This, Waugh wrote in his diary, represented  "A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it." Comparably, it seems a typical triumph of modern politics that Labour should disown one of the more reputable parts of its record in office.

David Blackburn

Miliband’s misdiagnosis

From our UK edition

Ed Miliband will give a speech on immigration later today, marking out the territory on which he plans to engage those voters who feel that their communities and livelihoods are under threat from migrant workers. Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, prepared the ground for Miliband earlier this week by echoing her husband’s sentiments about the need for greater control of economic migration from eastern Europe. The Labour leadership insists that the Blair government was wrong to waive transition controls in 2004, when many former Soviet republics acceded to the EU. Labour stress that this is not a 'British jobs for British workers' speech, but, rather, it aims to start a discussion about how the playing field might be levelled for British workers.