Brooks Becoming British

UK Citizenship Examined
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-78590-015-0
Verlag: Biteback Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 304 Seiten

From Syrian asylum seekers to super-rich foreign investors, immigration is one of the most controversial issues facing Britain today. Politicians kick the subject from one election to the next with energetic but ineffectual promises to 'crack down', while newspaper editors plaster it across front pages. But few know the truth behind the headlines; indeed, the almost daily changes to our complex immigration laws pile up so quickly that even the officials in charge struggle to keep up. In this clear, concise guide, Thom Brooks, one of the UK's leading experts on British citizenship - and a newly initiated British citizen himself - deftly navigates the perennially thorny path, exploding myths and exposing absurdities along the way. Ranging from how to test for 'Britishness' to how to tackle EU 'free movement', Becoming British explores how UK immigration really works - and sparks a long-overdue debate about how it should work. Combining expert analysis with a blistering critique of the failings of successive governments, this is the definitive guide to one of the most hotly disputed issues in the UK today. Wherever you stand on the immigration debate, Brooks's wryly observed account is the essential road map.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Brooks, Thom

Leseproben

CHAPTER 1

IMMIGRATION RISING

It was like any other spring day in Rochdale. But a general election was on the horizon that morning in 2010, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown had come to Rochdale to speak to voters and help promote local Labour Party candidate Simon Danczuk. It was an ordinary day that became extraordinary for a chance encounter with a local grandmother named Gillian Duffy.

Gillian was selected by one of Brown’s aides to speak with the Prime Minister. The aim of his campaign team was to show Brown engaging with local citizens and win positive coverage in the media. But that’s not how things turned out. In front of the cameras, Gillian voiced her concerns about the economy, but it was what she said about immigrants – and how Brown reacted to what she told him – that made the headlines.

Gillian briefly mentioned her worry that immigration was too high. Brown replied by changing the subject of their conversation. He reminded her that the three big issues she had raised with him – education, the NHS and helping people – were his priorities, too. They parted with a handshake and a smile, but the laughs were soon over.

Brown hadn’t removed a microphone used for the cameras when he spoke with Gillian. Oops. As his chauffeur drove him away, taking him off camera, Brown’s voice remained audible and every word was recorded. ‘That was a disaster,’ Brown says, before criticising his aide for choosing Gillian. ‘She’s just a sort of bigoted woman.’ For many people, these seven words neatly summed up the problem: political elites were taking too little notice of important issues like immigration. To raise a worry was to be branded bigoted and racist.

Brown had his words played back to him soon afterwards during an interview with the radio host Jeremy Vine and was understandably quick to apologise for his comments. He promptly went back to Rochdale to apologise in person to Gillian – and to make clear that he understood her concerns about immigration. I’m sure he did after that second meeting. But the damage was done.

This was more than an interview that went badly wrong. It touched a nerve. The public had concerns about immigration that they dared not express for fear they would become demonised. Voice worries about immigration and others may wrongly suspect it is based on mere prejudice. Should anyone want to discuss this with their elected leaders, the conversation would be moved on to some other issue. Better to bury any talk of immigration concerns and avoid awkward moments than discuss the worries on people’s minds. Or so it went in 2010. Not much has changed since.

* * *

A year before sweeping to power as Britain’s first and, to date, only female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher said something that still resonates with many people:

If we went on as we are then, by the end of the century, there would be four million people of the new Commonwealth or Pakistan here. Now, that is an awful lot and I think it means that people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture.

Swamped. Floods. Tsunami. Besieged. Marauding. And worse – you get the idea. It’s raining immigrants. A shower without end. This is the alarmist language that is used regularly to describe immigration. People who come to live in Britain are not seen as neighbours or potential citizens, but like hordes of locusts that are not merely different but dangerous, which must be curbed before they destroy everything in their path. Immigration is not an opportunity, but a threat – and it must be stopped.

In 2004, one in eleven people normally resident in the UK were born abroad. Only ten years later this had risen to one in eight. Over a quarter of all births in 2014 were to mothers born outside the country. The most common non-British countries of birth for UK residents are Poland, Pakistan and India. Between 2001 and 2011, migration accounted for 56 per cent of the population change in England and Wales. Britain has a population of about 64 million – and five million were born abroad. These are important demographic changes that some understandably find to be increasingly a problem.

It comes as no surprise that immigration is the number one issue of concern for voters today, overtaking the NHS and the economy. A recent poll run jointly by The Economist and Ipsos MORI concluded that ‘we have never seen concern about immigration this high’, and it shows no signs of letting up. Pensioners and the skilled working class are most strongly concerned, but far from alone. Worries about immigration outstrip concerns about schools, housing and terrorism combined. What the public want – or say they want – is less of it. Much less of it. And they don’t have much faith in politicians to deliver, either.

It’s not difficult to uncover statistics that fuel deep concerns about immigration by the public. The problem is knowing which numbers to count – and this is where the government is getting itself into trouble.

The government has responded to public fears over immigration by playing the numbers game, committing itself to reducing net migration to fewer than 100,000 people annually. Despite their best efforts, they are achieving the opposite result. Rather than falling, net migration has risen to 323,000 – only slightly off the record high of 336,000 reached in the year up to June 2015. The 100,000 target has more recently been downgraded to an ‘aspiration’, but it remains a goal despite the government’s inability to come close to it. I have spoken to several former ministers – including former Home Secretaries like Charles Clarke and Jacqui Smith – and have not met anyone who thinks a net migration cap is a satisfactory policy.

Net migration is a crude way to measure people leaving or coming to live in Britain, bringing together different things. Net migration is about outflows and inflows without regard to their composition. We count the total number of people leaving the country and contrast it with the total number coming in. Net migration is calculated by subtracting the roughly 294,000 people who left the country from the circa 617,000 who entered it. Together this gives us a net migration total of 323,000. That’s roughly the population of Coventry in one year.

The numbers certainly sound like a lot – although it amounts to about half of 1 per cent of the total UK population of 64 million people. But the story of net migration is about more than the numbers of people who come to Britain – it’s also about those who leave. In fact, it might surprise a lot of people to know that when it comes to immigrating, Britain does it best. A recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found Britain has a greater proportion of its citizens living abroad than any other European country. If high numbers of people leave each year, this can bring down net migration overall. British citizens leaving the country to work elsewhere may help the government get closer to its 100,000 net migration target.

The big problem for the government is that fewer people are choosing to leave the UK as its economy slowly improves. According to the Office for National Statistics, this slowdown is to blame for high net migration today. About 87,000 British citizens returned to the UK last year. Roughly half came for work-related reasons. Nearly 10 per cent came back for formal study. Net migration might appear to be a measure of non-British migrants, but it includes British citizens too, a fact which is rarely noticed. If you’re looking to assess the numbers of non-UK citizens, net migration isn’t it.

As one former immigration minister told me, net migration is not a target: ‘It’s a nonsense.’ Net migration figures can vary sharply not only in the numbers that come to the UK, but in the numbers that leave – whoever they might be. Net migration takes no notice of nationality. Each person counts the same whether from Britain, Europe or North Korea. Nor does it matter whether people have come to the UK for work, study or an extended visit.

Consider a few examples that show why net migration targets don’t work. If 300,000 people enter the UK, the government has failed its target – even if every one of them is a British citizen. Should 250,000 people want to leave the UK to find work and pay their taxes elsewhere, this would then satisfy the target and it would not matter whether everyone who left was British, French or Chinese. While you could have a target for managing immigrants coming to the UK, a net migration ‘target’ makes little sense when it can be met or missed almost entirely by chance. And it takes no notice of the potential harm to the economy or our society, either.

Michael Howard demonstrated this point when he was leading the Conservative Party during the 2005 election against Tony Blair. Howard stood by manifesto pledges to reduce immigration and to ensure cleaner hospitals, among other policies. But the obvious question, which caused enormous damage to his campaign, was simple: who is going to keep our hospitals clean if migrants are kept out?

Cutting migration has consequences. The Migration Advisory Committee is an independent group of five economists who advise the government. They found that one way to reduce net migration would be to set a salary threshold of £18,600 for anyone wanting to sponsor a family member coming to the UK who was not a European citizen. But the consequences are that these income hurdles can create new problems by hitting hardest people working...