Don’t blame the immigrants!

  Immigration hit the headlines this week with the publication of a House of Lords report into the effects of immigration on the British economy.

The Lords report concluded the following:

• There is little or no economic benefit to Britain from the present high level of immigration as immigrants are not needed to fill labour shortage.
• Millions of Britons could be priced out of the housing market over the next 20 years by rising levels of immigration
• Government statistics on immigration are “seriously inadequate” causing inadequate levels of public funding.
• The low-paid, some ethnic minorities and young people seeking to get on the jobs ladder may suffer because of competition from immigrants.
• Some schools struggling to cope with the increasing number of children who do not speak English as a first language.

But who is at fault is it? Imagine being a plumber in Poland and you see an advert offering you work in another EU state for more money. My guess is it’s only natural to take up any offer of work. But this isn’t the fault of the Polish plumber so is it the fault of the UK business offering the work?

As the head of a UK construction company your firm is finding indigenous qualified trades people hard to come by at the rate you want to pay. Existing UK plumbers are scare and therefore are in demand and charge accordingly. You don’t want to pay these higher rates and so look elsewhere and find out there’s numerous Polish plumbers willing to do the work for less and so you bring them over.

So the effect is Polish plumber’s are taking away UK jobs because UK firms encourage them over. And at the same time they are accepting lower wages which has the knock-on effect of driving wages down. So the Lords report is correct in identifying a correlation but is wrong to see immigration as the cause, it’s far too reductionist. Because without these tradesmen, UK firms couldn’t build anything and this in itself would threaten UK employment and wages. So who do we blame?

The Government maybe? Prior to Thatcherism, it was mandatory for all firms over a certain size to employ apprentices and have bona-fide apprenticeship schemes in place in order to make certain a fresh supply of qualified labour filtered through the system. Mrs Thatcher removed that obligation in the 1980s and many trade unionists at the time warned of the dangerous repercussions which could follow. So it’s Thatcher’s fault then?

Well no, as Labour have been in power for 10 years they could have helped alleviate a sizable portion of the problem back in 1997 by reintroducing ‘real’ apprenticeships rather than these current phoney schemes. Yet even if they had done it back then they wouldn’t have had enough time to make up for the damaged caused by Thatcher. By doing so they would have helped train thousands of young people into being plumbers, electricians, engineers and ready to meet the demands of our booming economy and made us less reliant on imported labour.

In addition it’s important to recognise how trade unions have over the years improved wages and conditions for UK workers. Immigrants, for a whole raft of cultural and economic reasons might be prepared to work for a few pounds an hour in horrendous conditions. Quite rightly indigenous workers won’t and aren’t willing to compete in the fight for sweat-shop wages. Therefore the report fails to address the role of UK companies when making its conclusions.

UK businesses are effectively exploiting immigrant labour in order to boost profitability. If all UK firms paid higher wages there would fewer jobs for migrants as UK workers would be filling the vacancies. However businesses leaders would argue that in a global economy margins are getting tighter and they have to compete with Asian markets where wage controls are virtually non-existent. But this argument fails to stand-up as the bosses of UK companies manage to resource their high salaries in a global market.

Notwithstanding the role of businesses in, the Government has undoubtedly misjudged things.  Where our present government have failed is in addressing the social impact caused by the massive influx of migrant labour, on areas such as housing and education. Schools in some areas are struggling to deal with the complex strains caused by the substantive increase of foreign nationals. In the same way police forces have to fund translators simply so they can stay within the law when arresting someone. And all these migrants need housing, but to argue, like the report does that immigration has caused the housing boom is a red herring. There’s a wealth of reasons for the recent boom, the most significant one being greed not immigrants.

There is a serious issue regarding immigration that needs to be addressed. But we if we’re going to blame someone then let’s make certain we blame the right people otherwise we’ll simply fuel prejudice and make scapegoats in the same way we have with black people since their arrival in the 1950s.