At last, a sensible immigration plan – and it comes from Boris
It is not often that I agree with Boris Johnson.
But when the frontrunner to be the next Prime Minister announced his immigration proposals yesterday, for the first time in this leadership race I found myself on Team Boris.
In a digital hustings, Boris revived an idea that he had trumpeted during the Vote Leave campaign: an Australian-style points-based system, whereby applicants – wherever they are from – are awarded “points” based on a range of criteria, from education levels to language skills to potential job offers, which can add up to a visa.
In defence of this system, Boris argued: “We must be much more open to high-skilled immigration such as scientists, but we must also assure the public that, as we leave the EU, we have control over the number of unskilled immigrants coming into the country.”
He’s absolutely right.
Immigration is hugely beneficial to the UK economy. Despite the misguided narrative repeated in some quarters that migrants leach off the state, most foreigners come to the UK to study or work, often filling jobs that British nationals are either unwilling or unable to do. They are primarily adults of working age, who help offset the demographic challenges of an ageing population.
Their impact obviously varies based on age and other factors, but Oxford Economics estimates that EU nationals in the UK contribute £2,300 more to public finances each year than the average Brit, and pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits.
And yet for all that, we know that migration was a headline concern in the 2016 referendum. In an Ipsos Mori survey just before the vote, it polled above the economy as the most important issue, and further studies have shown it to be the joint top reason that people voted Leave, along with sovereignty.
Despite the vast benefits that immigrants, particularly from the EU, offer the UK, that message was drowned out by the cacophony of voices lamenting Britain’s loss of control over its borders as a result of free movement.
When Theresa May stepped up as the first post-referendum Prime Minister, she made listening to this immigration-sceptic chorus her priority. But she did so in the bluntest and most blinkered way imaginable: by fixating on the arbitrary target set by David Cameron to bring net migration down to under 100,000 a year.
This blanket cap has led to Home Office policies that range from the counter-productive to the inhumane.
We’ve seen families ripped apart on the basis of unfairly high income thresholds, applications rejected due to trivial or bureaucratic errors, even people wrongfully deported in a bid to get numbers down at all costs.
And on the economic side, people with desperately needed skills, from NHS doctors to star coders, have been barred from bringing their expertise and energy to Britain.
Whoever becomes Prime Minister, May’s draconian and tone-deaf reign of immigration terror will thankfully be over. And rightly so – because the public was never as unhealthily obsessed with the raw numbers as their misguided Prime Minister.
Even people who voted for Brexit have a much more nuanced view of immigration than May ever acknowledged. A September 2017 British Futures survey found that a staggering 82 per cent of Leave voters wanted high-skilled immigration – from the EU and beyond – to remain the same or increase after Brexit. Significant majorities felt the same way about low-skilled migrants filling certain key jobs, like fruit pickers or care workers.
It’s clear, then, that migration anxiety was not due to numbers, but to a sense that Britain had lost control.
A points framework might be practically challenging to set up at first, and business groups have raised valid concerns about the inevitable bureaucracy, but once implemented, it would demonstrate that the government was back in control and that the system was fair, allowing Britain to welcome the people it needs.
That is, after all, how it works in Australia. For all that our antipodean cousins are heralded for their strict rules, Australia takes around three times more migrants per capita than the UK does. Australians have full control of their borders, and that gives them the confidence to let in far more people than we do.
Boris may be sketchy on the details of his Brexit plan, but throughout his career his attitude has always been outward-looking and globalist. He is also a stellar salesman.
If there’s one politician who could open Britain’s doors while alleviating public concerns with a robust points system, it’s him.
And for that, he should be commended.