Britain must become a land of opportunity once more to attract the world’s workers
COUNTRIES receive the immigrants they deserve. A migrant has 192 countries to choose from. He or she will choose according to his own preferences and reasons. The possibility of economic betterment is the most important: nobody aspires to end up on the breadline. What forms of economic betterment are available will determine what sorts of people a country attracts.
People can preserve or increase their income in all sorts of ways – and there are corresponding countries for each option. People who already earn a high income may move to places like Switzerland and Monaco. People who don’t want to work too much, but want to enjoy substantial social and health care protection, may move to France. People who want to live in a booming, dynamic society will move to Hong Kong or Singapore. People who want to work hard, and earn a lot over a short period, may move to the Gulf States.
Who moves to Britain? As the political-economic climate changed over the last decades it is likely that the immigrants changed, too. What attracted us yesterday will have changed from what attracts people today. Of course, immigrants come for all sorts of reasons. But when the economic opportunities alter, it is more likely that certain sorts of immigrants will arrive, while others will go elsewhere.
When I came to the UK in 1994, it was a get-on-yer-bike sort of country. If you worked hard, you could make it. The state helped by staying out of the way. Unemployment was far lower than in my native Belgium. It was very easy to set up your own business. Taxes were low.
You know what came next. The Labour Party built up its client state with taxpayers’ money. Tax credits helped welfare grow to extraordinary levels. The state bloated while the private sector shrank. Stealth taxes fooled the middle classes into believing that it was business as usual. Greedy politicians funded their pet projects by mortgaging our children’s future.
At the same time, they threw the doors wide open. Millions came. What attracted this recent batch of immigrants? It’s different for every individual. Though when one sees that visas were granted to one-legged roofers, one has to wonder. Welfare and housing continued to be distributed on a last-come, first-served basis. Were we advertising a land of opportunity or an easy ride?
Today it’s even worse. The zeitgeist is to attack capitalism, high salaries and wealth. He who makes it is subjected to suspicion and hostility. Under the guise of social justice, Peter is robbed to pay Paul. What does this say to aspiring migrants – apart from “those who want to better themselves through their own efforts need not apply”? Wannabe entrepreneurs would be quite mad to move to Britain today.
There is nothing wrong with immigration. It has always existed to some extent; Churchill famously called the Anglo-Saxons “a mongrel race”. Today, the phenomenon of cross-border migration is unstoppable – indeed, trying to stop it is like King Canute commanding the waves. Think of the huge numbers of gap year students, living abroad. Look at our pensioners in France and Spain.
All you can do is try to influence the sort of people who end up on your shores. For this, our coalition government favours an immigration cap. Only those needed in the economy are to be welcomed. But this throws us back to the delusional days of the planned economy. How on earth is the state to know what sort of people the economy needs? A free market economy is about unpredictable trial and error, not a civil servant with a clipboard standing at Britain’s gate telling the hopeful: “We’ve now accepted 27 engineers. Sorry, we’re full up, we cannot accept 28.” Capping immigration this way is ludicrous. Especially as some powerful business interests will always be able to convince the government of the day that their sort of labourers are just what the economy needs. Crony capitalism will never go away, but it flourishes under conditions like these.
There is a far more satisfactory way to deal with mass immigration. The reason why there is a sudden outcry against immigration is that money is short. When the economy shrinks, the pie shrinks, and citizens are wary of having to share it with ever-more strangers. The solution lies in encouraging immigrants to help grow the economy. Hong Kong’s population increased from 600,000 to 2.2m between 1945 and 1955. And yet it coped: in 1945, its income per capita was a quarter of Britain’s. By 1997 it was equal – even though Britain had grown tremendously over that period, too.
The best way to deal with immigration is to make Britain a land of opportunity. Reduce the size of the state. Reduce taxes. Cap welfare payments. Cap housing benefit. Keep the safety net, but bin the safety hammock. Just you wait: an entirely different sort of hopefuls will once again enrich our nation.
JP Floru is the author of What the Immigrant Saw, published by Bretwalda Books £9.99.