Enough is enough when it comes to immigration, pronounced the Home Secretary, before he went off to Rwanda to try to sort out the illegal sort.
To which one can only say that it’s a bit late in the day. The measures to reduce net migration by 300,000 a year will only kick in from April, or five minutes before the election. And with 1.2 million people a year entering the country (745,000 net in 2022), it’s not quite the Taking Back Control that Brexiteers promised in 2016. It’s good as far as it goes — it was mad that employers could undercut wages by paying immigrant workers 20 per cent less than locals — but it still allows for more than the population of Tower Hamlets to enter the UK every six months.
Granted, many are students, but of these over a third stay on to work, which is fine if they’re Imperial College boffins or skilled artisans; not all are. Granted too, many came from Ukraine on account of the war. It’s still too many.
Our talk about immigration doesn’t need to be loaded, but it should be an audit of long term costs as well as benefits
Is it necessary to say that immigration is in general a very good thing? Let me say it anyway. The right numbers of the right people can bolster the economy and enrich the nation. Arrivals from Poland did wonders for services in the 1990s; I bet those from Hong Kong will be transformative. As for ballet dancers and opera singers, it’s fair to say we couldn’t do without Carlos Acosta.
But it’s another matter to import relatively unskilled workers like those in social care. Last year, 173,000 dependents of care workers came with them, and employers are complaining that if they can’t continue to do so, they won’t come. They shouldn’t need to import people for care homes; the sector is unhealthily reliant on cheap labour.
The underlying problem is that although immigrants may benefit some employers in some sectors, they naturally and inevitably have costs. Being human, they are going to get old in turn; they too will need care when they’re incapable. They obviously need somewhere to live, like the rest of us, putting a greater burden on housing stock that’s already strained. Their children need schools; that has to be taxpayer funded.
One example of the cost of immigration is the amount spent on translation services in the NHS, about £40 million in 2021-22. Our talk about immigration doesn’t need to be loaded, but it should be an audit of long term costs as well as benefits. Right now it isn’t.
Net migration is about four times the level it was three years ago; it’s just not sustainable. And it’s all happened under a Tory government, the one which aspired to reduce numbers to tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands. It hasn’t happened, has it? Enough is indeed enough. The Tories will pay the bill, come the election.
