Fact
For the year to September 2011, approximately 10k migrants entered the UK on a general skilled migrant visa, versus a cap of 21k on general skilled migrants per annum. That is, not all the potential skilled migrant visas were issued.
Note that this 10k of migrants doesn’t include any of the following:
1) Non-skilled migrants, for example New Zealanders who temporarily migrate to the UK under the latest iteration of the Working Holiday visa
2) Intra EU migration, so migrants from countries which have recently joined the EU,
3) Migrants who have moved to the UK under family reunification schemes to join family members who have already settled here, and
4) Migrants who have moved to the UK under Intra Company Transfer schemes. Ie, you join BHP Billiton in their Sydney office, and then BHP Billiton transfer you to their London office.
Perception
Even bearing all of the caveats above, the fact that not all the potential skilled migrant visas were issued is surprising in light of the general UK sentiment toward migrants. If you rely on the red tops for your news (and a lot of people do), there is a flood of migration – both legal and illegal - which is “stealing British jobs from British people”. To quote the immortal South Park episode on migration: “They took our jobs!”
Sigh. It shouldn’t to be this way, and seems like a classic bait and switch. Decimate the UK manufacturing sector, concentrate returns in London financial services, and then blame Johnny (or more likely Ahmed) Foreigner.
I am mildly addicted to the TV show UK Border Patrol, which shows both the lengths illegal migrants will go to in order to enter the UK and the crappy jobs they are willing to endure once they get to the UK. For example, men leave skilled jobs in Afghanistan to work in car washes in the UK earning a measly few quid an hour.
Yes, I know that this happens in New Zealand as well (for example the doctor from Somalia who stacked Woolworths shelves alongside Marie many many moons ago), but I would like to think that in New Zealand these migrants are able to work legally, so get a smattering of protections such as minimum wage.
Yes, part of the reason NZ doesn’t have UK levels of illegal migration is that it is an isolated island, so it is easier to physically seal the borders.
Even bearing these points in mind, I would still like to think that New Zealand is more humane toward migrants than the UK. The level of fury toward migrants over here is ugly to behold, and so many of the half truths which get trotted out are blatantly untrue. Just taking the ‘burden of migrants on the state’ argument:
Rather than being a burden to the state, (economic) migrants offer a net benefit to the state. People are heavier users of state services either when very young or very old. If you are of working age you are subsidising children and retirees – this is the implicit basis of the state social contract, so is a very good thing – so an influx of economic migrants of working age will subsidise indigenous children and retirees. Yes, this point does get a little diluted when migrants either bring family members with them or settle and produce a family, but I think my basic point stands.
Sure, non-economic migrants such as refugees may be a burden to the state. You can bring moral arguments into play for refugees, so a compassionate state should be obligated to accept asylum seekers as it would be immoral not to accept them. And to be flippant, if you don’t accept refugees then you miss out on throngs of new and exciting restaurants. The strip of Vietnamese Restaurants near my place grew from the Vietnamese community centre in Englefield Road, which in turn grew out of the waves of boat people migration from the Mekong Delta in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Turning to the “They took our jobs!” argument, which also manifests itself as “British jobs for British people”**:
One of my reasons for rejecting this (a reason I acknowledge is intellectually lazy, as racists do on occasion make valid arguments) is the calibre of people who make this argument. When various forms of this argument pop up in the election manifestos of racist and fascist parties such as BNP and UKIP, my gut response is to stop listening.
Re unskilled labour, the jobs which unskilled migrants take are often overlooked by indigenous workers as they are unpleasant. So if an unskilled British labourer doesn’t want to pick strawberries because the work is arduous, why is it a bad thing if a migrant worker fills this role, thus enabling British consumers to purchase cheap strawberries.
Re skilled labour, there are very few cases where indigenous skilled workers will be replaced by migrant skilled workers. If you have a skill which is in demand, you should be able to get work without getting displaced by a migrant worker, as the demand for skilled labour should rise in response to an increased supply of skilled labour. I can’t back up my argument here, other than some waffle about inelastic supply curves.
An issue arises when a company moves offshore, for example outsourcing a factory from Britain to India to take advantage of cheaper labour costs. Here, the closed factory will result in a large number of indigenous skilled workers becoming unemployed, and holding skills for which there may be no demand. And if you have a skill for which there is no demand, you suddenly have to look for unskilled work which is horribly depressing after a skilled career. But in this situation crying “They took our jobs!” doesn’t really apply, and “They outsourced my job to a location to which I was not willing to move for a wage I was not willing to accept!” isn’t quite as punchy a slogan.
As an aside, under Tory lizard scum proposals skilled migrants may lose the right to settle in the UK if they don’t earn enough(!).
Money quote from a think tank at the link above:
"Ministers accept that our economy needs skilled migrants to come and work at levels below £35,000 a year, but have decided that even if they work hard, pay their taxes, and play by the rules, they will be forced to go home after five years."
The more the UK tightens the strings on migration, the greater the imperative for me to have (hypothetical) progeny in the UK, to give them dual UK / NZ citizenship. Said progeny would automatically get a UK passport if born here, as I have a UK passport. I couldn’t pass down my passport if they were born in NZ, as I was born in NZ and only get my UK passport because Dad was born here.
**This begs the question: what is British? This in turn opens the can of worms of ethnicity versus nationality, which reared its partially evolved head in NZ with the recent brouhaha of people wanting to fill in the census ethnicity box as ‘New Zealander’ due to some objection to ticking ‘New Zealand Pakeha’. Never mind that within NZ ‘New Zealander’ is completely meaningless as an ethnicity, as in this location this will be your nationality. It is only outside NZ that you can label your ethnicity as ‘New Zealander’.
For me, I hold British and NZ nationalities, but I don’t feel my ethnicity to be ‘British White’. Rather, my ethnicity switches depending on who is asking, from ‘White Other’ on UK forms to ‘New Zealand Pakeha’ on NZ forms. Indeed, this switch will be inevitable as the respective data gatherers (UK / NZ censuses) will have different criteria as to what the most relevant ethnicities are for their purposes. Imagine the relevance of a NZ form offering ‘British Caribbean’ as an ethnicity, and you get an idea of why different data gatherers must present different ethnicity options.
