Putting Immigration to Bed

With David Cameron continuing to beat a hyped up UKIP tempo on the immigration drum this week it was refreshing to see Nathalie Bennett coming out to question the Prime Minister and his political doppelgängers in the purple & yellow.

"This is a speech addressing non-existent problems - the government has not been able to produce evidence of systemic 'benefits tourism' or 'health tourism"

The Green Party position on immigration is one which I share: that many of the worries surrounding the issue are caused by government failure to address societal needs - the blame for these failings is then apportioned to the catch-all political scapegoat which is immigration. It taps into a latent instinct of suspicion and a wariness of the unfamiliar and allows staggering injustices to hide in plane site while Cameron et al continue to work flat out to direct our ire onto those around us; most of whom may well be facing the very same struggles. It is a lazy excuse to cover years of neglectful policies courtesy of successive neoliberal governments. A brief look at some of the typical immigration complaints bears this out:


Housing
There simply has not been anywhere near enough housing built for over 25 years; this, paired with an idealogical drive to transfer existing council housing stock into the private sector, has resulted in a disgraceful shortfall in available housing. This shortfall has not been addressed by successive governments and has resulted in swathes of council housing stock falling into the hands of private landlords - many of whom proceed to rent the properties back to council tenants; and so public money is transferred into private pockets. A nationwide scheme of house building would alleviate these tensions, provide affordable housing, create jobs & boost the economy. It's hard to see the downside - unless of course you're a party using social tension to deflect political discussion & criticism away from your own failings.

Jobs
It is a line which has become synonymous with the current political Zeitgeist 'coming over here and taking our jobs' and while it is of course true that every job which goes to a non UK national is one which cannot go to a UK born citizen this, as always, does not paint the complete picture. The fact is that without immigration the country truly would be in dire straights; 26% of NHS doctors are non-British and 11% of NHS workers as a whole. Much of the home grown British fruit & vegetables sold in our supermarkets are picked by immigrants, work which some UK job seekers deem beneath them; just this week Next admitted a need to advertise for warehouse jobs in Poland to supplement the 500 Brits they have hired for festive work.

Just 1 in 40 jobs created since the recession has been full time, the rest being part time and zero hours contracts; this against a back drop of unprecedented government cuts to swathes of the public sector: 5,000 firefighters, close to 6,000 nurses, 15,000 police staff to name a few - the private sector has not picked up the slack. Not surprisingly massive austerity and cuts to public spending have not created an environment where widespread, meaningful employment is available.

Benefit Tourism
Polish immigrants living in the UK are 20 percent more likely to have a job than those born in the UK according to the latest UK census; indeed 73% of EU born nationals in the UK are in employment, this compared to 69% of Brits. The net result being that immigration contributes billions more to the economy in taxes than it costs in welfare; money which could, and should, be spent on improving public services to cope with the added demand. The upshot of immigration, money in the public coffers, is conveniently ignored by the political establishment who much prefer to stoke the fires of discontent.


All of this got me to romanticising about a non-Tory government putting the issue to bed. Could they choose an area, afflicted by these tensions, and embark upon a first class house building programme while fostering a burgeoning clean energy market as has been undertaken in Germany. A focus on proper recycling and waste disposal could create jobs in the community and local farming could be encouraged to grow organic and sell to local businesses; keeping commerce local and cultivating a connection with food and how it is produced.

This may sound like pie in the sky but it simply isn't; a government project like this in an area such as Romford & Strood could serve as a microcosm for nationwide policy, it could expose the huge lie that is the immigration debate and blow a hole in Tory & UKIP's politics of hate thy neighbour. It could show us that policies of hope and aspiration serve us better than those which denigrate others for the failings of the state & the 'free market'.

We need something radical; should the electorate opt for anti Tory, anti UKIP & anti austerity then neoliberal-lite is not going to cut it. Renationalising the railways and rolling back Tory NHS privatisation may serve as a start but what's needed is a top down reorganisation of British society.