The Spectator’s Notes | 29 January 2005

Immigration is an issue like new housing in the Green Belt — governments have to permit it and they have to try to restrict it. This is because the interest of those already present — the indigenous population, the nimby houseowner — is damaged by the arrival of many more people and yet, at the same time, it is also helped. People may say that they want a ban on immigration, but if that happened, they would quickly discover that they could not find enough building workers, waiters, cleaners, plumbers to satisfy their wants. The government is probably right to say that the immigration it has recently permitted from Eastern Europe has not caused great outrage, because people can see that the workers who come do things that need doing and do not appear, for the most part, to be importing religious or cultural problems with them. But Michael Howard is right that the loss of control of immigration is very alarming, particularly through the asylum system, which has become an organised and expensive dishonesty.