Why IDS is right raise the link between immigration and worklessness

Before everyone gets too excited, Iain Duncan Smith is not saying in his speech today that immigration is a bad thing in itself. But he is saying that it has consequences, some of which impinge on native Brits. Many of these consequences are, as it happens, writ in the official statistics. As IDS highlights – and as Coffee House has detailed before – a good number of the jobs that sprang up during the New Labour years were accounted for by immigration; and there are signs that the process is continuing still. This is one of the reasons why the number of jobs in the economy can increase, while the dole queues barely shorten. Workers are imported, rather than nurtured.

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Clifford Beal

Bring back shortwave!

This isn’t the fault of the immigrants themselves: they are selling their skills as well they might, and to willing buyers too.