Immigration

Today’s migration statistics show a marked decline in net migration to the UK (down 34 per cent to 163,000 in the year to June 2012). Although this still leaves the Government some way off their target of reducing net migration to less than 100,000 by 2015, ministers will be pleased to be able to say that things are, in their terms, moving in the right direction. But there is a catch, and the simple maths of net migration mean that the current Government may be, wittingly or unwittingly, laying a trap for themselves, or for a future one. Net migration is the difference between immigration and emigration.  So net migration

I am afraid, dear reader, that I have misled you. Yesterday’s post on immigrants and benefit-claimants contained an inaccuracy. I repeated a claim I’d seen in the Telegraph that there are almost 14,000 Polish-born people claiming unemployment benefit in Britain. This is not the case. The true picture of Polish benefit-dependency is very different. There are, in fact, fewer than 7,000 Poles claiming the Job Seekers’ Allowance. Indeed, there are fewer than 13,000 JSA claimants from the “Accession Eight” countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Slovenia). Whatever else these eastern europeans have been doing in Britain, they’ve not been mooching off the benefits system. And it

The Sunday Express is at it again. It is outraged that Britain’s prisons contain some inmates who were not born in this country. Of course, everyone is hopping aboard the immigrant-bashing bandwagon these days. Immigration, it sometimes seems, is something to be feared, not valued. I understand the political calculation behind all this. The restrictionists have carried the day and there are few votes in seeming “soft” on immigration these days. Which is a shame. But there you have it. Nevertheless, the immigration brouhaha increasingly bears more than a passing resemblance to a moral panic. As tends to be the case, such fears are not utterly groundless but they are

MPs’ concerns about how many Bulgarian and Romanian migrants might come to this country when transitional controls are lifted aren’t going away any time soon, by the looks of things. There were six questions on the order paper from Conservative MPs about the matter at Home Office questions yesterday, for starters. But I’ve also spoken to a minister who is uneasy about the impact that the end of the controls will have on his own sector. Planning Minister Nick Boles told me: ‘Put it this way, we should have been more worried than we were about the pressure on housing and other public services from the last set of entrant

Whisper it but the government have a fighting chance of reaching their immigration target. The main risk now is an inflow from Romania and Bulgaria when our labour market is fully opened to them next January. That is why the issue of child benefit is important; if we continue to pay it to children left at home it could greatly encourage such migration. Opposition to the government’s immigration policy is now starting to dissipate. Much of it has come from special interest groups who stand to gain from unlimited immigration. Unfortunately for them, their raucous campaigns are colliding with the facts. It is hard to argue that business is suffering when there is

Reihan Salam highlights the latest pro-immigration move by Stephen Harper’s Canadian government: Canada is looking to poach Silicon Valley’s intrepid foreign up-and-comers as it launches a “first of its kind in the world” program that will grant immediate permanent residency to qualifying entrepreneurs starting April 1. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Thursday he will head down to America’s technology heartland once the program is in place to begin recruiting the “thousands of super bright young foreign nationals,” often from Asia, who are working at technology start-ups on temporary visas and may have to go home before they’ve been able to obtain their coveted U.S. Green Card. “We see the bright,

Eric Pickles says he’s waiting for figures on how many Romanians and Bulgarians are expected to come to the UK when transitional controls on their freedom of movement expire on 31 December 2013. The problem is that the Home Office isn’t producing those figures, arguing that such an estimate would be impossible. I’ve spoken to a Home Office source, who told me: ‘There are no Home Office figures in terms of a projection of the numbers because there’s not really very much point in guess work about this because it really is just guess work. Instead, our view is that we should be focusing on the factors that are bringing

Does it matter that white Britons are now a minority in three towns or cities in this country? The latest census figures suggest that whitey is outnumbered in Leicester, Luton and Slough. I assume the reason for this is that lots of Asians have colonised these places and as a consequence many of the whites have got the hell out. They have always been fairly awful places, mind, in any case – Luton in particular. Those who welcome more and more immigration usually wave their hands and say listen, change happens, and we should welcome it – for the white people in those towns it is a chance to meet

Yes, Britain’s employment figures are strong but most of the rise in employment so far under this government is accounted for by foreign-born workers (as was 99pc of the rise in employment under Labour). The recession has not diminished employers’ appetite for immigrant workers and today’s Sunday Times magazine has a long piece asking whether there is a “fundamental difference in our attitudes to work”. It’s still one of the most important questions in Britain today: what’s the use of economic growth if it doesn’t shorten British dole queues? And should we blame these industrious immigrants; aren’t the Brits just lazy? I’d urge CoffeeHousers to read the whole thing, but

It won’t actually come as a surprise to anyone living in London that the census results from the Office of National Statistics this week showed that ‘white British’ are down to 45 per cent in the capital. There are bits of the capital whose look and feel suggests that the percentage is much higher – well, the figures are from people who filled in the census forms, which isn’t quite the same thing as the actual population. Remember that cover story in The Spectator a couple of months back, based on the premise that London was practically a city-state, radically different from most other parts of the UK? Well, this