Cicero's Songs

The UK Border Agency (UKBA) did not have a happy birth. It was conceived by the Labour government as a supposedly tougher response to the alleged hoards of immigrants that were a threat to the British way of life- or some such nonsense anyway. It was, in short, a political project, and like most political projects it failed to take into account a whole range of practical difficulties. These difficulties become more obvious every day, and it is now not far short of a serious disaster. The basic problem is that since the UK chooses to administer its immigration policy separately from the rest of the EU, it has to run a separate visa and entry clearance policy. Yet this has led to the stupid spectacle that any Australian who wishes to gain entry clearance to work in the UK may well have to go to Manila, in the Phili ppines, approximately 4000 miles from Sydney in order to be interviewed. Meanwhile Asian tourists are being put off by the need for a separate visa, to the point that Chines...

I have never had much time for Andrew Green - the absurd extrapolations of questionable statistics that his "Migration Watch" group publish periodically serve only to get a few scare story headlines rather than actually contributing to the debate on migration. Since Mayor Boris Johnson- a figure who increasingly impresses me- mused publicly about the idea of an amnesty for illegal immigrants, it was only a matter of time before Green would publish some swivel-eyed nonsense. The scare story headline was that "legalising" illegals would cost £4 billion. However even before we start, we find that half of this is somehow attributable to the partners and families of illegals- many of whom are actually already legal British tax payers. So even on Mw's numbers, then the cost falls by half to the still eye-popping £2 billion. Then you look at the assumptions. Essentially Migration Watch assume that those who are working would not only not pay tax, but would instead beco...

Usually I have a lot of time for the Joseph Rowntree reports, although I am a little nervous about drawing the sweeping conclusions that they have made in today's report about immigration . Although advertised as a survey of 600 individuals, in fact the attrition rate took the continuing survey down to only just over 100 individuals, and I think that the sample size is too small to really judge too much about whether Eastern European immigrants actually intend to stay long term or not. I am not too worried should it be the case that about a quarter do see a longer term future- these are those who are integrating and providing substantial skills. Meanwhile, it is interesting to see that British strawberry farmers are now very nervous that they will not get enough Central and Eastern Europeans to come for the harvest this year . I am sure that the usual suspects will come out with tirades about immigration- not differentiating those who come to the UK under the free movement of labou...

As the Conservatives and their blinkered friends in "Migration Watch" continue to pedal their warped ideas about immigration, it was interesting to get some information about British emigration overseas. In recent years we have heard a lot from the Tories about refusing to let in "non-European immigration" to the UK. Fascinating to notice that apart from Spain, most Brits chose to leave the UK and go to... Non European destinations . A good thing that the New Zealanders are not arguing "send them back" then. The fact is that emigration/immigration are subjects that are far to complicated to be debated using the language of the Daily Mail. So, by all means let us discuss the question of migration, only please, without the misrepresentations and distortions of "Migration Watch" and the Tory party.