There is an interesting article on The Spectator today by Professor Paul Collier of Oxford University, discussing immigration, and making some important points showing it is not entirely true to claim the economy needs mass immigration. He argues:
Inchoately, many people sense that ever-rising population would threaten our environment, while ever-rising diversity would threaten our cohesion. Trotting out exaggerated claims of the economic benefits of immigration talks past these concerns. In doing so, it plays into the corrosive populist idea that political elites are disconnected from reality.
He argues that immigrants, over their whole lives, will receive more from the state than they pay in taxes, unless they earn above-average incomes, and consequently a snapshot taken early in their working lives, when they are not receiving pensions and other expensive forms of care, does not show that such people will, over their whole lives, “contribute”.
I’m not sure every single point made there can be welcomed by all: the writer says “it would help if ‘English’ ceased to be an ethnic identifier and became the accepted identity of everyone reared in England”, but then, in that case, what would I be? If ‘English’ were defined in that way in a multicultural society, it would empty it of any ethnic or cultural meaning. So what word would be used to signify those whose identity were based on the cultural traditions of England?
The writer argues for staying in the EU and wielding a veto, oblivious to the fact that qualified majority voting exists in most areas.
In any case, I welcome the piece as an example of the fact that, even within the Establishment, there is an awareness that claims the economy would collapse without immigration are not intellectually coherent, and are simply insufficient to meet UKIP concerns on this issue.
We need a higher quality debate on this subject. So far, most participants in the debate are quite resistant to an elevation of the discourse.
