Migration Watch UK: News

Tightening immigration benefits all legitimate students

By Matthew Pollard
Executive Director, Migration Watch UK
Politics, London, 25 February, 2011

Universities should show more interest in the UK graduates they're sending to the dole queue, rather than foreign applicants.

The government will soon announce measures to reform the student immigration system. Meanwhile, their consultation exercise has been greeted with howls of outrage from the universities along with doomsday claims about billions of pounds of income under threat. Given that students accounted for over half million entrants to the UK last year (including student visitors) it is only to be expected that the government would wish to examine the route very carefully. However, contrary to claims on the Left Foot Forward blog, no cap on numbers is proposed as with economic migration. Nor are the measures likely to have much impact on the universities. ……

To read the full article click here.

House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee

Oral Evidence from Migration Watch UK : Students

See Briefing Paper No 2.11 for the full text.

Immigration Under Labour – Chaos or Conspiracy?

Figures due out on Thursday will, for the first time, officially confirm that net foreign immigration under Labour exceeded three million.

This is the context for a detailed indictment of the Labour Government’s record on immigration published today in Briefing Paper No 11.24. It forensically examines one of the most significant and far reaching changes ever imposed on the fabric of Britain - despite the wishes of the vast majority of its citizens.

The document, ‘Immigration – Labour’s enduring legacy to Britain’ - from think-tank Migration Watch, has brought together the principal facts and figures resulting from the largest wave of immigration for nearly a thousand years.

Migration Watch was one of the few voices consistently raised in opposition to mass immigration during the Blair and Brown years and was regularly vilified by Labour politicians and the immigration lobby.

Now we find that, as the Labour supporting Institute of Public Policy Research recently put it; “It is no exaggeration to say that immigration under New Labour has changed the face of the country.”

‘We would agree, the sheer scale of what has occurred is changing Britain fundamentally and irrevocably and in ways the majority of the population did not ask for, were not consulted about and did not wish to see,’ said Migration Watch chairman, Sir Andrew Green. ‘Urgent action is needed to place firm limits on any further immigration’

The report shows that in the years before Blair’s government net immigration was running at around 50,000 a year, but in 1997 the floodgates were opened and numbers quadrupled with the result that over three million migrants came to Britain and stayed here plus, perhaps, a further one million who came and stayed illegally. At the same time nearly a million British citizens left the country.

This is in sharp contrast to Labour’s 1997 election manifesto which declared that “Every country must have firm control over immigration and Britain is no exception.”

‘This has been a clear failure of democracy due in large part to the left’s deliberate tactic of stifling reasoned debate with accusations of racism,’ said Sir Andrew, ‘ In the years to come immigration will be seen as Labour’s great betrayal.’

He added that the raw statistics were difficult to envisage.

‘But when you consider that three million extra people on this island equates to the creation of three cities the size of Birmingham, seven the size of Manchester or 20 the size of Harrogate with all that that means for the pressure on our roads, railways, housing, infrastructure, the environment, schools, hospitals and the general quality of life it gives some idea of the scale of what Labour has bequeathed to us all.’

Some of the key headlines from the report are:

• nearly a migrant a minute now arrives in Britain
• Of the 3.2 million immigrants who have come to the UK some 80% came from outside the EU.
• the UK population is heading for 70 million in twenty years time, 68% of the increase will be due to immigration
• since 1997 75% of the extra jobs created went to foreign born workers
• over one third of new households will be a result of immigration, requiring 330 new homes every working day for the next 23 years
• waiting lists for social housing in England have risen by 70% since 2001
• children born to a foreign mother almost doubled to 25%
• an extra 500,000 children arrived in our primary schools; a similar number do not have English as their first language
• the number of migrants has increased under Labour’s new Points Based System.  In 2009, economic migration fell by 27,000, helped by a major recession, but students increased by 43,000.
• Research by one of the country’s leading demographers has concluded that if immigration continues at its present level the ‘white British’ may become a minority in the UK by the late 2060s.

Said Sir Andrew: ‘Immigration on a sensible scale has clear benefits but only if it is both properly controlled and limited in scale. It is still not entirely clear whether the outcome of the Labour years was a result of gross incompetence or some politically motivated desire to change the whole nature of our society. Policy might also have been influenced by the fact that many immigrants become Labour voters.

‘The present government will have to stick to their guns if they are to clear up the shambles they inherited and get a grip of developments that could otherwise fundamentally change the whole nature of our society.

Note to Editors:

1 Mr Blair’s 690 page memoir has only one substantive page on immigration in which he describes his strategy for handling it at the 2005 election:  “Because our position was sophisticated enough – a sort of ‘confess and avoid’, as the lawyers say – we won out.” (page 524).

2 The IPPR quote is from “Immigration under Labour”, November 2010, page 4.

Bogus Student Clampdown 'Economically and Morally Justified'

The Government’s planned clampdown on the long running issue of bogus students is both economically justified and entirely fair, says a new report from think-tank Migrationwatch, issued as the government’s consultation period ends on 31 January.

The proposals are designed primarily to stop the widespread abuse by people coming to Britain under the pretence of study and using it as a means of entry that might otherwise be denied them.

In its submission to the consultation process on the proposals Migrationwatch has calculated that while it is likely to lead to a loss of some £95m a year fee income to colleges offering below degree level courses this has to considered alongside the £300m - £500m a year that it has estimated the taxpayer must fund to support British workers made unemployed by bogus students working illegally.

‘This is yet another legacy of the previous Government’s disastrous management of the immigration system which has once again left the taxpayer picking up the bill,’ said Migrationwatch chairman, Sir Andrew Green. ‘It is imperative firm action is taken to rectify the situation.’

‘It is neither economically justifiable for the hard pressed taxpayer nor fair to British workers who have to compete for scarce jobs with people who have cheated the system to come here.

‘The Government is right to take this firm action and in our view their proposals strike the right balance between the need to stamp out abuse while protecting and encouraging those who come here to genuinely study – which are the majority,’ he said.

Sir Andrew said it was important to be clear that the purpose of the government’s measures is not to reduce the number of students but to reduce the exploitation of the present system by bogus students. 

In the normal course of events, students should leave after completing their courses to be replaced by others. Over time, therefore, the number of those who arrive will be counter balanced by those leaving with no effect on net migration. There are two exceptions to this.  A step change in the number of students will produce a step change in net migration, perhaps tapering off over several years. Also, a proportion of students - 20% in a recent Home Office study will switch to marriage or work thus adding to net migration.  Bogus students, however, can displace British workers who would be obliged to live on benefits at very substantial cost to the taxpayer.

He said the government’s proposals were not likely to have much effect on universities. They are primarily aimed at courses below degree level and in private colleges where most of the abuse is believed to take place. In future, only Highly Trusted Sponsors (HTS) will be allowed to offer courses below degree level to adults. There are also measures to ensure that everyone coming to study speaks English to the necessary level and to close the Post-Study Work route so that foreign graduates will no longer be able to stay on for two years to look for work. With new graduate unemployment now at 20%, the latter measure is fully justified.

Said Sir Andrew: ‘The number of foreign students has rocketed since the new Points Based System was introduced. It is therefore vital that the government close off avenues known to be subject to abuse. These measures, which should have been in place years ago, are an important step in the right direction.’

The Impact of the Points Based System

Summary

Briefing Paper No 3.13 looks at the effect of introducing the Points Based System (PBS) on immigration control. It finds that the PBS is an ineffective instrument for the task. The PBS gives primacy to “objective criteria” for the issue of a visa rather than immigration control objectives. Student numbers grew rapidly by 100,000 in the first year while, despite the worst recession in a generation, work permits have only fallen by 27,000 or 30%.

To see the full document go to the Briefing Paper.

The comment that wasn't free

Posted on Migration Watch UK web site on 12 January, 2011

An article attacking our paper on bogus students appeared in the Guardian on 9/01/11. The response below was offered to the paper but they declined to publish.

Bogus foreign students, and indeed bogus colleges in Britain, are a serious problem - not withstanding the IPPR attempts to quibble with our description of some of the costs. Bogus colleges damage the reputation of British higher education - its key selling point. And bogus students cost the tax payer hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

To take the quibbles first. The IPPR suggested that the data are uncertain, that we exaggerated the numbers and that we relied on the lump of Labour fallacy. In dealing with illegal behaviour it is surely obvious that the data will be weak - that is why we presented our results as a broad range from just over £300 million to just under £500 million a year. Secondly, our paper specifically states that the number of jobs in an economy is not fixed but at times of high unemployment illegal immigrants, by working illegally take jobs that otherwise might well be available for a British worker who remains unemployed.

The broader position is that we are admitting nearly half a million students, student visitors and their dependants to Britain every year. The previous system of interviewing has effectively been abolished and there are still no checks on foreigners departing the UK.

In our view, the new "Tier 4" system is fundamentally unsound as a means of ensuring that only genuine students are admitted to the UK. The key question is whether the applicant intends to return home. However, there is now very little effort made to ascertain this. Whatever the limitations of interviews, they were a significant deterrent to bogus applicants. The Immigration Officer was able to assess the standard of English as well as the coherence and plausibility of the applicant. Now there is little to be lost in submitting a speculative application. It is surely significant that, in the year after the introduction of the new scheme, applications from India increased by 80%, from Bangladesh by over 300% and from Nepal by over 1,000%.

The new system is promoted as being "transparent and logical". In reality, the transparency is an aid to fraud and the logic has been stood on its head. Now, instead of the applicant having to satisfy the Immigration Officer that they intend to return home, the Immigration Officer has to have “evidence” on which to base a refusal.

The new system depends on the issue of a "Certificate of Acceptance for Study (CAS)" which is issued by the educational institution in Britain. In the nature of things, the admissions tutor will have very limited knowledge of either the candidates or the conditions in the country of origin. What he will know is that the college has a clear financial interest in granting the certificate. In the country itself, many colleges employ "agents" to help fill in the forms; they too have a financial interest in a visa being granted. Thereafter, it is box ticking. The applicant provides a photograph, fingerprints, a forty-two page application form, and copies of certificates and bank statements. The bundle is then sent off to an immigration section, sometimes in a different country, to be checked over and for the visa to be issued.

That is effectively it. On arrival at a UK airport, the Immigration Officer has very limited powers but the sheer number of students arriving makes it impractical to intervene in all but a few cases. It is notable that when the Prime Minister and Home Secretary visited Heathrow recently, immigration officers pointed to weaknesses in this student system as their main concern.

Genuine students do not, of course, add to net migration since, unless they marry a UK citizen or obtain a work permit, they return home at the end of their course. By contrast, bogus students do stay on and thereby add to net migration.

It is surely obvious, therefore, that any serious attempt to reduce net immigration, must address this huge gap in our immigration system. For a start, it is absurd to apply a complex box ticking arrangement to countries of origin where there is little or no risk of overstaying - such as the United States and Japan. Equally, in countries from which students are very likely to overstay we need to re-introduce into the system an element of human judgement - otherwise known as common sense. That means restoring the possibility of interviews and returning to immigration officers in overseas posts the discretion to refuse applications which they judge to be bogus. None of this should be controversial but expect vocal special pleading from interest groups who benefit financially from the present sorry state of affairs.

Foreign Students

Summary

1 Briefing Paper No 2.8 provides background briefing on foreign (non EU) students in the UK. It outlines the visa system, the number of students, the colleges involved, and the role of the UKBA.

Student Visas

2 Previously the ‘Student’ visa was used to cover all study from short English language courses to undergraduate or postgraduate degrees. This has now been phased out for new applicants and replaced with two visas categories: Student Visitor and PBS Tier 4.

3 PBS Tier 4 is for students on courses of over six months either at university level or in Higher Education of some kind. It started to operate in 2009. 40 points are required. 30 points are awarded for possessing a Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies (CAS) issued by the sponsoring college and ten point s for maintenance. The student must demonstrate that they have enough funds to cover the first year of their course fees and their living costs. The living costs are £800 per month in Inner London and £600 for the rest of the country. These students can bring in dependants. Students at degree level can work 20 hours a week and students below degree level can work 10 hours a week. The dependants of students at degree level are allowed to work without any restrictions on their hours. The dependants of those at below degree level cannot work. For more detail on eligible courses and English language requirements see Annex A of the Briefing Paper.

Impact of the 'Immigration Decade' on English Primary Schools

The dramatic impact on Primary schools of the massive increase in immigration into the UK in the last decade has been spelled out in a new paper from think tank Migrationwatch.

The paper examines the effect of a net increase of more than 2.5 million long-term immigrants from non English speaking countries, between 1991 and 2008.

It follows an earlier Migrationwatch paper which showed that over the next five years to 2015 over half a million more school places will be needed for the children of recent immigrants to the UK - those who arrived after 1998 – at a total cost of £40 billion over the period.

‘These pupils will of course continue through the education system - with all the attendant costs - but it is primary schools where the effect is being felt most acutely at present and where the education of English speaking children is bound to suffer as immigrant children require extra help,’ said Sir Andrew Green, Migrationwatch chairman.

The paper examines England as a whole, individual regions, and three groups of Local Education Authorities (LEAs) - London Boroughs, the largest urban boroughs outside London, and the remaining LEAs in England. It also projects the numbers to 2018.

In total, between 1991 and 2008, there was a net increase of over 2.5 million in long-term immigrants arriving in the UK from non English speaking countries, mostly to settle. Of these, two million arrived between 1998 and 2008.

The effect on birth rates has been intensified by the rapid increase in the number of foreign born women of reproductive age. In 2007 this total was nearly 43% higher than in 2001.

In contrast, the number of UK born woman of reproductive age was nearly 3% lower in the same period.

In the period 1994 to 2009 the proportion of births to foreign born women rose from 14% to 25%.

In the period 1998 to 2010, the proportion of children in primary schools in England for whom English was not the mother tongue nearly doubled to 16%, or over half a million out of 3.2 million children.

In inner London native English speaking children are already in a minority - in 2010 55% of all primary school pupils did not have English as their first language.

In Outer London the proportion of pupils without English as a mother tongue almost doubled from 22% to 39%.

In six out of the nine regions and in England as a whole, the percentage of children without English as a mother tongue also nearly doubled from 8.5% to 16%.

‘Our projection suggests that the percentage of primary school children in England without English as a mother tongue will increase to 22.7% in 2018, or almost 830,000 - a 60 % increase on current numbers,’ said Sir Andrew.

‘We believe it is important that these issues are discussed as they have enormous implications, not only for our schools at a time of severe financial constraint, but also, if the present scale of immigration is allowed to continue, for the very nature of our society. Once again the case for major reductions in immigration to the UK is powerfully made.’

‘It is astonishing that this situation has been allowed to develop without discussion and without regard to the views of the vast majority of people of this country,’ he said.

See Briefing Paper 2.7 for further details.

Immigration and Education: response to the IPPR

The IPPR has recently published a critique of Migrationwatch's recent report on the likely future impacts that immigration would have on primary and secondary education in the UK.

Their critique does not attempt to challenge our main point – namely that mass immigration of 3 million over the last 12 years is likely to add 0.5 million to the school rolls in the next five years and 1 million in the next ten years. It ignores some significant and authoritative evidence that we used in our report, and makes a number of observations that are unsupported by evidence.

IPPR

"Migrationwatch ignores the fact that migrants make a significant contribution to the public purse – a significant number of taxpayers are migrants."

No. We have not ignored the contribution that migrants make to Government revenues as taxpayers, but we believe that it less significant than IPPR and others claim it is because their calculations are based on the same ‘questionable approach’ criticised by the Economic Affairs Committee of the House of Lords in their 2008 report:

This Committee reported:

Determining whether immigrants make a positive or negative fiscal contribution is highly dependent on what costs and benefits are included in the calculations. Government claims that the exchequer consistently benefits from immigration rely on the children of one UK-born parent and one immigrant parent being attributed to the UK-born population – a questionable approach. But even using the Government’s preferred method, the fiscal impact is small compared to GDP and cannot be used to justify large-scale immigration.

For a full discussion of this important issue, Chapter 5 of the House of Lords report is worth reading.

In addition, our calculations of the costs of educating children of migrants were based on very conservative assumptions, excluding for example any costs of pre-primary education and the additional costs imposed by the particular challenges entailed in educating migrant children – which are significant, and which were ignored in the studies purporting to demonstrate the fiscal benefits of migration mentioned by the IPPR.

IPPR

“Key groups of migrants who have arrived since 1998 (which is the focus of the Migrationwatch report) have significantly higher employment rates – migrants born in new EU member states, for example, have an employment rate of 82.9 per cent”.

IPPR are presumably referring to the employment rate of nationals of the A8 group of countries who began to enter the UK in substantial numbers in 2004. It is true that this large group of migrants has a higher employment rate than UK-born members of the labour force, but 80% are at or near the minimum wage so they pay very little tax.

IPPR

“In claiming that migration will create demand for additional school places, Migrationwatch doesn’t take account of the fact that the number of births to UK-born mothers is generally falling – a significant number of the children born to migrant mothers might be expected to simply fill school places that would otherwise be empty”.

No. Births to UK-born women in England and Wales in 2009 were 6,000 less than in 2008, but they are not ‘generally falling’ as the IPPR claim. In every year but one since 2003 such births have risen – in 2003 they totalled some 506,000 and in 2009 around 532,000.

But, even if there is spare capacity in some primary schools, it is clear from section 4 of our paper that this is not generally in Local Authority areas that have experienced the highest rates of immigration and where demand for places is already significantly greater than capacity – a situation that is projected to become more severe over time.

Response to Critics: Immigration and Demand for Education

Our paper published on 14 October attracted criticism from the usual quarters.  None of it affected the main thrust of the report which was that there will be a very substantial increase in the demand for education as a result of the massive levels of immigration permitted, even encouraged, by the previous government.   However, it should not be allowed to pass unchallenged so brief responses are set out below:

Tim Finch (IPPR) quoted on the BBC website:

“The research was based on “guesstimates”…..

No.  It was based on actual births and on projections with assumptions stated.

“assumptions included that migrant children would spend the maximum time in the education system …”

No.  The assumption was that they would spend only such time as was legally required.

“Half the children referred to in the figures are those whose mother was born abroad, but whose father was UK born”.

No.  Those with both parents born overseas were included.  Of those with one UK parent only half were included.  They were much less than half the total.

“…these people (migrants)…… are contributing to a growing economy, so we should educate their children.”

Yes.  But they are also adding to our population. A major enquiry by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee “found no evidence for the argument, made by the Government, business and many others, that net immigration—immigration minus emigration—generates significant economic benefits for the existing UK population”.

Mr. Phillipe Legrain has also criticised the statistical methodology and assumptions that underpinned our paper.  His critique, which is reproduced in full below ignores a very substantial amount of evidence from eminent sources supporting the assumptions used in the MigrationWatch paper and in some cases he has misinterpreted the evidence used.

“By using cumulative figures. If you add up spending on anything over a long period of time, it looks much bigger than it really is. Using a single year’s statistics, 2009, and MW’s deeply flawed methodology, the cost of schooling the children of migrants who have arrived since 1998 is £4.6 billion, out of an education budget of £88 billion”.

Taking Mr. Legrain’s first point – use of cumulative data – it is apparent that he either misunderstands or ignores the reasons why MigrationWatch used cumulative data to estimate the impact on school places. Put simply, children in the UK receive a minimum of 11 years schooling, so that starting at age 5 pupil numbers and therefore demand for places would accumulate with each successive year until 11 years after starting school, when the cohort born 16 years previously would ‘drop out’ of the data. As a calculation of pupil place requirements stemming from net migration since 1998 – which was the sole objective of MigrationWatch’s study - this is a perfectly reasonable methodology.

Mr. Legrain appears to imply that the £4.5 billion calculation by MigrationWatch of the cost in 2009 of educating migrant children who were either born in 1998 or afterwards, or directly migrated to the UK, is small relative to the total amount of public spending in the UK on education in 2009/10 – around £88 billion.

 This is an unsound comparison because it is not comparing like with like. Since in 2009, virtually all children born in 1998 and thereafter would still be receiving primary education, the relevant comparator is the cost of primary education which in 2009/10 was £23.7 billion – so that education of migrant children accounted for almost one fifth of this – a very significant proportion.

“By counting children who have one parent who was born abroad as half due to migration. Since Nick Clegg has a Spanish wife, they include half the cost of educating their kids as being due to migration. Excluding that dodgy use of statistics, the cost in 2009 falls to £3.6bn”.

The assumption used by MigrationWatch that half the costs of educating children born to parents with only one UK born parent should be counted as a cost of migration, was implicitly endorsed by the Economic Affairs Committee of the House of Lords which, in its report on the economic impacts of immigration (2008), observed that the approach taken by the then Government of attributing all the costs of educating these children to the UK population was in itself a “questionable approach”.(paragraph 132)

However, even if we strip out the costs of educating all such children from the calculation of the cost of migration on education, the cost of migration in 2009 is still over 15 per cent of the budget for primary education in the UK in 2009.

Furthermore, MigrationWatch’s calculation of the costs of migration is also based on highly conservative assumptions and specifically excludes the significant additional demands on education spending made by the particular requirements of children who, for example, are often unable to speak English when starting school.  These ‘uncosted externalities’ are very significant. For example, the Government is committed to spend over £200 million on its ‘Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant’.

These matters are discussed at length in paras. 139 – 144 of the House of Lords report referred to above:

 “By ignoring the taxes that migrants pay. Research by the Home Office, IPPR, Christian Dustmann at UCL and others show that migrants pay more in taxes than they take out in benefits and public services. Allowing for that, it is not UK-born taxpayers who are paying to educate migrants’ children, it is migrants who are subsidising the education of the children of people born in the UK”.

The research referred to by Mr. Legrain is by no means generally accepted, has been heavily criticised by at least one eminent economist and by the House of Lords Committee who reported as follows:

132. Determining whether immigrants make a positive or negative fiscal contribution is highly dependent on what costs and benefits are included in the calculations. Government claims that the exchequer consistently benefits from immigration rely on the children of one UK-born parent and one immigrant parent being attributed to the UK-born population—a questionable approach. But even using the Government’s preferred method, the fiscal impact is small compared to GDP and cannot be used to justify large-scale immigration.

 It also relies on the same ‘questionable’ assumptions criticised by the House of Lords in their report. This is all discussed at length in Chapter 5 of this report. 

According to “Full fact report”,, “MigrationWatch say that their figures are based on “the ‘principal projection’ by ONS of UK population over the period 2008 – 2033, projects a total of births of 19.8 million, of which 2.3 million are projected to occur, directly or indirectly, because of net migration. But after much searching and head-scratching, Full Fact was unable to discover any ONS projections which broke down predicted birth rates by the parents’ place of birth.

 A call to the ONS confirmed that no such statistics exist: “We certainly don’t publish population projection data by country of migrant or any kind of ethnic background,” said a spokesperson, “the sums themselves won’t have been done by us.”

 The ONS is correct in saying that it does not publish population projections by ethnicity or country of migrant, but MigrationWatch’s report did not say it did. In fact they calculated the difference between the ‘natural change’ – the excess of births over deaths – of the UK’s population projected by the ONS under two assumptions: that in its ‘Principal Projection’, and that in the ‘Zero Net Migration’ assumption. For an explanation, see the ONS’s 2008 Population Projections.