Migration Watch UK: News

‘If the Tories are serious about immigration it will be in the manifesto’

Commentary

By Sir Andrew Green
Chairman of Migration Watch UK

The Times, London, 11 January, 2010

It was good to see an Archbishop give the political system a hefty kick last week. Lord Carey’s courageous intervention in support of the cross-party group called Balanced Migration certainly caught the attention of the public and gave a huge boost to their campaign to get immigration down close to the level of emigration.

He has moved the debate forwards. Instead of the usual accusations of racism there is now a more reasoned acceptance by the political class that current rates of immigration into Britain are unsustainable.

They are stressing our public services and straining our social cohesion. Now we have David Cameron saying that he does not support the idea of a 70 million population. He wants to see immigration kept within the tens of thousands. This is a significant development. He does not make stray remarks on this subject.

Indeed, he has hardly mentioned it since a major speech on population two years ago.

Nobody, least of all Mr Cameron, challenges the reality that immigrants have made a major contribution to our society. It is the recent scale of immigration that is the problem.

The latest population projections from the Office for National Statistics show that the UK’s population will reach 70 million in 20 years’ time and that just over two thirds of this increase will be because of immigration.

The Government claims that it will never happen but ONS forecasts are much better than the Met Office. Over the past 50 years their 20-year projections have been accurate to 2.5 per cent. Ministers also claim that immigration is coming down, partly due to their Points Based System. But the fall is almost entirely due to more East Europeans going home while three quarters of the PBS are student applications, which are riddled with fraud. The only means open to the Government to limit population is to limit immigration. If the Tory leader is serious he will put it into his party's election manifesto – and it will be hugely popular.

Sir Andrew Green: 10 Reasons our Visa System is Rotten to the Core

Commentary in The Daily Mail 30 December, 2009

We got lucky - this time. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian graduate of University College London who tried to blow up a passenger aircraft over Detroit was turned down for a student visa when he applied for one in May.

He had been stupid enough to try to enrol in one of the 2,000 colleges the Government has at last realised are bogus.

But make no mistake, there are others who will succeed where he failed. Why?

Because the Government's new visa system is a disaster whose full results have yet to be seen. Yes, Abdulmutallab was stopped, but 370,000 student visas were issued last year.

How many of those were bogus students coming here to work on the black market? And how many were potential terrorists?

The simple answer is, we don't know and we may never know.

The new visa system requires a student to acquire 40 points before they are issued with a visa.

Thirty points are awarded automatically if he or she has a letter of acceptance from one of 3,000 educational institutions in Britain now licensed to issue such letters.

The other ten points are awarded if the student can show sufficient funds for the first year's fees and to live on during the year.

If they have the points, they get the visa. That's the theory. The reality, though, is that the system is rotten to the core. Here are ten reasons why. . .(See the full Daily Mail article)…

That day is not far off.

Student Visas 'A Massive Hole' in Border Controls as Numbers Top 1.5 Million in 8 Years

Nearly 3/4 of visas under the Points Based System are given to students

11/2 million students admitted in just 8 years

No checks on how many leave UK

Role of Immigration Officers severely undermined

 

A new report out today reveals that student visas are a massive loophole in our border controls. Nearly three quarters of visas issued under the Points Based System are given not to workers but students, under a system that is easily abused, badly administered and complex. Far from being “tough and flexible” as the Government claims, the new Points Based System has made a bad situation much worse.

 

The report by Migrationwatch shows that:

 

Nearly 1½ million student visas have been issued in the last 8 years. Students also account for a huge number of applications for extension. For example, between 2004 and 2007 they averaged about 140,000 per year…

 

See the Full Press Release

Sir Andrew Green: The Government's Points Based immigration system is a potential disaster

Ministers have perfected a patter when talking about immigration. “We’re sorry – we’ve made mistakes, but we’re now getting it under control with our new, tough, Australian-style Points Based System”, they say. Last week, in his first speech on immigration in two years, Gordon Brown trumpeted the merits of the Points Based System (PBS) for immigration and citizenship. He claimed that "together they constitute a fundamental reform of a decade's old system - a reform founded on the British values of personal responsibility and civic duty."

Read the full article

Migrationwatch media information

Migrationwatch website has been revamped and updated. This should make it easier to find any information on immigration and asylum issues you may require. In particular, two overview papers: "What is the problem?" and "What can be done?" may prove to be useful.

Migrant stock has doubled since 1991 Immigration problem 'Home Grown' - not a result of Globalisation

The cause of the highest levels of immigration the UK has ever seen is not, as the government claims, global population movement but rather a series of failures of Government policies, says a new report out today from think tank Migrationwatch – “How did immigration get out of control?"

Now that immigration regularly features high on the list of public concerns the Government have tried to promote the view that world trends have been responsible for a trebling of net foreign immigration since 1997. However, the report demonstrates that this is simply a ‘smokescreen’ to disguise the way in which UK immigration and asylum policy has been mismanaged for a decade.

'The government seems to make a habit of blaming current ills on ‘global forces’ but our analysis shows that this problem is almost entirely ‘home grown’. It could, and should, have been more competently managed, so preventing the rising tide of resentment among the public,’ said Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch.

The report shows that the percentage of the world population who are international migrants increased somewhat - from 2.5% in 1960 to 3.0 percent in 2005. The pattern in Britain has been quite different. The percentage of migrants in the UK – that is persons born outside the country - increased by only just over 1% in the first 30 years - from 4.5% in 1961 to 5.8 % in 1991. It then accelerated, doubling to 11% in 2008.

The report also demonstrates that comparisons with major European countries are often irrelevant because their demography is completely different. For example, the population of Germany would decline by 25% in mid century without immigration, whereas that of France and the UK would still increase.

Until 1997 it was the policy of successive British governments to minimise immigration into the UK, subject to the needs of the labour market and obligations to dependants and international conventions. Indeed, until 1996 government statisticians assumed in their population projections that net immigration would be zero over the long term.

Since then a series of policy measures has contributed to the rapid increase in immigration:

Embarkation controls – because of the total abolition of embarkation controls (begun in 1994 and completed in 1998) foreigners arriving on time limited visas became aware that there was no check on their departure and, as Mr Blunkett- then Home Secretary - later admitted on television, the government now has "no idea" who is in Britain.

The Primary Purpose Rule – in 1997 the requirement that the applicant should show "that the marriage was not entered into primarily to obtain admission to the United Kingdom" was abolished. Immigration by spouses has increased by over 50% since then.

Asylum – control of the asylum system was lost for several years so contributing considerably to net immigration, particularly when dependants are included. The number whose claim is rejected still exceeds the number removed.

Economic migration - Since about 2000, the government have specifically encouraged the arrival of economic migrants. The number of work permits issued has trebled since 1997.

East European workers - the forecast of numbers coming to the UK was wrong by a factor of at least 10 when, unlike most EU partners, the Government failed to impose any transitional controls over numbers.

'Many people are at a loss to know how all this was allowed to happen’, said Sir Andrew. ‘The true story is that the government has held public opinion in contempt for years. Despite having dismantled border controls, they deliberately encouraged immigration, partly to make the economic growth figures look better. The fact that the extra population cancelled out any real benefit to the resident population was repeatedly denied until exposed by a major investigation last April by the highly authoritative Economic Affairs Committee of the House of Lords,’ said Sir Andrew. ‘We now face a massive increase in population just as our economy is struggling. Some apologies from the government would be in order.’

Cabinet minister admits immigration 'free for all'

A Cabinet Minister has admitted the Government has presided over an asylum and immigration “free for all” and warned that the recession could be a recipe for social tension.

Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, said Labour had failed to manage the system effectively, allowing many people to enter the country under false pretences.

See The Sunday Times for the full text of this article.

How Britain's new jobs have gone to immigrants

Nearly all the jobs created in the UK since 2001 have gone to immigrants - not British born workers

New research from think tank Migrationwatch – based on Government figures – shows that virtually all the extra 1.34 million jobs have now been filled by people from abroad, notably by the half a million workers who have come to the UK from Eastern Europe.

Over the same period there has been no progress at all in getting British born unemployed workers into work; the number in employment did increase between 2001 and 2005 but there has since been a fall of nearly a quarter of a million. Meanwhile the number of East European (A8) employees rose by nearly half a million after they were given free access to our labour market in 2004.

The study also shows that the number of East Europeans is starting to stabilise. Some are now leaving the UK but they are also continuing to arrive – although at a lower rate of about 13,000 a month. The Labour Force Survey shows that the number working in the UK has been stable at about 500,000 in the first three quarters of 2008.

'From an immigration point of view this means that migration from Eastern Europe is moving into balance as we have been predicting but, from the point of view of British born workers, the damage to their prospects has already been done - at a time when jobs of almost all kinds are at a premium,’ said Sir Andrew Green, Migrationwatch chairman.

‘This must have been staring the government in the face for a long time yet even last month they described the East European migrants as “helping to fill gaps in the labour market. Rather than come clean about the effect of massive immigration on the prospects of British born workers they have been spinning the statistics and camouflaging the true position with “tough talk” about immigration.

'Now that the cat is out of the bag they cannot possibly lift such restrictions as now exist on Romanian and Bulgarian workers.’

The Business Visitor Scheme under the Points Based System

Migrationwatch called yesterday for much tougher rules on business visitors. The new rules are far too lax and, in particular, permit unlimited secondment of foreign employees to Britain

Commenting, the Chairman, Sir Andrew Green, said "The Government scrabbled to produce these rules only days before the system goes live. Far from being "tough" the rules for business visitors drive a coach and horses through the entire work permit system. Now any foreign company with a contract with a British company can send as many seconded staff as they wish for periods of six months each. This could easily be used to replace more expensive British workers as the recession bites. The Government must think again and take urgent measures to put proper controls in place."

How many more people can our small island take? As population heads towards 70 million has the penny dropped for Labour?

By Sir Andrew Green, Chairman, Migration Watch UK.

The issues around immigration are steadily becoming clearer as successive government smoke screens are blown away by the cool wind of logic.

New immigration figures being published by the Government today will confirm that very high levels of immigration are continuing at about 200,000 a year.

In recent weeks, the penny has finally dropped in government circles that immigration is having a huge impact on our population. This is not a matter of speculation.

Getting too crowded? The UK population is on course to hit 70 million unless effective measures are taken

The Government's own projections show that the UK population will reach 70 million in 20 years'time.

To read the full text of this article see Press Articles on Migration Watch UK's web site.