Eastern European migrants' boost to British economy was 'insignificant', says thinktank
A claim that mass immigration from Eastern Europe gave a huge boost to Britain’s economy was rubbished last night in a groundbreaking report.
The wave of migrants who came to the UK from Poland and other former Communist states had an 'insignificant' impact on growth, according to a respected economic think tank. In just five years after EU expansion in 2004, they pushed up Britain’s population by 700,000 - a rise of more than one per cent. However, they added a third of that - just 0.38 per cent - to Britain’s economic output over the same period, the National Institute for Economic and Social Research said.
The report prompted a renewed attack on Labour's 'open door' migration policy which heaped pressure on public services and housing.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the MigrationWatch think tank said: 'This blows out of the water many of the arguments that the immigration lobby have been making for years. 'We now find that the contribution of workers from Eastern Europe to our GDP was trivial, much less than their addition to our population.' He added: 'This is the last nail in the coffin of Labour’s immigration policy.'
Successive Labour Home Secretaries, as well as former PM Tony Blair, defended immigration by citing the supposed economic benefits of new arrivals. A Home Office-commissioned report in 2007 claimed immigration added £6billion to the economy during the previous calendar year.
But today's report found they added just £4.91bn to Gross Domestic Product over the entire five years from 2004.
The researchers also said the patterns of migration established over the past seven years were 'likely to prove permanent'.
Left-wing supporters of mass migration have pointed to the dip in Eastern European arrivals seen during the recession as evidence many of those migrants who came to Britain would return home when work dried up.
It was also claimed Polish and other Eastern European workers would try to find jobs in Germany and other countries who, from yesterday, were forced to abandon temporary restrictions on workers from A8 contries- Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.
But one of the report’s authors, Dawn Holland, said the lifting of restrictions by other EU countries would make little difference. She said: 'Lifting barriers in Germany may divert some Polish and other workers away from the UK,' she says, 'especially given the relative strength of the German economy.' 'But as the existence of support networks for new migrants is one of the most important factors, much of the shift in migrants since 2004 is likely to prove permanent.'
The report found that between 2004 and 2009 around 1.5million Eastern Europeans came to Britain from the eight new EU states. The report estimated around 700,000 stayed, including half a million from Poland alone. Over the same period Britain's GDP grew by £98bn - of which 5 per cent can be attributed to immigration, the NIESR said. By contrast, it found Germany's growth fell by as little as 0.1per cent as a result of imposing curbs on new arrivals.
Tory immigration minister Damian Green this year vowed not to repeat the 'mistake' of not implementing the transitional controls, which were limited to seven years and expired yesterday.
The Labour government allowed full access to Britain’s job market, and only imposed restrictions on benefits. These also expired yesterday - raising fears of a new rush of benefits tourists.
A House of Lords report on immigration in 2008 found the economic benefits of immigration were 'small and close to zero'.
Mr Green commented: 'While immigration can being benefits, it can strain public services, infrastructure and community cohesion unless it is properly controlled. 'That is why, as well as reducing net migration to the tens of thousands, the government will introduce transitional controls for new EU member states as a matter of course.'
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
1. Refugee Resettlement: A System Badly in Need of Review (Backgrounder)
2. Public Comment on Proposed H-1B Regulations (Testimony)
3. An Unusual Voice on Univision (Blog)
4. Does Parroting Lobbyists Constitute 'News analysis'? (Blog)
5. USCIS Overturns 'Early Bird Gets the Worm' Rule in H-1B Program (Blog)
6. State Department Regs Guarantee Loss of 120,000 American Jobs (Blog)
7. SB1070 as Bogeyman (Blog)
8. Superman Meets His Match: Los Hermanos Ortiz (Blog)
9. Utah's Actions Analyzed at Immigration Policy Conference (Blog)
10. Jason DeParle Has the Last Word, for Now (Blog)
11. Bahamas Gets It Right on Investment Levels and Streamlining (Blog)
12. Is it Time for a National Latino Museum? (Blog)
13. A Message from Jason DeParle, and a Response (Blog)
Background
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.
The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:
1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.
2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.
3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.
4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.
5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.
6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.
I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.
No comments:
Post a Comment