Thousands of migrants 'disappear' in British cities under new official counting system
Hundreds of thousands of migrants have ‘disappeared’ at the stroke of a pen under a new official counting system. The method has led to apparent large falls in the numbers of migrants thought to live in London and other major cities.
The change has provoked fury among council leaders who say the immigrant populations of their districts have been grossly underestimated by government statisticians.
Westminster and Kensington in London, Manchester, Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge are among places thought to have had their estimated populations reduced by many thousands by the Office for National Statistics.
Colin Barrow, Tory leader of Westminster, said: ‘After four years of work supposedly improving migration estimates, the ONS apparently still has little idea how many migrants are in this country or where they live and work.
‘Our incoming migrant population appears to have dropped by 17 per cent over four years; you only have to go out into the bars and restaurants in the West End to see that migrants come to Westminster to live and work in much greater numbers than this.’
More than nine out of ten migrants to the UK live in England, which has become the sixth most crowded major country in the world, the MigrationWatch think-tank said last week. Last year net migration was 239,000.
The new estimates method, to be used from next year onwards, uses the same source of immigration statistics the ONS has always used. This is the International Passenger Survey, a check on intentions of arrivals at air and sea ports and on the Eurostar.
From this researchers use a complex formula, based on other official population databases, to estimate the number of yearly arrivals.
Under the new method, this formula has been tweaked, resulting in changes to the estimated numbers arriving at certain towns and cities. Some have fallen while others have risen, but the total remains unchanged.
Westminster’s migrant population has been reduced by 10,000, and Manchester’s and Bristol’s each by 30,000. According to ONS briefing papers, Kensington and Chelsea, Oxford and Cambridge have had ‘quite large downward revisions’.
Mr Barrow said: ‘We would seriously question the estimate that fewer than 4,000 migrants came to Westminster in the 2009 financial year to seek work. 'We have seen more people registering with doctors and paying council tax in Westminster, so we fail to understand how the government statisticians can be so wrong.’
Councils can lose millions in Treasury grants if Whitehall cuts their population estimates.
The ONS was scheduled to publish papers about the new migration counting system last week, but failed to do so. Some places are said to show a higher count, such as Newham, East London, with a 13 per cent increase. The ONS declined to comment yesterday.
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
1. Amnesty by Any Means Extended to DOJ Lawyers (Blog)
2. ICE Finds Another Border Tunnel, But Well After Construction Ended (Blog)
3. Man Bites Dog, or Asylum Lawyer Supports Denial of Asylum (Blog)
4. The Jewish Establishment's 'Unity Pledge'; Will Sacrificing Israel to Obama's Re-Election Cause Blowback? (Blog)
5. Migrant Wage Drain from U.S. Economy Increased a Little in 2010 (Blog)
6. More Administrative Amnesty, This Time from USCIS (Blog)
7. A New Civil Rights Movement in Alabama? (Blog)
8. DHS Pressies Have the Week That Was, and Will Be, and Was, and Will be Again (Blog)
9. U.S. Senate Takes CIS' Advice and Imposes Fees on the Visa Lottery (Blog)
10. November 1986: Comments on 'Comprehensive Immigration Reform' (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