LET'S TALK ABOUT EMMIGRATION

Why should we expect to be able to move anywhere if….

Marjorie Smith

Imagine the posters and leaflets calling for a halt to unbridled EU immigration, use of the words 'flocking' and 'floods' and 'hordes' widespread in the media. Imagine the references to distorting the housing market, to causing overstretch in public services such as hospitals, whose budgets are said to be struggling to cope with the influx.

Imagine a large and significant group of foreigners refusing to learn the native tongue. Shops such as ALDI and LIDL a metaphor for the Tower of Babel as customers speak in a multitude of tongues and are served by low-paid immigrants desperate for any work.

Imagine the drip, drip, drip, of continual antipathy to the immigrant community as parties of all points of the political spectrum acknowledge that immigration is a big political issue and has to be curbed.  As ever hiding behind the application of EU laws and saying "it's all that Brussels' fault" as political camouflage for their own inability to present a balanced case for immigration.

How would it feel to be part of that immigrant community accused of being a net drain on the public finances, when in fact the opposite was the case. That the taxes the immigrant community paid were in excess of any cost of the public services received and that this lie was a central plank of the political opposition to EU immigration.

Now imagine the plethora of political propaganda was in Spanish not in English, that the opposition to unbridled EU immigration was orchestrated by extremist Spanish parties. That the Spanish mainstream parties believed that using anti-immigrant sentiments as part of a populist electoral tool was acceptable.

How would the more than seven hundred thousand (yes, over 700,000) Britons who have made their home in Spain feel? Why is it that it is perfectly acceptable for the British to believe that they have the right of residency in any other EU country, yet it is apparent that people believe that the same right should not be reciprocated to citizens from other EU countries.

This seems to be the current political atmosphere that is pervading the country and seemingly has infected the Labour party.  It now appears that leadership candidates such as Balls and Burnham believe that playing the immigration card is way of selling their candidacy as an attractive option. They should hang their heads in shame, sacrificing decades of Labour party morals, for a squalid short-term fix in order to further their own political ends believing that an ill-thought out populist approach to immigration is either politically attractive or morally right.

There are currently one million, six hundred and fifty thousand (1,650,000)  Britons who live in the rest of the EU full time (less than 15% of them of pensionable age), if one includes those who live part-time in the UK and part-time in the rest of the EU that takes the figure up to over two million (2,000,000). We seem to believe we should be able to flock abroad at will but deeply resent the quid pro quo.

However, the deepest resentment appears to be amongst those who do not have the financial resources to choose. There is a case to be argued that unbridled immigration from the new Member States of the EU has had an impact on the lower end of the jobs market in the UK. However the economic growth under the Labour Government from 1997 onwards created large numbers of jobs that could not be filled locally.

It does seem to be the case that those who have been impacted on the most are the unskilled poor where competition for jobs may have suppressed wage levels below their normal historical relationship with more skilled pay levels. However, the role of family tax credits compensates for what may have been a suppression factor in domestic pay rates at the lowest level.

The case has to be argued that EU immigration to this country has had a positive effect on the pubic finances. That most of the immigrants from Eastern Europe have been relatively young and keen to work, that the tax take from such immigrants has led to a net contribution to the UK Treasury. Furthermore, many of the immigrants from the EU have already returned to their home countries and the arrival of newcomers slows down dramatically as the economy suffers under the Posh Alliances planned savage cuts in public expenditure.

It is also undoubtedly true that those whose quality of life has improved the most are those people who are the +/- 350,000 who live part-time in the UK and part-time in the rest of the EU. This group almost certainly contains a significant number of the rich middle-classes who delight in their second-homes on the Mediterranean or in Tuscanny or the Dordogne.

However, 'that's life', those with sufficient disposable income to buy holiday homes will spend the money on such homes. It can be argued that the freedom of movement in the EU has had a welcomed negative effect on house prices in the UK, with the South Coast, South West, Wales etc seeing house prices moderating as the attractions of second homes abroad compete with domestic options.

The Labour Party does itself no favours when it espouses policies based on anti-immigrant sentiment, when it employs phrases such as combating/halting/ fighting 'the  tide' of immigration. It is ill-served by leadership candidates who rather than campaign about the issue on the doorstep instead reach for the knee-jerk response in a tawdry display of triangulation, with the BNP being, imperceptibly, one of the angles.