EU Referendum


Immigration: creating terminal political stresses


13/09/2014



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Running in The Times and The Daily Mail is a story which is hardly calculated to improve the popularity of the European Union.

It has European commissioner for employment. László Andor telling us to "stop moaning about immigration". He accepts that there are "problems" for countries such as Britain in dealing with a "large, sudden influx of people from other EU countries", but he urges the British government to invest in new infrastructure rather than looking to tighten immigration controls.

Britain, he says, is happy to exploit the economic benefits of free movement of people within the EU, but it is failing to provide sufficient infrastructure to house them. "The answer to these problems", he says, "is to invest in new facilities, housing and services, not to turn away people that are working hard and more than paying their share into the UK's budget".

Clearly, Andor is not aiming to score any popularity points, and nor does he seem to take into account the effect of increased population on the quality of life. This is an issue that the bean counters do not factor into their calculations, but generally low population density is regarded as a plus factor and higher densities - past a certain level - reduce quality.

Furthermore, Mr Andor does not seem to have worked out precisely how much cash would be required to meet the infrastructure investment he has in mind. We are not, therefore, able to calculate the overall cost-benefit of taking in a "large, sudden influx of people from other EU countries".

An additional issue in this context is that Andor is suggesting that UK public spending priorities should be determined by EU-mandated "freedom of movement" provisions, rather than those dictated by the electorate of the UK.

Mr Andor's intervention, therefore, is not going to improve sentiment on EU immigration. In the Commission's opinion, we must not only accept unregulated, unplanned and unpredictable migration levels, we must also divert public spending to cope with the influx, regardless of our own priorities.

Tactful, this really isn't, and neither is it realistic. No government can realistically be expected to budget for expenditure which, by definition, is unplanned and unpredictable.

The Commission has a problem here, because immigration is creating intolerable stresses within the UK. The "freedom of movement" policy has the potential to break the grip of the EU in the UK, and the commissioners seem to be completely unaware of how dangerous it is becoming to their own construct – otherwise Mr Andor would not be making such unguarded comments.

What, of course, is going to happen is that the government will ignore the likes of Mr Andor, which means that immigration is going to continue imposing stresses on the existing infrastructure. And with that come political stresses, to which Mr Andor seems to be adding.

Nevertheless, in those stresses may lie the longer term answer if, progressively they make the UK a less attractive place for EU immigrants. If that happens, a balancing dynamic takes effect and immigration reduces automatically. Not only will the UK ignore Mr Andor, therefore, it should do so – at least long enough for us to manage an orderly exit from the EU.

And therein lies the ultimate relief – leaving the EU. The only debate should be over how exactly we manage the process.

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