EU Referendum


Flexcit: the immigration dimension


09/10/2014



000a Guardian-009 immig.jpg

I promised yesterday to look at the immigration issue further, specifically taking in discussions in London, with parties who must remain unnamed.

The essence of what we were told reflected a widespread view that the "Norway Option", with EFTA/EEA membership, was not a viable proposition because it still required the UK to adopt the EU's freedom of movement provisions. Since immigration would be the main issue in the referendum, this would have to be addressed, with the WTO option preferred, without seeking a free trade agreement.

Our counter was that The Norway Option was only a temporary expedient, and that the longer-term settlement would seek to decouple trade and freedom of movement, reverting to controlled access of workers, admitting only those necessary to meet UK economic and social needs, and our remaining international obligations.

We also argued that leaving the EU, per se, would not solve our immigration problems. On the one hand, the bulk of our immigration was not mandated by the EU. It relies on the ECHR and, to an extent, the UN convention on refugees and other international agreements.

Further, we argued that simply blocking immigration would result in an increase in illegal immigration. Irrespective of EU membership, it was necessary to deal with the "push" and "pull" factors which drive migration.

To that extent, I averred, migration itself was not the problem – it was the symptom of multifarious (and very different) problems. Thus, to deal with migration, the specific problems had to be identified and picked apart. No one solution would work, so it was a question of chipping away at the edges, with different policy and enforcement strategies, the cumulative effects bringing down overall migration.

This, I then argued, would impact on migration from EU member states, even to the extent that we could do much more already to trim numbers, some of which measures Mr Cameron had already introduced, specifically in terms of benefit payments.

In this context, the influx of Polish workers was raised, whence I pointed out that many of the "pull" factors had economic implications which added to the draw, but which verged on criminality and could be addressed by existing law and more rigorous enforcement.

Specifically, I noted the tendency in some areas to accommodate incoming workers in poor housing, in breach of statutory density limits, the overcrowding enabling lower (although extortionate, relative to what was offered) rents to be changed.

Here, I argued, if statutory limits were applied, rental costs would increase substantially for the migrants, reducing the economic gain from their employment in the UK. This would have the effect of reducing the longer-term "pull" from low-wage countries.

This is but one example. Of many other issues, one is the failure of police to enforce re-registration of foreign-registered cars after they have been here for one stay of six months, or several shorter visits in any one 12 month period. For the some of the immigrant community, vehicle tax and insurance has become optional and often unpaid, again reducing costs and increasing the draw.

I pointed to many more examples of how enforcement failures gave immigrants the edge, but I have to say that much of this was disputed, ending with a somewhat obdurate insistence that returning control of our borders (a wholly misleading phrase) was the only way forward.

It is this extremely helpful now to have a piece in the Guardian which illustrates some of the malpractice going on, confirming exactly some of the points I have made – even if the same conclusions have not been drawn.

Re-inventing the wheel is hardly necessary, so I won't summarise the article here, but it is worth reading it. Tackle some of those issues, and you will have an effect on the locality where they were reported – Wisbech. In other areas, different strategies, or combinations, are required.

This, of course, does not gainsay the argument that leaving the EU and then, eventually, quitting the EEA and renegotiating a new free movement deal would not be advantageous. But it does re-affirm that, just because we are in the EU, does not mean that we are totally at the mercy of immigration from member states. There are things we could be doing, and these should be done.

Pretending we can do nothing is almost as bad as pretending that leaving the EU is the answer to all our problems.

UPDATE: News just in - tax loophole on foreign-registered cars to be closed. The scale is huge - we're talking about 100,000 cars, costing the revenue £20 million a year. What took them so long?

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