30/03/2015
Things are not quite what they seem to be on the immigration front, says the
Financial Times, telling us that fewer migrants have come to Britain in search of work during this parliament than under Labour's final term in office, and they are more highly skilled.
This is based on a study commissioned by the
FT from the Oxford-based
Migration Observatory, which challenges pre-election warnings from those such as UKIP that Britain is attracting record numbers of incomers from Europe and farther afield.
The most recent official statistics showed annual net migration soaring to almost 300,000 - dashing the Conservative party' s attempts to cut the number to the "tens of thousands" and so win the confidence of wavering Ukip voters.
But the observatoryâs five-year snapshot across the parliament shows that 117,000 fewer working migrants arrived in the UK since the 2010 election than during the previous Labour term in office a decrease of 16 percent.
Migration Observatory director, Madeleine Sumption, said it was striking that despite increases in net migration in 2014, the size of the migrant workforce was "considerably smaller" now than five years ago, with the data demonstrating that since the coalition took office there has been a rise of 40 percent in jobseekers from recession-hit nations in the "old EU", such as Italy, Spain and Portugal.
The intriguing thing is that this has been offset by a 35 percent fall in working migrants from the eight eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004, and a drop of more than a quarter in those arriving from beyond Europe.
Sumption argues that the growth in working migrants from old EU countries, who are more likely to pursue professional jobs, had helped to raise the skill level of those arriving in the UK. "While it's difficult to predict migration flows, it's clear that what happens to migration from old EU countries could have a significant impact on the overall skill profile of the new migrant workforce in the future", she says.
The observatory's data also show that migrants' wages have risen on average by 17 percent under the coalition, compared with the previous five years - a significantly higher increase than among the UK-born population. There has also been a greater concentration of immigrants in London, in professions such as financial services, and away from lower-skilled roles elsewhere in the country.
By contrast, the number of lower-skilled migrants from Europe has begun to decline in the past five years, something which the Observatory has already noted to be highly significant. In a previous report,
it noted its 2011 Migration Observatory/IpsosMORI study found that attitudes toward low-skilled labour migrants, extended family members, and asylum seekers were much more negative than attitudes to high-skilled migrants, students, and close family members.
This general pattern was found again in a Migration Observatory/YouGov study, in both Scotland and England/Wales, signifying that the public attitudes to immigration are far more nuanced than is generally allowed. There seems to be a greater tolerance for skilled migrants, and for those which come from our closest neighbours.
All in all, therefore, the migrant "card" will perhaps not be quite as powerful a factor in the general election as earlier polls have suggested.
