Migration: the pot speaks of the kettles

18/08/2015

One of the few saving graces for those of us fighting for withdrawal from the EU is that most of the key figures in the emerging "yes" campaign seem to be as thick and as ill-informed as some of our lot.

This certainly applies to Laura Sandys, chair of the European Movement, who is sounding off in the Guardian in her own illiterate fashion about immigration.

Like so many, she elides refugees and asylum-seeking with immigration in general, to tell us that Europe's migration crisis is "escalating everywhere from Calais to the Mediterranean refugee flotillas", thereby miscasting the nature of the problem and parading her profound ignorance of the issues.

It ill-behoves this "pot", therefore, to pick on sundry blackened "kettles" of whom she declares, "many are claiming that exiting Europe will solve these and other migration 'problems'". This, says la Sandys, "is one of the biggest political mis-selling scandals of our time".

One can note in passing that Mzz Sandys isn't really into irony, as the it is the very European Union that she so loves – aka The Great Deception - as political mis-selling on an epic scale.

It is a pity, though, that she has plenty of material to support a claim that "outers" (i.e., parts of the "no" campaign) have "started to make some very ambitious claims about the wonderful sunny uplands of life outside the European Union – sans foreigner and in particular sans EU migrants".

Nevertheless, this is classic BBC-inspired trick of picking the bits that provide her with a useable counterpoint, using them to say that "they" would have it that there "will be an end to dastardly migration to all those Ukip-rich voting areas once we leave behind the plot to flood this country with foreign workers who undercut British citizens".

You can see what she's doing here – apart from the "bait and switch" from asylum seekers to free movement of workers – simply by the fact that she avoids Flexcit like the plague. It will not give her the answers she needs.

Instead, she picks Business for Britain, Douglas Carswell and Nigel Farage, claiming on the one hand that their "arguments are often contradictory" but then asserting that they all claim that "controlled borders" would mean less migration. And these claims are not "in any way credible".

Nevertheless, she doesn't play it straight. For her "take" on Business for Britain, she cites this source, claiming that:

… it proposes taking away the social chapter, which gives protection to low-paid workers, and only allowing EU migrants to come to the UK for “skilled” jobs. In effect, this would mean that British workers would be sent to the fields or dreary factories, while EU migrants could access skilled work.

Taking BfB's actual statement, though, we get:

If Britain decided to leave the EU, policy-makers would face crucial questions about which direction they would like to take Britain's migration system: leaving would give the UK complete control, allowing it to either retain an 'open border' scheme or reduce inward immigration by, potentially, the tens of thousands.

The UK would gain significant new freedoms which would allow policymakers to, if desired by the British people, reform its migration system to select only highly skilled workers from across the world. It would also, crucially, have the power to remove the discriminatory element in our current migration system and apply the same criteria to both EU migrants and non-EU migrants, making it easier for the UK to fill the gaps in its economy by finding the best candidates globally.

However, meaningful reform could only come as part of a wide-ranging change in how the UK manages migration policy across a range of government departments. Leaving the EU is an enabler, not a solution in itself.

The real issue here is that we would not get these freedoms without also losing access to the Single Market, but the essence of what BfB is saying is a million miles from Sandys' claim. She is doing that cuddly little thing that Europhiles do – she lies.

Next in line for Sandys, though, is Carswell. She picks his "Singapore of Europe" model. This, we are told, doesn't try to put an end to free movement at all. In Carswell's post-Brexit Britain, employers will be under pressure to reduce employment rights. Says Sandys:

A new focus on trade with the rest of the world will require loosening visa restrictions in order to secure inward investment and bilateral trade deals. With already half of our migration coming from beyond Europe, it is unclear how well this vision would reduce actual numbers. And we shouldn't forget that migrants coming from the rest of the world are more likely to seek permanent residency, eventually getting old in the UK, with all the attendant health costs.

Then she goes for Farage's Brexit "retail offer", telling us that this is the model "that would place the greatest restrictions on free movement". But, says Sandys:

… for Britain to keep his promises, we would have to erect a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland – which would effectively become the "back door" option for migrants entering Britain from the EU. Farage heralds the Australia immigration model, but a closer look reveals that even Migration Watch says that the Australian model is "totally unsuitable" and admits that once you look at the figures behind the rhetoric, Australia has three times more migration proportionately than the UK.

Finally, we get a model she describes "the Twilight Zone option" – following the example set by Norway and Switzerland. This too, Sandys says, would fail to deal with migration issues, as Norway and Switzerland already have higher EU migration as a proportion of population than we do. Any Brexit proponents promising they can get access to the single market without free movement of people are selling a pup. So no real halt on EU migration with this model either.

And there, actually, we get to the substantive issue. We have a choice thrust upon us, as to whether to go for a limit on freedom of movement, or whether to preserve access to the Single Market. In Flexcit, we went for the latter, arguing that we could return to the immigration question at a later date.

What Sandys has done, therefore, is expose the vulnerability of the sections of the "no" campaign, sections who have not thought the issues through, and chosen to make migration an issue.

Sandys thus claims that they are currently leaving unspoken the reality that leaving the EU would merely make those who are currently insecure at work more insecure, and deliver almost no change in the need for workers from abroad.

If the "outers" (as she would have us be) really cared about those who feel threatened by immigration, she says, "they would propose aggressive enforcement of those breaking minimum-wage laws, promise a huge increase in skills development and support the living wage".

With that, we see where she is going – bogging us down with tedious detail over increasingly arcane points. That is what the "no" campaign has let her do. We need to take the high ground and "park" immigration as an issue, leaving Sandys out in the cold where she belongs.