Giving the lie to the "we must have more immigrants" mantra
Robert Henderson | 07.01.2004 03:06
The idea that a country must continue to grow its economy through immigration without regard to the social consequences of doing so is reckless in the extreme. It is also economically illiterate.
Giving the lie to the "we must have more immigrants" mantra
By Robert Henderson
The idea that a country must continue to grow its economy through immigration without regard to the social consequences of doing so is reckless in the extreme. It is also economically illiterate.
The weakness of the pro-immigrant argument - that we must have more immigrants to maintain our society and compete with other societies - can be seen simply by asking what would happen if no immigration took place.
In the case of the general economy, that would soon adjust to a shortage of labour. It would do this by using labour more efficiently, shifting labour to the jobs which are deemed most valuable, utilising the labour of those sections of the population currently underemployed or unemployed, e.g. those over the age of fifty, and by introducing ever more efficient machines.
In the longer term, we can improve the quality of the workforce generally by providing meaningful education and training for all. Presently, large numbers of our children emerge from school with precious little evidence that they had spent at least 11 years there.
Perhaps the most important thing to realise is that no person or groups are indispensable to an economy. England's history has a first rate example of how people are replaced when necessity arises. In 1290 Edward I expelled the Jews from England. They were not officially re-admitted until the 1650s. Received wisdom amongst modern British historians would have it that England should have suffered for that act, the Jews being counted as an asset to a country.
In fact, in the 350 years they were absent, England became one of the richest and most influential countries in Europe and laid the foundations for the industrial revolution. The Jews in England were replaced by Christian bankers, Christian merchants and Christian artisans. That is not to deny the abilities of Jews merely to point out that their skills are far from unique or irreplaceable.
There is in Britain currently, in Marx's words, a very large reserve army of labour, there being probably in excess of 3 million people unemployed. The labour force survey of the unemployed - the internationally most used standard - shows 1.8 million seeking work. To that may be added a large number of people who have retired early but who would probably welcome a job if they could get one and the many people in higher education who are effectively delaying their entry into the labour market for no good reason.
Who would do the menial jobs if immigrants ceased to come? Many of these jobs are unnecessary. Take cleaning. With the proper equipment, one person may do what six do with a dustpan and brush. Yet many industrial cleaning jobs are still undertaken with pretty rudimentary equipment. Where mechanisation is impossible, the pay for such jobs would have to be raised to a level where they attract sufficient workers or, where the jobs are not essential, not done at all.
Bringing cheap labour into a country is a sure road to ruin for an industry in the long run. Cheap labour may get employers out of an immediate hole, but in a free trading world the advantage will soon be undercut by even cheaper labour in other less developed economies and increased mechanisation in advanced countries which do not allow imported cheap labour. This is precisely what happened to the British textile industry. In the late fifties and early sixties they important cheap labour from the sub-continent. Within 15 years most of the labour was no longer employed in the trade because the British mills had not modernised and British Mill wages although low were still nothing like as low as those in the Third World.
The dismal truth is that Britain in practice exercises no quality control of immigration. Anyone resident in the EU may move to Britain legally. Foreign spouses are generally allowed in since the abolition of the "primary purpose" rule by Labour after the came to power in 1997. Other dependants likewise have easy entry and asylum seekers are rarely if ever removed whether or not they are granted the right to stay. To those groups may be added the illegals. All of these people are allowed into Britain without any concern for their abilities or training. Even the work permit system for those outside the EU is so liberal that more than 100,000 people are allowed in each year, often for menial jobs.
The future is of course always uncertain, but it is arguably more uncertain now than ever before. In the lifetimes of most people now living it is probable that genetic engineering will be used to both significantly increase average lifespans and alter the qualities and abilities of the population. To that may be added the near certainty of advances in artificial intelligence within the next half century which will produce robots that can do most of the jobs men now do. Either of those new technologies will revolutionise society and produce great social stresses. The last thing any society will need at such times is the additional burden of racial and cultural division.
We are told that to compete with other countries we must grow our economies to become larger and larger. In fact, even with a stable or declining population, it does not follow that the country will go to rack and ruin. All it means is that the country will have to adjust to the new circumstances, which of course will occur very gradually and allow for a for a gentle transition.
The idea that a country can only survive by having an ever increasing workforce can be seen for the fraud it is by simply pointing to the example of most of the First World economies, including Britain, whose populations have grown very slowly over the past fifty years. During that period the greatest ever expansion of their economies has taken place.
As for the pensions scare, demographic projections are notoriously unreliable. It is quite possible that in ten years time the birth rate will be above replacement level again - just looking at the people I see in the street, I suspect that the tide may already have turned because there do seem to be an awful lot of young children around. But even if the present demographic projections are proven to be correct, the decline can be managed by making provision now. That should be done by setting up a national pension fund into which each year 1% of GDP should be invested - at present that would mean £10 billion pa - and adjusting retirement ages where necessary.
The other great lie of the immigration propagandists is that immigrants are an economic boon to the recipient country and that they pay their way through taxes. A little thought will show this is nonsense in a country such as Britain, which has a fully-fledged welfare system.
Any legal immigrant coming into Britain will immediately be eligible for the full range of state provision, including healthcare, without ever having paid a penny in tax. If the immigrant has dependants they will have the same eligibility. Should the children be of school age, they will receive education free. Moreover, a large proportion of those of working age coming to Britain remain unemployed for a considerable time, or work in the black economy where they pay no tax or NI and frequently draw benefits at the same time.
The cost of maintaining an immigrant family can be surprising. Let us take an actual example. The Daily Telegraph ran a story on 26/3/2000 about a family of Kosovan Asylum seekers living in Leeds. The family consisted of the parents and four children aged 15,13,11,16. They were receiving benefit, had a three-bedroom council house and the children were being educated at a local school. The parents and children speak little English. The father was a builder in Kosovo, the mother a housewife. One of the children has a rare brain condition.
According to the story, they received £150 a week living allowance. That is £7800 pa. They had a three-bedroom house for which the rent will be paid by Housing Benefit. Leeds is quite an expensive area, so let us say the rent even of council property would probably be £60 per week. That is £3120 pa. All the children are at school. Three will be a secondary school and one at primary. Because they do not speak English well, they will need special needs teaching. If we say the average cost of educating them will be £3000 pa each that will be conservative. So that is another £12000. That is a total of £23,900.
To those costs one must add free dental and medical treatment. Children are very draining on the NHS. Moreover, one of them has a rare chronic condition. If we said the family of six will cost £500 each for medical and dental care pa that adds £3000 pa to the bill. I suspect that they also draw child benefit. Four children of that age will bring in about £40 per week or £2000 pa. So we are now up to £28,900. The cost could of course be greatly inflated if serious illness strikes. To that you may add in legal aid for their asylum application.
As neither of the parents speaks English well, it is unlikely that they will get jobs, particularly well paid jobs. The children will all be at school for years. Therefore, they will be a burden on the state for years. Moreover, the parents may have as many more children as they want and the taxpayer will be landed with the bill. And they get all this without having paid a penny in taxes in their entire lives. The Immigration officers union estimates the cost to the taxpayer of asylum seekers alone is £2 billion a year.
It is difficult to get any hard figures on immigration into Britain, but we do have some indication from Home Office statistics. Asylum seekers and dependants are running at around 90,000 pa. Spouses and other dependants from outside the EU exceed 100,000. This year, work permit entry for non-EU citizens will also exceed 100,000. Those three categories alone total around 300,000. To those may be added those legality resident in the other parts of the EU moving to Britain and the illegals. The total must be in excess of half a million a year at the most conservative estimate. It could well be much more, but let us assume 500,000. If they cost the country only £2,000 per head pa, that is £1 billion pounds each year.
The economic disadvantage to the country is carried through to subsequent generations. We know from the statistics constantly thrust at us by government and agencies such as the CRE, that second and subsequent generation immigrants, and particularly black and Asian immigrants, are more likely than the native population to be: -
(1) unemployed,
(2) earn less on average,
(3) have a higher incidence of benefit take-up,
(4) are more likely to occupy social housing and
(5) commit more crime.
Thus, immigrants overall down the generations do not pull their economic weight.
Immigration on a large scale will always mean that the overall quality of the immigrants is mediocre. That is so simply because there are not that many people with scarce and desirable skills and abilities. Most who come will be unskilled, poorly educated, none-too-bright and probably without adequate English. They will place pressure on our welfare state and schools by creating additional demand. They will take low skilled jobs or be unemployed. Their availability will allow employers to remain inefficient and depress the wages of the native population who still need the jobs the immigrants compete for. Immigrants also compete for housing, both private and public. This can have a dramatic effect as those in London are already discovering as private housing become absurdly expensive and social housing in ever shorter supply because of the pressure of immigrants.
All of these things are a cause of social disruption and expense and a good reason for not permitting mass immigration in themselves. However, there is a larger reason, namely, mass immigration is a form of conquest and should be resisted as vigorously as a military invasion.
The logic of the "ever growing need for immigrants to feed the economy" argument is that the economy is all. It assumes that men have no other concern than to grow ever richer, that the problems of race and culture are unimportant, that Man's tribalism can be ignored. It is a recipe for incessant conflict.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A multicultural society is a contradiction in terms, dissolving society into competing fragments. It gives people nothing to identify with or hold in common with each other. It creates instead a grievance culture in which minorities present themselves as victims."
Melanie PHILLIPS, 2001, Sunday Times 2 ix. {Melanie Phillips was till recently a regular columnist for the left-wing Observer newspaper.}
"The borders of Western countries are under siege and the West needs to consider incentives for would-be migrants to stay at home."
EDITORIAL, Sunday Times 2 ix 2001.
"....until we free ourselves of the constraints of multiculturalist dogma, and reaffirm the central importance of historic American culture and immigrant assimilation into that culture, we will face an immigrant situation that is not only a social problem, but also a national security risk."
Lance IZUMI (Senior Fellow in California Studies, Pacific Research Institute), VDARE.COM, 19 x 2001 (
http://www.vdare.com/misc/izumi_assimilation.htm).
"[Home Secretary David Blunkett's] outburst [urging that immigrants learn English and renounce arranged marriages and genital mutilation] is quite useful. The pussyfooting fake reverence for immigrant "cultures" has done damage to British life."
TopTimes columnist Libby PURVES, 11 xii 01
"A Sunday Times survey has found that four of ten British Muslims believe Osama bin Laden is justified in mounting his war against the USA. ..liberal Britain has got to get real and ditch the multiculturalism that is now a menace to life and liberty."
Melanie PHILLIPS, 2001, Sunday Times, 4 xi 01.
By Robert Henderson
The idea that a country must continue to grow its economy through immigration without regard to the social consequences of doing so is reckless in the extreme. It is also economically illiterate.
The weakness of the pro-immigrant argument - that we must have more immigrants to maintain our society and compete with other societies - can be seen simply by asking what would happen if no immigration took place.
In the case of the general economy, that would soon adjust to a shortage of labour. It would do this by using labour more efficiently, shifting labour to the jobs which are deemed most valuable, utilising the labour of those sections of the population currently underemployed or unemployed, e.g. those over the age of fifty, and by introducing ever more efficient machines.
In the longer term, we can improve the quality of the workforce generally by providing meaningful education and training for all. Presently, large numbers of our children emerge from school with precious little evidence that they had spent at least 11 years there.
Perhaps the most important thing to realise is that no person or groups are indispensable to an economy. England's history has a first rate example of how people are replaced when necessity arises. In 1290 Edward I expelled the Jews from England. They were not officially re-admitted until the 1650s. Received wisdom amongst modern British historians would have it that England should have suffered for that act, the Jews being counted as an asset to a country.
In fact, in the 350 years they were absent, England became one of the richest and most influential countries in Europe and laid the foundations for the industrial revolution. The Jews in England were replaced by Christian bankers, Christian merchants and Christian artisans. That is not to deny the abilities of Jews merely to point out that their skills are far from unique or irreplaceable.
There is in Britain currently, in Marx's words, a very large reserve army of labour, there being probably in excess of 3 million people unemployed. The labour force survey of the unemployed - the internationally most used standard - shows 1.8 million seeking work. To that may be added a large number of people who have retired early but who would probably welcome a job if they could get one and the many people in higher education who are effectively delaying their entry into the labour market for no good reason.
Who would do the menial jobs if immigrants ceased to come? Many of these jobs are unnecessary. Take cleaning. With the proper equipment, one person may do what six do with a dustpan and brush. Yet many industrial cleaning jobs are still undertaken with pretty rudimentary equipment. Where mechanisation is impossible, the pay for such jobs would have to be raised to a level where they attract sufficient workers or, where the jobs are not essential, not done at all.
Bringing cheap labour into a country is a sure road to ruin for an industry in the long run. Cheap labour may get employers out of an immediate hole, but in a free trading world the advantage will soon be undercut by even cheaper labour in other less developed economies and increased mechanisation in advanced countries which do not allow imported cheap labour. This is precisely what happened to the British textile industry. In the late fifties and early sixties they important cheap labour from the sub-continent. Within 15 years most of the labour was no longer employed in the trade because the British mills had not modernised and British Mill wages although low were still nothing like as low as those in the Third World.
The dismal truth is that Britain in practice exercises no quality control of immigration. Anyone resident in the EU may move to Britain legally. Foreign spouses are generally allowed in since the abolition of the "primary purpose" rule by Labour after the came to power in 1997. Other dependants likewise have easy entry and asylum seekers are rarely if ever removed whether or not they are granted the right to stay. To those groups may be added the illegals. All of these people are allowed into Britain without any concern for their abilities or training. Even the work permit system for those outside the EU is so liberal that more than 100,000 people are allowed in each year, often for menial jobs.
The future is of course always uncertain, but it is arguably more uncertain now than ever before. In the lifetimes of most people now living it is probable that genetic engineering will be used to both significantly increase average lifespans and alter the qualities and abilities of the population. To that may be added the near certainty of advances in artificial intelligence within the next half century which will produce robots that can do most of the jobs men now do. Either of those new technologies will revolutionise society and produce great social stresses. The last thing any society will need at such times is the additional burden of racial and cultural division.
We are told that to compete with other countries we must grow our economies to become larger and larger. In fact, even with a stable or declining population, it does not follow that the country will go to rack and ruin. All it means is that the country will have to adjust to the new circumstances, which of course will occur very gradually and allow for a for a gentle transition.
The idea that a country can only survive by having an ever increasing workforce can be seen for the fraud it is by simply pointing to the example of most of the First World economies, including Britain, whose populations have grown very slowly over the past fifty years. During that period the greatest ever expansion of their economies has taken place.
As for the pensions scare, demographic projections are notoriously unreliable. It is quite possible that in ten years time the birth rate will be above replacement level again - just looking at the people I see in the street, I suspect that the tide may already have turned because there do seem to be an awful lot of young children around. But even if the present demographic projections are proven to be correct, the decline can be managed by making provision now. That should be done by setting up a national pension fund into which each year 1% of GDP should be invested - at present that would mean £10 billion pa - and adjusting retirement ages where necessary.
The other great lie of the immigration propagandists is that immigrants are an economic boon to the recipient country and that they pay their way through taxes. A little thought will show this is nonsense in a country such as Britain, which has a fully-fledged welfare system.
Any legal immigrant coming into Britain will immediately be eligible for the full range of state provision, including healthcare, without ever having paid a penny in tax. If the immigrant has dependants they will have the same eligibility. Should the children be of school age, they will receive education free. Moreover, a large proportion of those of working age coming to Britain remain unemployed for a considerable time, or work in the black economy where they pay no tax or NI and frequently draw benefits at the same time.
The cost of maintaining an immigrant family can be surprising. Let us take an actual example. The Daily Telegraph ran a story on 26/3/2000 about a family of Kosovan Asylum seekers living in Leeds. The family consisted of the parents and four children aged 15,13,11,16. They were receiving benefit, had a three-bedroom council house and the children were being educated at a local school. The parents and children speak little English. The father was a builder in Kosovo, the mother a housewife. One of the children has a rare brain condition.
According to the story, they received £150 a week living allowance. That is £7800 pa. They had a three-bedroom house for which the rent will be paid by Housing Benefit. Leeds is quite an expensive area, so let us say the rent even of council property would probably be £60 per week. That is £3120 pa. All the children are at school. Three will be a secondary school and one at primary. Because they do not speak English well, they will need special needs teaching. If we say the average cost of educating them will be £3000 pa each that will be conservative. So that is another £12000. That is a total of £23,900.
To those costs one must add free dental and medical treatment. Children are very draining on the NHS. Moreover, one of them has a rare chronic condition. If we said the family of six will cost £500 each for medical and dental care pa that adds £3000 pa to the bill. I suspect that they also draw child benefit. Four children of that age will bring in about £40 per week or £2000 pa. So we are now up to £28,900. The cost could of course be greatly inflated if serious illness strikes. To that you may add in legal aid for their asylum application.
As neither of the parents speaks English well, it is unlikely that they will get jobs, particularly well paid jobs. The children will all be at school for years. Therefore, they will be a burden on the state for years. Moreover, the parents may have as many more children as they want and the taxpayer will be landed with the bill. And they get all this without having paid a penny in taxes in their entire lives. The Immigration officers union estimates the cost to the taxpayer of asylum seekers alone is £2 billion a year.
It is difficult to get any hard figures on immigration into Britain, but we do have some indication from Home Office statistics. Asylum seekers and dependants are running at around 90,000 pa. Spouses and other dependants from outside the EU exceed 100,000. This year, work permit entry for non-EU citizens will also exceed 100,000. Those three categories alone total around 300,000. To those may be added those legality resident in the other parts of the EU moving to Britain and the illegals. The total must be in excess of half a million a year at the most conservative estimate. It could well be much more, but let us assume 500,000. If they cost the country only £2,000 per head pa, that is £1 billion pounds each year.
The economic disadvantage to the country is carried through to subsequent generations. We know from the statistics constantly thrust at us by government and agencies such as the CRE, that second and subsequent generation immigrants, and particularly black and Asian immigrants, are more likely than the native population to be: -
(1) unemployed,
(2) earn less on average,
(3) have a higher incidence of benefit take-up,
(4) are more likely to occupy social housing and
(5) commit more crime.
Thus, immigrants overall down the generations do not pull their economic weight.
Immigration on a large scale will always mean that the overall quality of the immigrants is mediocre. That is so simply because there are not that many people with scarce and desirable skills and abilities. Most who come will be unskilled, poorly educated, none-too-bright and probably without adequate English. They will place pressure on our welfare state and schools by creating additional demand. They will take low skilled jobs or be unemployed. Their availability will allow employers to remain inefficient and depress the wages of the native population who still need the jobs the immigrants compete for. Immigrants also compete for housing, both private and public. This can have a dramatic effect as those in London are already discovering as private housing become absurdly expensive and social housing in ever shorter supply because of the pressure of immigrants.
All of these things are a cause of social disruption and expense and a good reason for not permitting mass immigration in themselves. However, there is a larger reason, namely, mass immigration is a form of conquest and should be resisted as vigorously as a military invasion.
The logic of the "ever growing need for immigrants to feed the economy" argument is that the economy is all. It assumes that men have no other concern than to grow ever richer, that the problems of race and culture are unimportant, that Man's tribalism can be ignored. It is a recipe for incessant conflict.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A multicultural society is a contradiction in terms, dissolving society into competing fragments. It gives people nothing to identify with or hold in common with each other. It creates instead a grievance culture in which minorities present themselves as victims."
Melanie PHILLIPS, 2001, Sunday Times 2 ix. {Melanie Phillips was till recently a regular columnist for the left-wing Observer newspaper.}
"The borders of Western countries are under siege and the West needs to consider incentives for would-be migrants to stay at home."
EDITORIAL, Sunday Times 2 ix 2001.
"....until we free ourselves of the constraints of multiculturalist dogma, and reaffirm the central importance of historic American culture and immigrant assimilation into that culture, we will face an immigrant situation that is not only a social problem, but also a national security risk."
Lance IZUMI (Senior Fellow in California Studies, Pacific Research Institute), VDARE.COM, 19 x 2001 (
http://www.vdare.com/misc/izumi_assimilation.htm). "[Home Secretary David Blunkett's] outburst [urging that immigrants learn English and renounce arranged marriages and genital mutilation] is quite useful. The pussyfooting fake reverence for immigrant "cultures" has done damage to British life."
TopTimes columnist Libby PURVES, 11 xii 01
"A Sunday Times survey has found that four of ten British Muslims believe Osama bin Laden is justified in mounting his war against the USA. ..liberal Britain has got to get real and ditch the multiculturalism that is now a menace to life and liberty."
Melanie PHILLIPS, 2001, Sunday Times, 4 xi 01.
Robert Henderson