Get Back or Let ‘Em In?

In his latest blog post, Alexander McBride considers the views on immigration held within the UK and what could be done to stimulate a pro-immigration narrative in the UK.

Nigel Farage has again played the UKIP trump card and committed his party to a points-based immigration system. Mr Farage’s disdain for the pro-immigration view of the “political class”, into which he will surely soon be assimilated, is extremely well received by the public. Indeed, for all the immigration into our green and pleasant land, those of us in favour of an open border remain in the minority.

One can understand Labour voters being anti-immigration. They are the traditional party of government intervention and many of their working-class voters feel wronged by the current open-door system. What is more troubling is that so many on the right share this stance, which should worry all of us who defend the free market.

Most Conservative and UKIP voters are, at least to some extent, economically liberal. To paraphrase Keynes, they are the slaves of Adam Smith, F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman. Ask them about the free movement of financial capital and they talk of how it’s integral to growth and prosperity. Yet question them on the free movement of labour and they invariably talk of jobs stolen from natives and undeserved benefits claims.

It is this incongruity that never ceases to confound, for financial capital and human capital (labour) are just two just facets of the genus capital. If one believes that government management of the flow of human capital can be done successfully, one is necessarily committed to the same belief with financial capital. And we all know how that ends.

In a sense it’s fortunate that politicians don’t buy into the views of their constituents (recall: Brown vs. Duffy), because the evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of an open border. A recent addition to the list of favourable evidence came in the form an LSE report on immigration’s impact on the British economy. I won’t bore you with the details – suffice to say, it refutes the popular anti-immigration narrative.

And what of the common gripe that immigrants don’t integrate with the native population? Well, to an extent that is true, but what are we expecting? Most immigrant communities are still fledgling in sociological terms, so to expect the likes of rural Oxfordshire to be a hive of activity for Poles or Jamaicans is a little unrealistic. Given that their children will be born British, grow up in British schools, have mainly British friends and be exposed to British culture, greater integration is just a matter of time.

What is needed is honest engagement with the public. Everyday working people aren’t going to read studies on the economics of immigration, and nor are they likely to extensively ponder the issue. Their opinions can only be changed through concise rebuttal. We should start by making it clear that the naysayers were wrong. One Mr Powell once said that our nation was “heaping up its own funeral pyre”. It would seem we used fire-retardant wood.

All views expressed in contributions by named authors are their own and may not reflect the views of The Freedom Association.