(Source: Blueguardme.com)
The government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, keen to push hard line policies on immigration to an increasingly xenophobic British electorate, recently passed new legislation to "stop the boats" crossing the English Channel.
Central to the government's narrative on immigration is the notion that Britain is taking more than its fair share of immigrants compared to other European countries. The government particularly emphasises unauthorised immigration for the obvious reason that when immigrants are perceived as law breakers it is far easier to vilify and scapegoat them.
Seen in this light, it is no surprise that reports that emphasise illegal immigration have been especially influential in setting the tone on immigration policy for successive Conservative governments.
One such report is "Europe’s Unauthorized Immigrant Population Peaks in 2016, Then Levels Off" by the Pew Research Center, November 13, 2019. The report shows that UK has twice as much unauthorised immigration as other European countries. It also mentions that the proportion of people in the UK born abroad stands at 17% compared to 8% in the rest of Europe.
Jointly, these number convey the impression that the UK is not only full of immigrants already, but also being overrun by fresh inflows of migrants. This message suits a populist government keen to secure evidence that can help it to justify a clamp down on foreigners.
Yet, reality is not quite as simple. For one, it is important to distinguish between the stock of settled immigrants and the flow of newly arriving immigrants.
The UK has a larger stock of already settled migrants than most other European countries for historical reasons. Britain invaded and occupied huge swathes of the planet during the era of empire and colonialism. The British Empire spread the English language to more corners of the planet than any other language. Over time, many immigrants have sought out Britain for the simple reason that they speak the language. The widespread use of English in business and global communications in general has also made British schools and education establishments attractive to young ambitious people from the former colonies. Finally, Britain exported its legal system to a large number of former colonies, so the legal challenges associated with immigrating to the UK are likely to have been less onerous than those encountered in countries with less familiar legal systems.
These factors contributed significantly to the large stock of settled migrants during the period when Britain maintained an open-door policy towards immigration from the Commonwealth (former colonies) in the 1950s and 1960s. Britain invited these immigrants to alleviate acute domestic labour and skills shortages.
As for the current flow of new immigrants, the picture of unauthorised immigration painted by the Pew Research report is highly misleading in terms of Britain's share of overall immigration to Europe. This is because authorised immigration in Britain is lower than in other comparable European countries.
Authorised immigration is low relative to unauthorised immigration in Britain, because the UK government is deliberately clamping down hard on authorised immigration. However, this has pushed a great deal of immigration underground, that is, into unauthorised channels. No wonder, then, that there are suddenly so many small boats arriving on the shores of the UK.
This observation is consistent with the widely documented migrant behaviour from elsewhere, which show that overall migration tends to be insensitive to legal restrictions. Why? Because immigrants already take such huge risks that tighter immigration rules only have a very marginal impact. When channels for official immigration close, immigrants find other, unofficial channels.
Table 1 below illustrates these points. The table shows total populations as well as unauthorised and unauthorised immigration for the UK and comparable European countries. Three observations are worth highlighting:
Table 1: Immigration and population statistics (UK and major European countries)
Country | Population | Unauthorised immigration | Authorised immigration | Unauthorised immigration as % of total immigration | Total immigration as % of total population |
UK | 67,736,802 | 1,000,000 | 1,400,000 | 42% | 4% |
Germany | 83,294,633 | 1,100,000 | 4,300,000 | 20% | 6% |
France | 64,756,584 | 350,000 | 2,750,000 | 11% | 5% |
Italy | 58,870,762 | 600,000 | 1,400,000 | 30% | 3% |
(Source: Pew Research, Worldometers.info)
First, UK has a higher unauthorised immigration than other countries as a share of total immigration. Specifically, UK has 1.0m unauthorised compared to just 1.4m authorised immigration, meaning that a whopping 42% of UK immigration is unauthorised. This is a damning indictment of British immigration policy.
For comparison, Germany has 1.1m unauthorised immigration (more than UK in absolute terms), but 4.3m authorised immigration per year, so only 20% of total immigration in Germany is unauthorised.
The corresponding shares of unauthorised immigration in France and Italy are 11% and 30%, respectively.
Second, UK does not stand out from comparable European countries in any way when it comes to total immigration. The UK takes a total of 2.4m immigrants per year, which far less than both Germany (5.4m) and also less than. France (3.1m). Italy's total immigration is only marginally lower than that of the UK at 2.0m.
Third, after controlling for population size the UK takes even fewer immigrants. The last column in Table 1 shows total immigration as a share of the total population. In the UK, total immigration is 4% of the total population, which is meaningfully lower than Germany (6%) and also lower than France (5%). Total immigration to Italy is marginally below than of the UK (3%).
In conclusion, it is simply not true that Britain is being overrun by immigrants relative to comparable European countries. In fact, the UK is entirely unremarkable except in one important regard, namely that UK immigration policies are a complete shambles. Unauthorised immigration in the UK is unusually high, because the UK government deliberately suppresses legal immigration, thereby driving otherwise legal immigrants underground.
Aside from the fact that the policy does not reduce overall immigration, it is also a morally bankrupt policy. Policies that drive immigration underground increase the already high risks faced by vulnerable immigrants, for example by driving them into the arms of traffickers and other criminal gangs. As a result, many immigrants get abused en route. Many drown.
The End
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