Immigration: a self-licking lollipop

By Richard North - May 25, 2023

Through the daily articles on this blog, I have covered a wide range of issues yet, when it comes to immigration, my actual output has been relatively modest. In the earlier days of Turbulent Times, I tended to leave the issue to Pete, with articles such as this, most often covering the cultural effects of mass migration.

Both of us, in our own ways, have devoted most of our efforts to writing about illegal immigration and refugees, and especially the so-called dinghy people, latterly in the context of the Illegal Migration Bill.

For a number of reasons, though – some good, some bad – I have failed to focus on legal immigration, and in particular post-Brexit immigration policy. To some extent, like many others, I have fallen for the distraction of the dinghy people, something to which, it seems, Sunak would prefer us to give our attention.

However, with the publication today of the ONS immigration figures – out by the time most of you read this article – expected to show that that 728,000 more people came to the UK than left permanently – legal immigration has been catapulted to a dominant position.

What might matter just as much as the ONS figures are the data from the Home Office covering the first three months of this year. These are expected to show that the number of work and study visas has hit a record of almost a million, up by about a third on last year.

Such is the expected response that immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, has – according to The Times – hinted that more measures to reduce numbers would be announced after this week’s disclosure of plans to tackle the number of foreign students.

But, in an obvious contradiction to the expressions of concern, the Home Office is relaxing immigration controls still further, adding fishermen to the occupation shortage list, which makes it easier for employers to recruit foreign workers. Foreign fishermen, we are told, will be able to be employed on salaries as low as £21,000, 20 percent down on the average wage in the industry of £26,200.

Fishing, actually, is an issue all of its own, where it has long been difficult to recruit young persons to a tough and dangerous job, not least because so many are reluctant to spend days at a time out of mobile range and unable to use social media – a problem the industry shares with the Royal Navy. It also reflects a global problem where the fishing industry ranks high in the list of those resorting to slavery to provide enough workers.

That notwithstanding, the Senior Service also seems to have other issues on its mind but seems to have no trouble recruiting qualified diversity advisers to lecture on “genderbread sailors”, giving career advisers a greater knowledge of “gender identity, transgender issues and sexual orientation in today’s society”.

Interestingly, diversity advisers are not present in the list of “shortage occupations”, which give would-be immigrants their opportunities to apply for British citizenship.

It is most certainly the “skill shortages” which has become the “open sesame” which allow migrants to flood into the UK, with the blessing of HMG but, in policy terms, this aspect must also be seen alongside and integral with the government’s International Education Strategy launched on 16 March 2019 under the aegis of the May administration.

In a perverse and ill-thought-out strategy, the idea was to convert the UK’s further education system into an arm of Global Britain’s export industry, selling degree courses to foreign students in a bid to make up for the loss of exports to EU member states as a result of Brexit.

Focusing mainly on one-year taught Masters degrees, the idea was to increase the number of international students to 600,000 by 2030, earning £35 billion a year. The inducement was that students would be allowed to work in the UK for two years after their courses, and bring their close dependents with them.

Their presence in the UK also gave them the ideal opportunity to extend their employment into “shortage occupations” which, with an additional two years, entitled them to apply for British citizenship.

Given the adverse conditions in countries such as Nigeria, where 70 percent expressed a desire to leave the country if they had the resources, it should have come as no surprise that number of skilled work and study visas issued to Nigerians increased by 210 percent between 2019 and 2021, from 19,000 to 59,000.

It should also have come as no surprise to find that the less-prestigious end of the further education system has exploited this government-facilitated market and is now seeking to defend it, despite the abuse which has arisen.

Such abuse has been long-known, giving rise yesterday to an exchange in the Commons between Tory MP Aaron Bell and immigration minister Robert Jenrick, where Bell accused some universities of “selling immigration rather than education”.

Jenrick, acknowledging what has become a systematic scam, agreed that it was “important that universities primarily focus on education, not creating courses marketed overseas to individuals whose primary interest is in coming to the UK for immigration and work purposes, with those courses being a back door to that”.

But the ultimate irony of this system is that, while “skills shortages” are being used by employers to justify importing cheap immigrant labour (with a 20 percent discount on UK average rates being the norm), the very institutions which should be training indigenous employees are turning away British applicants in favour of more lucrative foreign students.

Even as early as 2015, long before this perverse policy was adopted, the government recognised that “employers may have reduced incentives to train native workers when they can employ migrants instead”. It was also found that migrant labour was often associated with reduced productivity.

Interestingly, the Guardian has been willing to report that business cuts to on-the-job training have made Australia increasingly reliant on migrants.

The paper cites an academic saying that companies “squealing” to government about worker skill shortage are contributing to it, yet it is not prepared to acknowledge the same dynamic in the UK. Instead it argues that skilled non-EU workers are helping the overall UK economy.

But the fact is that the UK government – in common with administrations in many developed countries – has created a self-licking lollipop. Entertaining complaints from employers about skill shortages, it has pandered to the call for increased immigration, adopting policy measures which are exacerbating the problems (and ignoring others), leading to calls for more immigration.

When even Nick Timothy – an advisor in the very administration which launched this perverse policy – recognises that the economy and state have become “addicted” to immigration, it is time for a “cold turkey” cure.

And while some apologists will argue that the high levels reported today are the result of special factors – such as immigrants from Ukraine and Hong Kong – this should not be allowed to obscure the real issue, a bankrupt political system that is making a bad situation worse.