I'd like to talk about immigration. Did a chill just pass through cyberspace? Did you look over your shoulder worried that this blog might not be work safe? Are you fearful that the next sentence begins 'I'm not a racist but...' Relax, this is a safe place. There will be no references to England being swamped or seaside towns being overrun; nonetheless even mentioning the word 'immigration' can be enough to shut down debate.
This strikes me as odd; no subject should be taboo apart from Morris dancing which is in my opinion nothing short of witchcraft. I've seen 'The Wicker Man'; one day you're skipping round the village green in a costume with bells on, next day you're sacrificing Edward Woodward to the pagan gods. My attitude to folk traditions may be influenced by a traumatic late night viewing of said film, aged twelve, when I had no idea of the ending. However I digress, back to the tricky subject of immigration.
Let me set out a simple principle: very few things are inherently good or bad, apart from Morris dancing which I've mentioned, patio heaters are another, as are leaf blowers (they are all bad just in case you were wondering). Inherently good things might include a small child laughing, Michael Palin and freshly baked bread (unless you are gluten intolerant). My point is that you cannot discuss immigration in simplistic binary terms, namely you are either for it or against it with no shades of opinion in between. The idea is self evidently nonsense, which these two hypotheticals will hopefully demonstrate.
Imagine that the only immigrants wishing to settle in the UK were highly educated, tolerant and hard-working people, with no dependents, who wished to work in areas where there was a chronic shortage of candidates such as physics teachers. Their numbers were modest and could easily be absorbed by the country without pressure on housing or social services. Ask anyone what they thought of immigration in this scenario and the overwhelming majority would be in favour.
An alternative scenario might be one where the only immigrants wished to settle in the UK were members of organised crime families, with convictions forserious offences, who intended to devote their time in their new homeland to furthering their criminal works. They too would arrive in small numbers, but in this situation nearly everyone would be against immigration. So it's a a meaningless question to ask is immigration good or bad, without context.
Think of it another way, I invite you to a fantasy time-travel dinner party, except you have no idea of the guest list. Do you say yes or no? Hard to decide. What if I tell you it's composed of the most famous individuals of the last 100 years? You would be intrigued yet the crucial question is the people attending. It might be Hitler or Gandhi, Stalin or Martin Luther King. The example is deliberately absurd to illustrate the futile nature of debating a concept without context. The devil is in the detail as the saying goes and it was probably said by Satan's lawyer.
Talking about immigration is a very touchy subject for mainstream politicians. Ed Milliband forgot to mention it during his conference speech, funny that. David Cameron looks like he's regurgitating a fur ball every time he's forced to discuss the subject. I think the reason it's become so toxic is one of the new axioms of modernity that we are all supposed to endorse, yet most know is ridiculous. The free movement of peoples is one of the stated principles of the EU, which on the surface sounds like a lovely idea. Except when you think about it, it's profoundly unfair. There are close to 500 million people in the EU, what would happen if they all decided overnight to settle in Bruges. It's a charming city, I've never been, but I've seen the film 'In Bruges' and it's nothing if not photogenic; there's no way it could accommodate half a billion people.
So logically, we can't all just settle where please, not least because it impacts the people already living there. If you need further proof, ask a Palestinian about their feelings on the matter. Okay cheap comment, but the concept is sound. The world is host to over seven billion people, some live in poor countries, others in middle income ones, a minority in prosperous lands. There is no conceivable scenario, where anyone would suggest total freedom movement of peoples as the most likely outcome would be huge migrations from the poor to the rich states which in turn would cause chaos and ultimately make everyone worse off than they were before. The Economist magazine, normally a perceptive and wise publication, holds to this dogma, irrespective of the practicalities. They also back free movement of capital and look how well that's worked out - a subject for another blog
You cannot discuss immigration without talking about who those people might be, however delicate our collective sensibilities. The question is not one of pure economics and in any event, economists cannot agree whether mass immigration is a net positive or negative for the host countries. Britain is a liberal society, under the rule of law, which does a reasonable job of protecting individual liberties. It's not perfect, nowhere is, something that the likes of Liberty seem to forget; it's a work in progress. Maybe there is heaven on earth somewhere, Sweden perhaps or Denmark? But they've seen a surge in far right votes recently, so there's trouble even in paradise. And it seems that immigration is the flashpoint, especially if newcomers reject liberal values, such equality for women or not stoning gay people to death, for example.
Of course there's xenophobia and racism towards new arrivals and none of this excuses that, but I wonder if the flowering of far right groups across Europe is the poison fruit of this creed about free movement. It undermines one of the fundamental attributes of a nation state, which is the control of its borders and the granting of rights to work and settle. If the aims of unrestricted movement of peoples in the EU was to bring people together, it seems to be having exactly the opposite outcome. That's not whant any of us want, whatever party we vote for.
