Now is the time to slow down immigration. Michael Fallon's ‘swamped by migrants’ remark leaves Tories in disarray. / GUARDIAN

Romanian migrants at work in Sussex: ‘Much of the fuss about migration has focused on its short-term economic impact.’ Photograph: Rex/Jason Alden/Rex/Jason Alden

Now is the time to slow down immigration

The right’s reaction to public concern has been dysfunctional – but we must take time to ease tensions and take stock of social consequences

Paul Collier

The Guardian, Tuesday 4 November 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/04/slow-immigration-social-consequences

What are we to make of the surging salience of immigration and the concomitant rise in support for Ukip? Are its supporters deluded, racist and misled, as the left would have it? Or are they voicing the wisdom of crowds, in angry alienation from metropolitan elites that have abandoned national identity, as claimed by the right?

Public policy clearly needs to lower the temperature before popular discourse metastasises into something ugly. Evidently, it will need to address reasonable concerns and allay unwarranted fears. Instead, the political reaction has been predictably dysfunctional.

The right smells a chance to castigate the left by exaggerating the costs of immigration: “we’re swamped”, and a theatrically aggressive message – “if its boat people getting swamped then it’s not our problem”. The left, terrified that any acknowledgment of costs would license hostility to migrants, clings to the narrative of the open door: that immigration delivers big economic gains. The key to getting out of this dangerous situation is to recognise that there is no inconsistency in asserting that past immigration has been modestly beneficial, while accepting that there is now a good case for curtailing further immigration. Existing immigrants are welcome, but future immigrants should be discouraged.

Much of the fuss about migration has focused on its short-term economic impact: it is variously alleged to be crowding the low-skilled out of jobs (Ukip) or to be essential for growth or short-term fiscal receipts (the left and big business). In fact, the evidence is that these effects are minimal. A careful new study across Europe by Frédéric Doquier of the University of Louvain finds that the cumulative impact of a decade of immigration has changed wages by between 0% and 0.5%, depending on the country.

The important effects of immigration are social and long term, not economic and short term. The key long-term social effects are probably on the overall size of the population and its diversity. As to population size, Britain is already one of the most crowded countries in Europe, and there is a sound environmental argument for protecting quality of life by discouraging further substantial increases. As to diversity, it involves a trade-off: as it increases, variety is enhanced but cohesion reduced. Variety is good but, unfortunately, as cohesion erodes voters become less willing to support generous welfare programmes.

There is a universal psychological tendency for inconvenient truths to be denigrated, and this is certainly inconvenient for the left. But it is not speculation: I describe some of the supporting research in my book Exodus, and rigorous new experimental research by the Oxford political scientists Sergi Pardos and Jordi Muñoz finds that immigration has just this effect, especially on benefits that are targeted at the poor.

This answers the question I started with. The trade-off between variety and cohesion affects social groups differently. The young, affluent middle classes are the big beneficiaries of variety. In contrast, those people on benefits, whether because they are unemployed or pensioners, are the most vulnerable to the weakening of cohesion.

Ukip support is highly distinctive in that it is concentrated in areas of unemployment and retirement. While Ukip supporters may well be deluded, racist and misled, their opposition to further rapid immigration is indeed likely to be in their own best interest. There is a good case for confronting their delusions and racism, and countering the misleading drizzle of anti-immigrant anecdotes, but this would not make them accepting of continued high immigration.

Might Ireland or Scotland provide models of more welcoming environments than England? During its boom, Ireland managed to accept larger proportionate numbers of immigrants than England with less opposition. Alex Salmond famously pitched that an independent Scotland would welcome immigration. Should a frigidly xenophobic England learn from Celtic warmth?

Such denigration of the English is fatuous. The immigrants to Ireland were overwhelmingly Catholic east Europeans, and so integrated into the basic Irish unit of social organisation relatively easily. Further, the Irish welfare system remains rudimentary, so once the economy crashed many of its immigrants left. Whether this temporary surge in immigration was beneficial to Ireland is debatable: by facilitating the construction boom, it amplified the mega-bust that followed, but anyway it is not an option for England. As to Scotland, it already has zero net migration: immigrants overwhelmingly opt for England. A Labour attempt to disperse some Somali immigrants to Glasgow had to be abandoned because one was murdered. Salmond’s pitch was merely cheap talk.

There is no way of establishing whether further increases in diversity in England would be a net gain or a net cost. However, the rate at which migrants are assimilating appears to be slower than had been expected. Immigrants have tended to cluster, and this reduces social interaction outside the group. Hence, after the surge in immigration since 1997, it may be sensible to have a temporary phase of slower immigration while we take stock of its social consequences. The economic consequences of a pause would be negligible as long as students were exempted.

It would be salutary for business to find that it had to train the existing workforce rather than poach trained workers from poorer countries: what is good for business is not necessarily good for the rest of us. Far from a pause licensing hostility to existing migrants, it may be necessary to avert hostility. While Ukip supporters should rationally fear continued rapid increases in diversity, they should welcome the integration of existing immigrants.

The true focus of policy should be on what, realistically, can be done to implement a pause. For non-EU immigration we retain considerable policy freedom, but within the EU we have to get smart. We need to ask ourselves why so many would-be immigrants crowd at Calais: after all, their alternative to England is not their country of origin, but France and the entire open-access Schengen area, including prosperous Germany and generous Scandinavia.

Perhaps it is that, unlike in the rest of Europe, access to our welfare system is not determined by past contributions. We could change that without EU permission. Or maybe it is that, owing to theatrical Tory opposition to identity cards, and the absence of a system of residence registers as exists in much of Europe, we are a paradise for illegality. We could change that too. Or perhaps it is that London is booming.

If this is the real issue, then we have a reasonable basis for negotiation with the European commission. The right to impose temporary controls triggered by out-of-phase economic cycles, which could be invoked by any country that met the eligibility criteria, would not challenge the existential symbolism that many continental politicians attach to the principle of free movement.

Ukip is on to the perfect issue: majority opposition to continued rapid immigration can be linked to the need to recover policy freedom from the European commission. The attempt to counter it with the message that continued immigration and EU membership are economically necessary is ineffective because it is seen by many ordinary people as a self-serving elite narrative that conceals contempt for their concerns.

Breaking out of this is essential and feasible, but the left must take the lead. Two generations ago the US opened to China because Richard Nixon saw that only the right could free Americans from the myth of the “yellow peril”. In Britain now, only the left can free us from the myth of the open door.

• Paul Collier is professor of economics and public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, and the author of Exodus: Immigration and Multiculturalism in the 21st Century.

Michael Fallon's ‘swamped by migrants’ remark leaves Tories in disarray

Defence minister’s comments about immigration prompt hasty climbdown by No 10

Rajeev Syal

The Guardian, Monday 27 October 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/26/michael-fallon-comments-tories-disarray

Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, has claimed British towns are being “swamped” by immigrants and their residents are “under siege”, in an escalation of the emotive language being used by Tory ministers calling for a renegotiation of the UK’s relationship with Europe.

In language reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s, he said on Sunday that in some areas of the UK, large numbers of migrant workers and foreign people claiming benefits should be subject to some form of restraint or risk dominating the local population.

His words follow David Cameron’s pledge to make changes to the principle of freedom of movement of workers within the union a “red line” in a mooted renegotiation of the UK’s membership terms.

The prime minister is under pressure from Ukip in the polls and faces the possibility of losing the Rochester and Strood byelection to Nigel Farage’s party next month.

But the disarray within the Conservative party over immigration was highlighted again on Sunday when the environment secretary, Liz Truss, admitted that Britain needed EU migrants to fill unskilled jobs in the agricultural sector.

Fallon’s use of the term “swamped” on Sunday morning was withdrawn hours later by No 10 sources, who said he should have said “under pressure”. There was no attempt to withdraw the phrase “under siege”.

Fallon made his comments after being forced to deny that Cameron’s efforts to renegotiate the UK’s relationship with Europe were foundering. The German chancellor Angela Merkel has spelled out her opposition to stopping the free movement of labour, telling the Sunday Times she was opposed to fundamental change.

Fallon told Sky News: “The Germans haven’t seen our proposals yet and we haven’t seen our proposals yet, and that’s still being worked on at the moment to see what we can do to prevent whole towns and communities being swamped by huge numbers of migrants. In some areas of the UK, down the east coast, towns do feel under siege, [with] large numbers of migrant workers and people claiming benefits, and it’s quite right we look at that.”

Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat energy secretary, criticised Fallon’s remarks, saying they were “more based on the Conservative concerns of the Ukip threat in the Rochester byelection” than the facts.

Ukip also accused Fallon of resorting to “intemperate language” and compared his words to the Conservative-inspired policy to drive vans through minority-ethnic communities urging immigrants living in the UK illegally to return home.

“Can you imagine what would have been said if we had said that?” said Steven Woolfe, Ukip’s immigration spokesman.

The shadow foreign secretary, Douglas Alexander, said Fallon’s comments reflected “the desperation of the Conservative party”. “You have got to be responsible always in the language that you use around issues of immigration,” he told Sky News. “Of course there are challenges, I recognise that, but I think that embodies part of the problem at the moment.”

The prime minister is said by aides to be preparing a manifesto pledge to introduce quotas for low-skilled migrants from the EU. Before the last general election Cameron promised to bring net annual immigration down to the “tens of thousands” but has failed to get anywhere near the target.

Some senior Conservatives want to impose a quota on “time-limited national insurance numbers” to limit the numbers of people able to move to Britain for work. Others want an “emergency break” to limit numbers coming from countries that suffer an economic collapse.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, the German chancellor appeared to dismiss the prospect of radical change.

“Germany will not tamper with the fundamental principles of free movement in the EU,” Merkel said.

Before Fallon withdrew his words, Truss was asked on the BBC’s Sunday Politics if Britain needed EU migrants to fill unskilled jobs in the agricultural sector. “I accept we do, yes,” she said. “I’m an MP in Norfolk, and there is an element of migrant workforce, that’s very true.”

The row comes after a difficult few days for Cameron, during which he was ambushed at a Brussels summit with a demand to pay an extra £1.7bn in EU funds. Cameron responded furiously to the bill. Under pressure to react from Tory Eurosceptic backbenchers, he insisted it would not be paid by the deadline of 1 December and said the dispute risked pushing the UK closer to the exit door.

Shadow Europe minister Pat McFadden claimed Cameron had shifted from his Bloomberg address in January 2013, in which he pledged to reform the EU and then argue to stay in.

“It now looks as though the prime minister, partly out of fear of Ukip, partly out of fear of his own backbenchers, is by default setting himself on a path where he may end up arguing that it’s better for the UK to come out,” he said.

The Tories have faced criticism before for the use of “swamped”. In 1978, Margaret Thatcher used it in saying people feared being “swamped” by immigrants from the new Commonwealth and Pakistan. She was elected the following year.

In 2002, the then Labour home secretary, David Blunkett, provoked a storm when he said some schools were being “swamped” by the children of asylum seekers.

Ukip will seek to capitalise on a surge in support by targeting 100 seats at the general election, it emerged. Paul Sykes, the party’s biggest donor, has indicated he will hand over another £1.5m to help widen its ambitions.

The move emerged as a poll found nearly a third of the public would vote for Ukip if they thought it could win in their area. Overall, the research by Opinium for the Observer put the party on 18% support.

A government source said Fallon accepted “he should have chosen his words better. He should have said ‘under pressure’”.