Migration Watch

Sir Andrew Green - the Reverend Ian Paisley of the immigration debate - is at it again in today's newspapers, claiming that up to 300,000 Bulgarian and Romanian workers will head to the UK in two years' time unless the government closes the labour market. Casting aside my doubts that 1% of the total population of the two countries would emigrate en mass to Britain, the truth is that workers from the new EU states, far from being a burden on the country, perform essential services and fill jobs which British people are either unwilling or unqualified to do: cleaning our public spaces, teaching our children, treating our sick, caring for our elderly relatives and building our homes among a multitude of other socially and economically vital tasks. In addition, the tax and NI contributions these new workers pay maintain our public services, state pensions and benefits. Money that most of them will never be in a position to claim for themselves.
This the real issue: if we do not want immigration in this country then we will eventually have to cut public spending, raise the retirement age and force people to save for their own pensions. The only way to avoid this, short of an immediate and sustained raise in birth rates, is to increase taxation and force people off benefits and in to low paid menial work. Deliberately or not, Migration Watch encourges people to believe they can have it both ways. They cannot.