Let’s sort out the migration mess

17 March 2007

Austen Ivereigh says that illegal immigration is both a symptom and a cause — of British economic success. The dead hand of the state is getting it wrong, as usual: time for a total rethink

A few Kurds still enter the UK gasping in the back of lorries, no doubt. But most of the 500,000-odd undocumented migrants — that’s a semi-official Home Office guesstimate — are rather more like Guillermo, a 25-year-old Latin-American who works as a deputy manager in a restaurant chain. Guillermo is not his real name; but nor is it the name in the fake Spanish passport he bought a few years back. Like most illegal immigrants I have met in the past weeks, he flew in on a visa, and in the past six years has been doing well. After a year or two cleaning, he learnt his skills in a coffee chain, from where he was promoted to his current job. ‘I am amazed by what I’ve achieved,’ he says.

Guillermo speaks excellent English, is intelligent, hardworking, taxpaying, ambitious; and he feels at home in the UK. In almost every respect he is just like the other thousands of migrant workers who, according to a recent report by Price- WaterhouseCoopers, have boosted economic growth while keeping a lid on inflation, without increasing unemployment among British-born workers. Migrants do not just take jobs, they create them, doing the work the native-born spurn, and expanding the economy in the process.

It is hard to match Guillermo or the thousands like him with the picture of illegal immigrants painted last week by the Home Secretary, John Reid. ‘It is unfair that foreigners come to this country illegitimately and steal our benefits, steal our services like the NHS, and undermine the minimum wage by working,’ he told the BBC. Guillermo pays taxes, but he cannot register with a GP; he certainly cannot access benefits, and he despises people capable of working who do. And he is paid rather more than the minimum wage, thank you very much.

Keeping him illegal helps no one. He left his small town mired in poverty and political violence with a dream to make progress — and he has succeeded. But he is a sub-citizen: unable to report crimes or get a mortgage or plan for his future — or even return home to see the house Mamá has built with the money he has sent home.

Tough, you say: he should go back. But he won’t. And why should we want him to? He is a net contributor to the nation’s economy and stock, one who adds more to the pie than he takes, while enabling the rest of us to continue to enjoy our slice.

The other large group of illegal immigrants are the 220,000-odd refused asylum- seekers. The current policy — which takes traumatised people and traumatises them more pour encourager les autres — means that fresh claims are now refused within weeks, so that asylum-seekers become illegal immigrants more quickly.