Immigration & Welfare Reform

Unsurprisingly, Fraser made some sound points in his two recent posts on immigration. But the main lesson, surely, to be drawn from his argument is that the problem lies with British welfare policy rather than British immigration policy? Fix the former and some of the economic concerns about the latter might be reduced.

Then again, how much of the anti-immigration argument is actually predicated upon economics? Or, to put it another way, who counts as an immigrant? I rather suspect that there aren’t too many people terribly exercised by Australians or Americans or Frenchmen or Irishmen holding down jobs in Britain. Which, if true, would lead one to suppose that the “problem” is not foreigners per se but the wrong kind of foreigner…

Actually, according to the ONS’s most recent  Labour Force Survey, you’re still more likely to have a job if you were born in Britain than if you were born outwith the UK.