AI’m not hand waving the issue of immigration. Quite the opposite. I’m furious about the response to it.
I’ve had personal experience of being a white guy growing up in an area transformed from white working class to multi-racial. I grew up in a mostly immigrant community fed by the wave of immigration from the Indian sub-continent in the 70s. Pretty much entirely nice people just trying to make their way or raise themselves out of the shit, who only ever became antagonistic in response to local aggression from those who never even bothered to give them a chance, and weren’t encouraged to. Immigration problems only exist as a product of the response from local communities. When it’s positive, intelligent and funded, you don’t get a problem. Even when it’d not funded it’s a hell of lot less of an issue if locals stop thinking nationalistically or assuming they have a God given right to exclusively occupy territory or a right to uninterrupted employment.
It is also worth mentioning that much of the debate is not focused on Syrian immigration, something to its shame the UK government has already imposed inequitable restrictions on within the EU (5000 a year, Cylon, 5000 a fucking year. It’s a disgrace), but EU economic immigration. You know, immigrants who come to the UK to work, who work hard, reducing the cost to business and consumers and (as far as I am aware) have a tendency to pay taxes and on average use fewer publicly funded resources. If there is pressure on housing it is no more than marginally amplifying a fundamental of low cost residential property development which has been not only a long standing social issue unrelated to immigration but actually one of the pillars of government policy since the 1980s to entrench support among the aspirational working and lower middle classes, and more lately the ageing property rich, by maintaining property values.
Besides, immigration really is a drop in the ocean when it comes to real effects. Yes, as far as I am aware, net migration represents something like 50% of the UK’s population growth, outstripping endogenous increases in population, but we’re talking in terms of a 0.6% total growth rate. Plus the numbers of non-EU migrants outstrips the numbers coming in from the EU, has done historically and continues to do so and is determined by entirely UK border policy and has sweet FA to do with the EU. Look, even taking that into account, I just don’t buy that a 0.3% increase in the population on an annual basis is capable of having the substantive adverse effects it is being linked to, nor that a sensible pro-active policy of increasing spending on housing couldn’t quite easily solve. It’s small potatoes in the round. There really isn’t anything to control, but what I would agree with is that there is something to be addressed in terms of domestic policy agendas in response to it.
What it is is a hot button emotional topic which can be easily stoked in people who, for utterly unrelated reasons, aren’t getting a fair crack of the whip. For reasons that are entirely due to policies followed by the government of which a large chunk of visible Brexiteers have been willing and enthusiastic members. It’s a canard exploited by people who are upset that the UK, in exercising the sovereignty we apparently lack, signed the Maastricht Treaty 20 plus years ago, because try as they might they cannot point to any material deleterious effect on the UK flowing from that decision or the existence of the EU. Fucking straight bananas and a constantly and deliberately misleading quote on EU budget contributions are about the long and the short of it. As a consequence it is getting far greater play than it merits either in terms of number of migrants or the effect it has on the economy and the majority of peoples’ lives. For those of us who believe political economies should be run through reason and not manipulation of people’s emotion that is a frustrating thing.
I’m not handwaving immigration. I’m just treating it with the disdain it deserves as a substantive factor in deciding whether or not to remain within the EU.