Interesting leak in the Sunday Times. My colleague Frank Field is to team up with Conservative MP Nicholas Soames and Migration Watch to call for a migration cap. Can the idea that you don’t allow a new immigrant into the country until one has left actually work?
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Well, teaming up with Soames and MigrationWatch won’t do his credibility much good.
But no, of course it can’t work. Even ignoring the human impact of such a policy (which is unacceptable) and just looking at the economy, what happens if we urgently need workers in a particular sector that we can’t fill? Do we then deport people who we’ve already accepted have a right to be here so we can get other people in quickly?
Of course, this would also have implications for the right to family life etc which couldn’t possible be resolved. Already it is difficult enough for someone who is legally in the UK to bring over their husband or wife - with a cap it would be impossible.
Also to make sure the policy wasn’t broken you would have to deny travel visas etc to people who you thought were at risk of overstaying - which would inevitably be a racist policy because you would just end up denying visa to people from Africa.
Besides, is this about population as a whole, or about some supposed damaging effect of migrants from outside the EU? If it’s about population as a whole then you’d have to withdraw from the EU to make it work, because you wouldn’t be able to stop people travelling from inside the EU.
I could go on, but this comment is already 5 paras. That policy is so impractical it would be laughable if the human cost of trying to implement it weren’t so great.
Like Tim, I’m tempted to roll on for a few paragraphs, but will try to keep it short about how wrong Frank Field and his new mates are. Briefly then:
a) In the world according to Frank, it’s just fine for us for capital to have a global reach, and in so doing set the conditions it likes for labour, but when labour wants to make the best of that global reach by reaching out globally, that’s bad for us.
b) There’s pretty decent evidence that Eastern European (eps Polish) migration has slowed up hugely and is going into reverse - I can quote Timeonline as well(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3378877.ece). Why is that happening? Because the Polish economy has surged. Why has it surged? Not least because Polish people went abroad to work in economies that needed them and when they needed to, and were then able to support a newly thriving economy through new purchasing power.
c) Likewise, Kerala in South India has had a massive level of migration to the Middle East for a number of years, with up to a quarter of households in the state having someone working in the Middle East. Now, that trend is changing because Keralans have got together enough money to invest in their own state, with a new high-tech town being built in the North of the state in partnership with the Malaysian government, and the predictions are that Kerala will become an in-migrating state in the next few years (http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=101542&d=22&m=9&y=2007)
c) Ireland as emigration to net immigration example, anyone?
d) Even in 21st century globalisation’s own terms, then, what’s being suggested doesn’t make sense. Free mobility of labour and earnings creates better global conditions for capital invesment, and Frank needs to get a handle on his own contradictions before spouting further nonsense.
Field is Kate Hoey’s representive on earth so no surprise he is teaming up with the odious Soames.
Frank Field is an odious man who has little love for the Labour party, nor notions of internationalism.
I hope someone challenges him for his selection next time round.
Our economy is strengthened immeasurably by immigration. Silly self-regarding stunts like this add nothing to the debate, nor do racism-engendering remarks about immigration being a “taboo subject” (if it is, why is it talked about so much by politicians and the media?)
Frank Field strikes me as an Oswald Mosley type figure. A man with a brain and willingness to look for solutions to problems but unable to find the right solutions. Increasingly frustrated that his ideas aren’t being taken up he appears to resort to increasingly reactionary solutions and radical policies. In a different era he would leave the Labour Party.
Further to the above, he may yet leave the Labour Party.
for those who oppose migration to our shores, think first because all our public services would be affected.
currently, the nhs is able to work within a certain budget simply by paying those from abroad less than they would those who have trained locally.
it is a stupid person who believes they are going to be able to walk alone: globalisation has affected the economies of countries, our arms and ammunition sales to repressive regimes results in more asylum seekers.
we are in a lucky position to enable others to fulfil their dreams of having a life free from violence!!!
Labour not having the guts to admit they were wrong over massive third world immigration are consequently losing out to ‘far right parties’ (who they I wonder?).
Field is only a front for Fraudie Broon’s desperate about turn to claw back some electoral favour. Makes a decent person want to throw up.
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