Jonathan Power :
The rise of right-wing parties in Europe is the outcome of exodus. The big immigration debate is often the big obscurantism debate. The wool is pulled over our eyes and even for the best-informed obtaining clarity is not so easily done. The vested interests in continued immigration are enormous. The migrants themselves are seeking an escape from poverty and lack of opportunity at home. But they are supported in their quest by governments at home who look at the remittances that bail out their balance of payments problems without looking at the other side of the balance sheet. It is the effect that emigrants and their money have: Raising the desire of their populations for imported goods, the lost of the “brightest” from their own economies, the often sad and destructive impact on family life. Migrants, when they do come home, spend money on a house, consumer items such as cars, large screen TVs or a fancy wedding rather than on investment either in their farm or in a small business.
Of course, there is always the 15 per cent who seem able to juggle all the balls at once – keeping their families content, investing in an auto shop, an Internet café or new techniques and tools for the farm, but this minority can give a misleading impression of the impact of migration on the home society. Likewise, governments and employers in receiving countries tend to look at immigration in a lopsided way. For them it is a short cut – to keeping wages down, to filling jobs that locals would rather be unemployed than do: Working night shifts, dangerous jobs on building sites or filling the shortfalls in seasonal labour on the farms. Not least, it helps keep inflation down.
It is the easy way out. Job retraining on a massive scale, persuading companies to initiate work methods that attract native workers, and raising the retirement age so that the older but often still very physically and mentally fit members of society can continue to be contributing workers seem to be problems that the more developed economies of the world have difficulty in initiating.
Receiving countries have long taken a simplistic view of the long-term costs of immigration. The benefits are obvious – first-generation immigrants are young and vigorous, are prepared to work long hours at unpleasant jobs, do pay taxes and draw less on social funds and health services.
Their crime and unemployment rates are low and they dream of retiring back home. But governments have ignored for too long the costs – in particular the attitude of the sons and daughters of immigrants. After poor education they have adopted the attitudes of their local working-class peers. They are not going to do the base work their parents were prepared to do. They would rather be unemployed than sink so low.
On balance this can be a negative contribution to society – taking out more of the social, educational and health services than they put in. Governments faced with uncompetitive industries have heaved a sigh of relief that immigrants can keep the show on the road.
In the UK in the 1960s it was easier to allow the cotton and wool mills of northern England to import workers from remote Pakistani villages to work long hours and night shifts than allow the industry to go bust. But go bust it eventually did, in the face of overwhelming competition from Third World producers and a reduction in trade barriers. The legacy is a bitter second generation who feel betrayed by their parents and the government.
Did Western governments think for two minutes what the build-up of large flows of migrants was having on their own population? Rarely. Right-of-centre politicians thought of the economic benefits. Left-of-centre politicians thought of the value of diversity, emphasising the cause of non-discrimination and conflating in their minds the real needs of refugees (who deservedly need a refuge, albeit one that should be only temporary) with those who were just economic migrants.
But the local working class who rub their shoulders with the immigrants became tired of taking the brunt of policies imposed by the elites. Hence the rise of right-wing political parties in Europe.
There’s the answer – economic development in the sending countries and retraining, increasing motivation and upping the retirement age in the receiving countries.
(Jonathan Power is a veteran foreign affairs analyst)
