Immigration Watch International

Despite some popular commentary, offsetting or even noticeably mitigating these trends through increased immigration alone would require unrealistic increases in total immigration levels.

The authors show that several other measures to mitigate the impact of a slower-growing and aging population on Canada’s workforce and incomes hold at least as much promise as changes to immigration. Delaying the normal age of retirement could help both workforce growth and old-age dependency in the near term. Higher fertility would help achieve both goals in the next generation and beyond, and faster productivity growth would boost real incomes per person more than any conceivable immigration strategy.

For the study go here (PDF)

Canada will reimpose visa requirements on citizens of the Czech Republic because of dramatically increased numbers of Roma asylum-seekers, Czech media are reporting after this week’s visit to Prague by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. The national daily Lidové Noviny (People’s News) said Mr. Kenney told the Czech government that the restriction would be imposed next Tuesday on the eastern European country.

Alykhan Velshi, Mr. Kenney’s spokesman, would not comment on the accounts or on what the minister discussed with his Czech counterparts. But he did say that speculative media reports could spark a run on the border.

In 1997, the Canadian government imposed visa controls on the Czech Republic after large numbers of Roma – who historically have faced discrimination in the country and say they face constant attacks from skinhead and neo-Nazi groups – arrived in Canada and claimed refugee status. The restriction remained in place for 10 years, during which time there were virtually no refugee applications. But since it was removed at the end of 2007, about 2,000 Roma have arrived – 1,000 of them in the first four months of 2009, making them the second-largest refugee applicant group after Mexicans.

Mr. Kenney has indicated he is concerned about the sharp increase in asylum claims. The Czech Republic, he said, is “hardly an island of persecution in Europe.”

The Immigration and Refugee Board sent a fact-finding team to the Czech Republic in March to investigate the treatment of Roma. Its report, posted on the IRB’s website, is inconclusive – it quotes state agencies saying the Roma are protected against discrimination and non-government organizations saying they are not.

Toronto immigration lawyer Max Berger, who is acting for about 400 Roma applicants, said that the IRB has made a decision in just under 100 cases and accepted 85 per cent, an extraordinarily high rate. The general acceptance rate is about 40 per cent. “So is Canada justified [in reimposing visa restrictions]? It’s effectively shutting the door on genuine refugee claims,” Mr. Berger said. He also said that the minister is undermining his own board by publicly declaring that the Czech Republic is not “an island of persecution” and implying that the refugee claims are not legitimate. “It’s an entirely inappropriate thing for him to say,” he said.

He said it would be more appropriate if pressure were applied on the Czech government to deal with persecution of the Roma. The concern about large numbers of applicants is “overstated panic,” he said. “The IRB has had bigger numbers in the past. In the early ’90s, there were 40,000 to 45,000 claimants annually, now there are 30,000.”

Human rights watchdog Amnesty has urged Malaysia to abolish caning, saying that tens of thousands of migrants have received the “inhuman and degrading” punishment in recent years. Amnesty cited a statement in Malaysian parliament last week that said local authorities had caned at least 34,923 migrants between 2002 and 2008, 60 per cent of them from neighbouring Indonesia.

“Amnesty International urges the Malaysian government to rid the country of this cruel punishment,” the London-based group said. “Whipping someone with a cane is cruel, inhuman and degrading, and international standards make clear that such treatment constitutes torture.”

Apart from Indonesians, those caned were also from Bangladesh, India, Burma, Nepal, the Philippines and Thailand. Malaysia, Southeast Asia’s third largest economy, has 2.2 million migrant workers in Malaysia, who are the mainstay of the plantation and manufacturing sectors.

The caning sentence was added to Malaysian immigration laws since 2002, amid concern over the ramifications of having a large migrant workforce. Under the laws, those staying in Malaysia illegally are subject to a mandatory whipping of up to six strokes of the cane, fines and up to five years in jail. Caning is also carried out for serious offences including rape and drug trafficking.

“The practice is humiliating, and causes such pain that people have reportedly fainted. Those caned often carry scars, psychological as well as physical, for years,” Amnesty said.

As promised, here’s the full story of those immigration statistics that I obtained from the ONS. In our new e-world, I can pass on all the results to you – and they’re worth discussing. The figures show the extent to which Brown’s “boom” was a mirage built not just on debt, but foreign labour. Most seriously, we can see a deep dysfunctionality in the UK labour market. Our system keeps millions on benefits (never less than 5 million have been on some kind of benefits since 1997) while meeting the needs of expanding the economy with a limitless supply of industrious immigrant labour. This means that the direct link between a growing economy and combating poverty is broken – and this is a serious development that demands attention.

The ONS results are here, in a pdf*. The key finding: there are fewer British-born workers in the first quarter of 2009 than Q1 of 1997. The trend of employers preferring immigrants, which we saw during the boom, has become more marked still during the bust.

But if we zoom in on the last eight years, the recession simply exacerbated what had been an existing downwards trend of UK-born workers in employment while number of foreign-born workers in employment has soared.

Without a doubt, immigration has been the largest change of the Labour years – the ratio of immigrant workers has almost doubled in the private sector and the economy overall as the below graph shows. This means the UK’s the overall mix of immigrants is up there with that of America – a change not taken deliberately, or with any debate, but something that happened by accident and which ministers are still struggling to understand.

I count myself as a supporter of immigration. But there is no doubt that mass immigration has given ministers the option of ignoring our own unemployed. If we didn’t have this unending tap of motivated workers then Britain would be forced to confront the fact that so many of its workers are being incentivised to do nothing by the welfare state. Here’s what the benefit tally, including ‘hidden unemployment’, has looked like in the last decade – using the DWP’s definition of out-of-work benefits.

At no point in the boom did the number on out-of-work benefits fall below five million souls. Almost half have been on welfare for five years or more – and are, therefore, statistically more likely to die than to work again. As I say, were it not for immigration, we’d be forced to confront this problem or our economy would not grow. When I was a business journalist in the late 1990s, I remember writing stories about how bus companies were recruiting in homeless shelters because they couldn’t find the staff. The people in those shelters were being offered structure to their lives, from an employer forced by economic conditions to deal with the greater risk they pose. It was a sign of economic growth addressing social problems – as it should be.

But mass immigration has broken this link. It meant Gordon Brown could actually afford to keep so many million on benefits, as tax receipts were being generated by comparative newcomers. It was a lot easier than trying to reform welfare. Scandalously, that’s what Brown did. To my mind, it is the most contemptible failure of his time as Chancellor. He had the money, the economic boom, to sort out the welfare dependency that afflicts so many communities in Britain. But he took the easy, short term route. To use that analogy the Prime Minister is so fond of deploying, he walked on by on the other side. Why get your hands (and poll ratings) dirty with welfare reform when you can rely on immigrants to keep the economy growing and tax receipts flowing? And who wants to end up with disabled people chaining themselves to the railings of parliament, as happened when Blair tried welfare reform? Brown took the easy option. And his short-termism has condemned millions to worklessness and poverty who might otherwise have escaped it.

This matters for Cameron, because he will inherit Brown’s dysfunctional labour market – one distinguished by its striking failure to provide that now-notorious Brown slogan “British jobs for British workers”. What if, when the recovery comes, the economy just sucks in more immigrants and the huge surge in dole numbers is never properly reversed?

That’s why immigration matters. You can’t understand the UK labour market, or the pernicious nature of the UK welfare state, without it.

The Brown economic model has spectacularly failed to provide British jobs for British workers – this is yet another one of his empty promises that a Tory government will have to fulfill. But unless the Tories work out how employment, welfare and immigration are interlinked they will be destined to repeat the same scandalous failure of the Brown years.

PS All immigration data is from the Labour Force Survey, a Eurostat-mandated study conducted by the ONS which defines immigrant in its most basic sense – ie, ‘foreign born’. No categoriation is perfect, and this of course captures some Brits like Boris Johnson who were born abroad. I also exclude pension-aged people from the study – it’s working-age only. The trend of pensioners returning to work is a topic all by itself.

*If asked for a password it is FraserNels0n

Last week the U.S. House of Representative approved a 1,500 page piece of legislation aimed at reducing America’s output of carbon emissions, which supporters suggest contributes to global climate change. If implemented, the legislation would require a 17 percent reduction (from 2005 levels) in carbon emissions by 2020 and an 83 percent reduction by 2050.

These will be very difficult goals to meet under the best of circumstances. But, even as Congress and President Obama seek to put America on a strict energy diet, they are pursuing other policies that will make reductions in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions virtually impossible, finds a new report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). This report again confirms that many elements of today’s immigration policy run counter to most of America’s most important long-range priorities.

Immigration, Energy and the Environment addresses America’s stifled immigration policy debate: it finds that America’s massive immigration-fueled population growth was the single largest contributing factor to the nation’s increased energy consumption and carbon emissions over the past 35 years. Even without a massive amnesty for illegal aliens supported by President Obama and congressional leaders, immigration will be the driving factor as U.S. population approaches the half billion mark by mid-century.

“Most Americans support the idea of reducing our nation’s dependence on fossil fuels, out of concern for the environment and national security,” observed Dan Stein, president of FAIR. “As Immigration, Energy and the Environment finds, Americans have reduced their per capita energy consumption, but population growth caused by unchecked immigration has steadily increased our energy use and our carbon emissions. “It’s like buying an SUV that gets half the gas mileage of your previous car while claiming its OK because you’ll only drive half as far each day – these forces operate against one another to the detriment of Americans here today,” Stein said.

“It is simply incongruous to believe that the nation can have an energy and environmental policy without also having a coherent population policy,” Stein stated. “Controlling runaway U.S. population growth must begin with rational and enforceable immigration policies and dramatic, sustained reductions in overall immigration. But, while Congress and the president are asking Americans to alter the way they live and work, they are simultaneously pursuing immigration policies that would unleash even more massive population growth in the U.S.”

Among the key findings of Immigration, Energy and the Environment:

Americans achieved more than a 9 percent reduction in per capita energy consumption between 1973 and 2007. During that same period, U.S. population increased nearly 70 percent and total energy consumption grew by 33 percent.
In order to meet the 2012 goals set forth in the Kyoto Treaty, per capita U.S. energy consumption would have to be reduced by 37 percent, even as U.S. population increases by 3.4 million people annually.

“U.S. population growth is the single greatest obstacle to achieving energy independence and reducing our greenhouse emissions,” said Stein. “It is not the fault of immigrants for requiring energy resources. It is the fault of U.S. policymakers for failing to recognize and correct immigration policies that undermine our ability to achieve vital energy and environmental goals.

“The role of immigration generated population growth cannot be ignored as Congress and the Obama administration tackle these very difficult issues,” concluded Stein.

The full report, Immigration, Energy and the Environment, is available at www.fairus.org.

Italy cracked down on illegal immigration and crime with a new law Thursday. For the first time, illegal immigration becomes a crime and Italians are encouraged to report illegals. The controversial law, which passed by 157 votes to 124, also enables private citizens – but mainly former officers – to help the police in crime hotspots.

Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right government, which came to power on a strong law-and-order ticket stressing links between illegal immigration and crime, said it was ”proud” of the law. Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said it would discourage migrants from targeting Italy and make the country safer.

But the centre-left opposition claimed it made Italy ”less civilised” and announced a campaign of civil disobedience to hinder its application. It also claimed the law could worsen prison overcrowding. A group of leftist intellectuals called for widescale protests against what it called a ”racist” law.

The Catholic Church again thundered against the law, saying it ”criminalised” immigrants and stressing that migration was one of ”the fundamental rights of mankind”. The Vatican criticised the law for ”focusing on crime and leaving integration completely out of the picture”.

The European Commission said it would see if the law complies with European Union law. Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot said it was important that another part of the law, automatic expulsions for people jailed for more than two years, should not be applied to EU citizens such as Romanians. The law covers a wide range of issues, including national registers for the homeless and disco bouncers, tougher jail conditions for mafiosi and making businesses report mafia extortion.

But its main focus is on illegal immigration. As well as the opposition and the Catholic Church, the law has also been criticised by human rights groups and immigrant associations. Maroni said these strictures were based on misinformation.

The law follows another controversial move, to return migrants rescued at sea to Libya, which critics say jeopardises asylum rights. Under the new immigration crackdown, people caught entering or living in Italy without a permit will not be arrested but they will given immediate expulsion orders and face fines ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 euros. The law also says that Italians – unless they are doctors or school heads who will be exempted – will be obliged to report illegal immigrants.

The bill triples the period of time that foreigners can be held in detention centres from two to six months in order to allow sufficient time to process their deportation, should they not be granted asylum. Other aspects of the law include tough fines for landlords who rent to illegal immigrants, no public services for babies born in Italy to parents without legal status and a longer waiting period for foreigners seeking citizenship through marriage.

The law also authorises ‘citizen patrols’. The government has stressed that the patrols will only be tasked with reporting crime but the opposition claims the government is contracting out policing to private individuals. It also fears the patrols will turn into vigilante gangs.

The proposal also would have prohibited cities and counties from limiting police officers in enforcing federal immigration law and require officers to try to determine people’s immigration status when questions arise about their presence in the country. Nineteen representatives missed the vote, which took place near the end of an overnight session as some lawmakers left the Capitol because of the approaching end to their 2009 session.

Though absenteeism likely was a factor in the bill’s defeat, Pearce said he wasn’t surprised that the measure failed in the House. “Some people support law breakers over law keepers,” he said. “How many more officers are we going to have killed?” He said he would keep trying to get the bill to become law and might gather signatures to take it to the ballot.

Although immigration has long been considered the sole responsibility of the federal government, advocates for tougher border enforcement have said for several years that local authorities could help lessen border woes in Arizona, the busiest illegal entry point into the United States.

The practical effect of such a new law wasn’t clear. Immigrant rights advocates predicted it would lead to racial profiling that would target Latinos who are U.S. citizens. Supporters say local officers enforcing an expanded trespassing law would provide a second layer of enforcement to catch immigrants who slip past federal agents and point out that officers would still need probable cause to believe that people violated the law before they could arrest them.

Many police bosses in Arizona have resisted past efforts to have local officers confront border woes, saying it would detract from investigations of crime in their communities and jeopardize the trust they have built in immigrant communities.

The Legislature’s defeat of the measure was the third time since 2006 that lawmakers have considered a trespassing expansion aimed at illegal immigrants. In 2006, then-Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoed two bills with similar trespassing provisions. The Democratic governor had said she opposed automatically turning all immigrants who sneaked into the state into criminals. Illegal immigrants account for an estimated 500,000 people in Arizona’s 6.5 million population…

Currently, most of Arizona’s immigration enforcement is done by federal authorities at the border and in the state’s interior. A few police agencies enforce a state immigrant smuggling law and have officers with special training in federal immigration law.

By contrast, these and other reports published this year by the NDIC — a division of the U.S. Justice Department — describe a U.S. government that often exerts little control over who crosses the border and with what. California’s border, says NDIC, is “easily breached.” “The vast border area presents innumerable remote crossing points that traffickers exploit to smuggle illicit drugs, primarily marijuana into the country from Mexico,” says NDIC’s March report on California’s border region. “These areas are easily breached by traffickers on foot, in private vehicles or in all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) as they smuggle drugs between POEs (Ports of Entry), particularly in the mountainous areas in eastern San Diego County and the desert and sand dune areas in Imperial County.”

Between official ports of entry, says NDIC, Arizona’s border has “few physical barriers” and is “underprotected.” “Large amounts of illicit drugs are smuggled into the area from Mexico, and bulk cash is transported from the area into Mexico,” says NDIC’s report on southern Arizona. “These trafficking activities are facilitated by several factors unique to the region, including … a remote, largely underprotected border area between Arizona’s points of entry.”

Most of this “underprotected border” is not fenced. “By the end of January 2009,” says the NDIC report, “108 miles of the 262-mile shared border between Arizona and Mexico will have some type of fencing. However, few physical barriers exist in border areas between POEs, particularly in the West Desert area of the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) Tucson Sector, to impede drug traffickers, chiefly Mexican DTOs, from smuggling illicit drug shipments into the United States from Mexico.”

Some fences that have been built are pathetically inadequate. “Traffickers use vehicle platforms or car carriers retrofitted with ramps that can extend over the border fence to allow vehicles to cross into the HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area) region,” says the report. “The ramps are set up in less than a minute, providing agents with a very small window of time in which to interdict these types of smuggling attempts.”

Arizona’s border is also vulnerable to exploitation by potential terrorists. “Alien smuggling organizations reportedly also smuggle aliens from countries other than Mexico, including special-interest countries,” says the NDIC report. “Special-interest countries are those designated by the intelligence community as countries that could export individuals who could bring harm to the United States through terrorism.” New Mexico’s border is hampered by “minimal law enforcement coverage.”

“More than half the length of this border is desolate public land that contains innumerable footpaths, roads and trails,” says NDIC’s April report on New Mexico. “These factors and minimal law enforcement coverage make the area an ideal smuggling corridor for drugs and other illicit goods and services — primarily alien smuggling into the United States and weapons and bulk cash smuggling into Mexico.”

The West Texas border also suffers from scarce law enforcement and potential exploitation by terrorists. “Moreover, the region’s location along the U.S.-Mexico border poses national security and law enforcement issues for the region, such as alien smuggling, weapons transportation, and terrorist entry into the United States through and between ports of entry,” says NDIC’s West Texas report, published in March. “As with other areas between POEs along the U.S.-Mexico border in West Texas,” the report says of Big Bend National Park, “limited law enforcement presence and rugged terrain make the park conducive to smuggling activities.”

Between ports of entry in South Texas, NDIC says, the border is “easily breached” and guarded by few “physical barriers.” “Few physical barriers exist between POEs to impede drug traffickers, particularly Mexican DTOs, from smuggling illicit drug shipments into the United States from Mexico,” says a report published in February. “Along many areas of the U.S.-Mexico border in South Texas, the Rio Grande River can be easily breached by smugglers on foot or in vehicles, enabling Mexican DTOs to smuggle multikilogram quantities of illicit drugs, primarily marijuana and cocaine, into the United States.”

Our president and congressional leaders now seek to control Earth’s climate by capping carbon emissions in the United States — even as they fail to perform their constitutional duty by capping the flow of contraband crossing our border from Mexico

President Obama has raised the specter of adding another hot button issue into the national debate. At the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast the President said that he is “…committed to passing comprehensive immigration reform…” but he was silent on the matter of legal immigration reform.

Then, last Thursday, the President met with members of Congress to discuss immigration issues. The political attention is rightly focused on illegal immigration, but if the administration ignores problems that exist within the legal immigration system, can its reform package really be considered comprehensive?

Skilled foreign workers, with high levels of education, contribute greatly to America’s economy. Currently only 65,000 visas are issued down from 195,000 in 2001. While this year’s applications have slowed somewhat as a result of the current recession, the limit is expected to be reached shortly. A 2007 Congressional Research Service report showed that the 65,000 visa cap was met the first day it opened in 2005 and the 2006 cap was hit before FY06 began.

The 2008 cap was met during the first two days of availability. A Heritage study demonstrated that these workers are highly paid, and pay a significant amount in taxes. Raising the cap to 195,000 would increase payroll tax and income tax revenues by $2 billion per year. Given recent levels of federal spending and the current state of the economy, increased tax revenue (and more importantly, increased economic growth) would be good for the United States.

Too often, H-1B visa holders are caricatured as “taking American jobs” when the opposite is often true. The value of an H-1B worker is that they contribute a unique skill set, and can often create jobs by creating value and allowing for businesses to expand. For instance, hiring an H-1B worker who writes software code may cause an American company to hire more Americans because it has an entirely new product to offer. Indeed, many of America’s most innovative technology companies already rely heavily on high skilled immigrant workers. Increasing the H-1B cap will help these companies remain competitive in the world marketplace.

During the Presidential campaign WIRED magazine gave Obama a ‘C’ on the issue of H-1B visas. At this time, though, the Administration has been silent on the H-1B issue. While she was Governor, Janet Napolitano was one of 13 governors to sign a letter to Congressional leaders urging them to increase the cap. Now, as DHS Secretary, she has the ability to act on this issue. The Obama Administration should live up to its promise and enact truly comprehensive immigration reform.

One major reason for this is the number of asylum seekers who have been granted asylum – or other forms of protection which entitle them to remain in Britain – and offered social housing. Politicians frequently assure us that asylum seekers do not get social housing. This is true up to a point, as they are given private rented accommodation at public expense while their cases are decided. But as soon as they are granted permission to stay, they can go on the housing lists. Astonishingly, over the past ten years the Government has granted more asylum seekers permission to stay in Britain than they have actually built social housing for. So, inevitably, the waiting lists have got ever longer.

This is not to suggest that we should not provide housing to genuine refugees. But surely the Government should have provided for the extra housing demand that their own policies have generated.

So who on these bulging lists actually gets a council house? Currently, it is decided on the basis of ‘need’ which, in turn, is heavily influenced by family size. And once granted residence, a migrant or an asylum seeker can bring over his entire family and thereby move up the priority list.

Of course local working people have seen this happening for years in their own communities. They know perfectly well that the Government have not been telling the whole truth – but few were prepared to listen.

But a major study called ‘The New East End’, published in 2006, revealed the true extent of the problem. The researchers from the Young Foundation looked at what had happened in Bethnal Green in London’s East End over the past generation. They found that the Whitehall concept of ‘need’ had, in practice, favoured Bangladeshi workers who were beginning to bring over their families.

Young British workers with smaller families were pushed out to Essex, away from their roots and away from their parents, who stayed put in their council houses in East London. The outcome was that family and social bonding between Bangladeshi families was strengthened – while the traditional working-class family structure of the British workers, especially the role of grandmothers, was severely weakened. The researchers found that the white working class were seething with resentment.

The Government rushed to assure their supporters that there was no truth in any of this, insisting that it was all down to scare tactics. Taking advantage of local resentment, the BNP started making inroads. In contrast to the major parties, they were willing to speak frankly about the issue – even if their solutions were distasteful. But when, in May 2007, the local MP, Margaret Hodge, remarked publicly on the advances the BNP was making in the local elections and suggested something should be done about it, she was jumped on by the Left of her party and told to shut up.

A report was subsequently commissioned by the then Commission for Racial Equality which conveniently concluded that there was no evidence that newly arrived migrants were being allocated housing in preference to UK-born people. But that was to dodge the real issue. The rules for allocating social housing might have been administered scrupulously. But it was the system itself that was unfair. Little or no credit was given for the length of time people had been waiting for housing, nor for the strength of their ties to the locality.

As a result, white working class people were indeed being leapfrogged by new arrivals with large families. That is the background to yesterday’s announcement. Only now have the Government been forced into long-overdue action because their own supporters are deserting them in droves. But it is not just social housing that has been coming under such pressure because of immigration. All housing has been affected – yet the Government refuse to acknowledge this, let alone discuss it.

All over the country, despite deep opposition, planning authorities have been told how many more houses they must build. They have no idea how much of this is caused by immigration – and nor do the local residents. But Migrationwatch dug out the figure from the last line of the last table of a technical paper produced by the then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister – and, astonishingly, it is nearly 40 per cent of all new homes.

This figure comes from the government predictions of new households which are issued every two years. The latest set shows that 252,000 households will be formed every year until 2031. They also show that without immigration, there would be only 153,000 households. In other words 99,000 households, or 39 per cent, will be caused, not by existing immigrants, but by future immigrants and their families.

Put another way, that is a requirement for a new home every five minutes for new immigrants over the next 23 years. This is an astronomical number. No wonder the Government avoid any discussion of it. As we face the most serious financial crisis for two generations and as the Government find themselves virtually broke, one has to ask, who is going to pay for all this? That is another subject the Government do not wish to discuss.