With lavish promises on controlling immigration dominating the news in this election, one migrant to the UK writes that it’s about time the UK got real about immigration and the free movement of people.
If 28 European countries agreed to lift restrictions on the flow of goods and services in their territory, it would be a massive free trade area. Add two other freedoms, the movement of people and capital, and you have created the European Union. The last two do not always get along together, at least in the UK. One is often seen as a beauty while the other is thought to be the beast. The beast has so far dominated the election campaign.
The free movement of capital provides a basis for developing the single market, which the UK‘s economy clearly benefits from. The latest findings by the Treasury show that nearly half of all EU investment banking activity takes place in London. Overall, more than 250 foreign banks are operating in the UK, which makes it the world’s largest center for cross-border borrowing.
On the other hand, the EU is the largest destination for UK exports of financial services, which provide bank accounts, mortgages, car and home insurances and help to create over 1.1 million jobs across the UK, according to the report. Without that Britain would have to choose between having a total deficit of over £70 billion a year, or almost entirely cutting its imports, or developing a new world class industry, a 2011 report by Open Europe think tank said.
‘People are inconvenient’
However, there are no records saying what would happen to the UK’s economy if inward migration had not reached 298,000 last year. London’s Green MEP Jean Lambert believes there is a big difference in how people perceive the free movement of labour and the idea of the single market.
She says: “I am fascinated by how often the same people who support the free movement of goods, services and capital really don’t like the free movement of people. People are inconvenient. They get married, they want to stay and find a job here. They really cause all these sorts of troubles.”
Lambert believes that the UK’s debate on immigration had been heavily biased against those coming there: “If you defend EU free movement and the rights of migrants, somehow this automatically means that you are against British citizens and the interests of your own society.”
She also believes that a real problem is going unnoticed – wasted skills.“Perhaps here, in London, we have the most highly educated barmen than elsewhere in Europe,” she says.
“These could be people coming from Spain or other countries where unemployment remains quite high. I think that the main question is how we really use their skills and talents,” she says.
Indeed a study by the Migration Observatory at Oxford University revealed that foreign-born workers tended to be more educated than those who were born in the UK. On average one in two migrants over the age of 21 had the highest level of qualifications, compared to one in four British workers. Yet migrant workers do not always get a job appropriate to their skills and education.
The Migration Observatory estimated that nearly one third of foreign workers were employed as cleaners, kitchen and catering assistants, drivers or food operators, while no more than 10 per cent were employed in management and administrative positions.
M is for migrants
Perhaps 29-year old Lithuanian Julia Ivanova was just lucky. Six months ago she was appointed as a manager at a British company. However, she said that it was the first time in her career that she has not been discriminated against.
“After working four years in London, this is the first company where I don’t feel discriminated against, where I am totally valued as a team member. Also for the first time in my career, I find that a foreign person can also get a pay rise,” she says.
Julia says that on her previous jobs she and other Eastern Europeans who were working with her often got verbally abused.
“We were called foreigners or even stone-age persons, as some of my colleagues were. On top of that you had to deal with people saying different things about your country or about why you came to London.”
“Yes, we do have an economic crisis in some of those countries and we try to work hard to put bread on the table. But at the end of the day we are not refugees. We pay taxes, we actually pay exactly the same amount of money to stay in the country,” she said.
Yet the M word is not everyone’s favourite, even though it fuels UK economic growth.
Jeremy Corbyn, Labour MP for Islington North, says: “Migration gives a massive boost to Britain, British economy and tax income. The standard of living we enjoy couldn’t be possible without a hard work of hundreds of thousands people who made their home here over the past decades.”
Corbyn believes anti-immigrant sentiment in UK politics is ridiculous given the long history of migration in Britain.
“We need Europe to grow up. In Britain we have about 1,000 years or more of migration. There is no family in the UK that can trace their ancestry back that far. We were Roman, we were Norman and then there were successive waves of migration from Northern Europe, Saxony, Central and Southern Europe.
“We live in the global economy, a global environment and a global sense of culture. Let’s enjoy it, not attck it,” he says.
Chasing capital
Workers and capital are like Punch and Judy: one cannot really perform without the other. They both belong to a category of means of production and if anyone of them changes place, the other has to follow it.
“Based on the concept of a free market, Europe has developed an idea that all our national borders should be transparent to capital and capital should be able to move wherever it’s needed,” says Simon Barrow, co-director of Edinburgh-based think tank Ekklesia.
He believes that although our capacity to travel has increased, we feel the need to put more and more restrictions on the movement of workers.
“The difficulty is that you then have a disconnection between people and resources, so resources go to one place and people have to chase them,” he says.
“But we are now living in the world, where if you cross a border to find work, someone will say that you are an economic migrant and that you create a problem. In fact, it doesn’t create a problem. What it reflects is that there is a lack of employment or lack of resources to adapt.”
Barrow believes that for good or ill people would continue to migrate.
“Unless we are able to adapt to that and achieve a greater equality of resources, the movement will remain a problem,” he says.
One might not like it or not, but the single market is a place where there is free movement of goods, workers and capital. Take any of them out and it will simply not work.
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