Of course the wealthy want an immigration free-for-all

Polly Toynbee:

Bercow and Labour hotly assert that migrants don't take jobs from British workers nor depress wages. But there is no evidence for this assertion. It is impossible to know what level wages might be at or how many unemployed might have been tugged into jobs at higher pay rates had Britain kept its doors shut to new EU citizens until their countries had caught up economically.

Blair and Brown embrace the inevitability of globalisation, but make a deliberately class-blind analysis. Migrants do bring GDP growth, but remember the Gate Gourmet workers fired to make way for cheaper newly arrived workers. Migrants add to the profits of the company and thus to GDP. They keep down the cost of flying for people wealthy enough to fly. They also hold down the pay rate for all other low-paid workers, keeping wage inflation remarkably low and the Bank of England very happy.

But all this does nothing but harm to the old Gate Gourmet workers and to all the other low-paid. This is what globalisation does, widening the gap between rich and poor. Cheap labour provides more cheap services for the rich to get their lifestyle at a premium while nailing an ever-larger swath of the workforce to the minimum-wage floor. The greatest job growth is in rock-bottom jobs.

London has the most migrant workers and it also has the most unemployed. Who are they? Many more young people are not in education or work after generations of deprivation. Bangladeshis are among the poorest because 80% of their women don't work. Many more London single mothers can't work because the cost of housing and childcare means even tax credits don't lift them out of a poverty trap where a low-paid job means working at a loss.

Any job can be filled at the right price. But the implication is that these Londoners are so thick or lazy that we need cheap foreigners for catering, caring and cleaning who can take low pay while sleeping on friends' floors in this expensive city. But what part of the good society does this help to create? It makes restaurants cheap for the well-off and lowers taxes, while public services are manned by those on sub-survivable pay.

The real reason why we should fear immigration

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