A Financial Times/Harris poll published a couple of weeks' ago showed that 47% of Britons believe migration by workers within the EU has been negative for the economy, and only 19% think it has been good, whereas in Spain 42% of the population believe migrants have been a benefit and only 24% think they have been bad for the economy. Two-thirds of those surveyed in Britain said there were too many foreigners. Although the government line is that the influx of eastern Europeans has been good for the economy, filling skill gaps and keeping wage growth under control, but not causing wage reduction or unemployment, they are introducing an immigration points system next year to give preference to young, highly skilled professionals and entrepreneurs.
Philippe Legrain argues, convincingly, in "Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them" (I'm about half way through...) that actually low skilled, unskilled immigrants are more beneficial to the recipient country, being happy to do the jobs that native populations don't want to do, at lower cost, and, as a group, repatriating sums of money larger than most official aid to their (usually poor) countries. We may be in danger of doing what Australia does, which is importing highly skilled people to do unskilled jobs.
Targetting younger immigrants is more justifiable, as they are more likely to be net contributors in terms of taxes and benefits, particularly given our ageing population.
I think the British hostility to immigration shown in the poll is more to do with our national habit of disagreeing with or not understanding the theoretical, abstract or general, but in practice being unconsciously in agreement. It's the "I'm not a racist, some of my best friends etc etc" stance. We also need to realise it is not just our friends that might be "immigrants" but the people we rely on or are connected to in our daily lives - from my own life: a Cuban manicurist, my son's best friends' parents including Italians and Americans, a hairdresser married to a Gambian footballer, a South African dentist and South African vet, a personal trainer married to a Venezuelan water engineer.
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