WHERE do you stand on immigration? Perhaps you’re with the majority who think we allow too many people in and that our public services can’t cope.
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Maybe you’re in the minority and think the numbers are about right. You might even think there aren’t enough immigrants.
Whatever you think, so long as we remain members of the EU your view is irrelevant – as is that of everyone else from the Prime Minister to the humblest voter. That of course is one of the most powerful reasons why 52 per cent of us voted to leave.
We voted, as the slogan had it, to take back control. So when Theresa May says that “Brexit means Brexit” it’s pretty clear what that actually means. It means for one thing that we take back control of immigration.
That doesn’t in itself require that the level of immigration will be reduced. It’s possible that as a nation we could now decide we need higher levels of immigration. Possible but in reality about as likely as David Cameron joining the cast of Strictly Come Dancing as Ed Balls’ partner.
The 2014 British Social Attitudes Survey found that 77 per cent of people want to see immigration reduced, with 56 per cent wanting to see it reduced “a lot”.
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Those figures are likely to have increased since then. So with the evidence showing that overwhelmingly most British voters think that immigration is too high, Brexit should mean the end of free movement. If voters’ views on immigration start to count once more, immigration policy will surely be more restrictive – or more sensible, as one might better put it.
That’s why the views of Theresa Villiers are particularly interesting. Ms Villiers, who was a member of David Cameron’s Cabinet when she backed Leave and was then sacked by Theresa May, said that we need to end “open-door migration” and should replace it with a points-based system.
The former Northern Ireland secretary explained: “The principle of a system whereby on a regular basis, probably every year, you look at where your skills shortages are and what sort of numbers you need to fill your skills is a sensible way to have a reformed immigration system. It gets the benefits of immigration but puts an end to the free-for-all, open-door migration.”
It’s difficult to overstate just how crazy the current system is. In June the official figures showed a net increase of 333,000 immigrants over the previous year. The relentless scale means that foreign-born workers now hold one in six of all jobs. That’s 5.2 million workers out of the total labour force in the UK of 31.5 million.
With no control possible on EU migration there is at least an excuse – a reason – for its size. Freedom of movement is enshrined in EU treaties.
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That explains why David Cameron’s EU renegotiation exercise was doomed from the start. Whatever other small wins he could secure from the other member states, nothing could touch free movement. So he could never even attempt to deal with one of the central issues around our membership.
But free movement only applies to EU immigration. And the parallel story is of an almost total failure to control non-EU migration to the UK. Of the 333,000 net migrants who arrived here over the past year, 184,000 were from the EU. That leaves a huge number coming from outside the EU.
And it means that although there are 5.2 million foreignborn workers, less than half – 2.2 million – come from the EU.
So much for the infamous pledge made by David Cameron to reduce the annual number of immigrants to “tens of thousands”. It wasn’t just Mr Cameron who made that pledge, it was also a certain Theresa May.
They must both have known that they were promising something they had no ability to control. Even had they got a grip on non-EU immigration their target would have been blown out of the water by free movement from the EU.
But they didn’t even come close to dealing with non-EU migration, as those stats show.
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For one thing ministers’ actions have shown that they are almost entirely uninterested in dealing with things despite their words.
We spend, for example, just £1.8billion a year on securing our borders and removing illegal immigrants and foreign criminals. That stands in stark contrast with our £12billion aid budget. The Border Force has three cutters to patrol our 7,700 miles of coast compared with Italy’s 600 boats for 4,722 miles.
The lesson of this chaos is that leaving the EU is a vital prerequisite for taking back control of immigration.
But it isn’t remotely enough. If we make the same mess of controlling immigration policy towards EU states when we leave as we do now towards non-EU states there will be barely any noticeable difference.
That means we need an immigration policy that curtails the scale and impact of current levels. It also requires a Border Force equipped to implement it.
That’s all easy to say and obvious to understand but on past experience such words are cheap. Our political class needs to understand that a wish to control the level of immigration isn’t racist, isn’t Little Englander and isn’t something to be ashamed of.
It’s about respecting the views of the people to whom they are accountable, which surely is the very basis of democracy.
