[Does anyone know any background about this fellow Brittan? I've read a few of his columns, but I still don't know exactly where to place him]
COMMENT & ANALYSIS: Let the huddled masses go free: The best way to show that globalisation can benefit poor as well as rich is to allow unrestricted migration of labour
Financial Times, Oct 25, 2001 By SAMUEL BRITTAN
For all the effect they have had on hostile opinion, the many books and articles showing the benefits of globalisation might as well have been printed in invisible ink. Most people's reactions are based on their political prejudices or favourite newspapers.
What is needed is a dramatic gesture, which is worthwhile for its own sake and would demonstrate that the free movement of capital and labour is of benefit to the world's poor.
The trouble is that there is too little globalisation rather than too much. There was far more economic free movement a century ago than there is today. The big difference is, of course, in migration policies. Many countries then allowed free inward and outward movement of labour. Today, migration is tightly restricted legally and, in practice, a focus of illegality and criminal violence. The resemblance to traditional drugs policy, where prohibition produces the very evils it claims to prevent, is all too obvious.
My proposal is to abolish the distinction between economic migrants and asylum-seekers - who in the UK are not permitted to work for the first six months and are provided with vouchers at sub-benefit levels - and allow anyone who so wishes to seek his or her fortune in any country of choice. This goes far beyond the ideas of the David Blunkett, the home secretary, of merely extending the number of work permits.
Like nearly all economic liberalisation, the free movement of labour would increase the world national income and would particularly benefit people in poorer countries, where even those who stayed behind would find a brisker demand for their services. Although the best results would be obtained at the lowest cost if this change were generally adopted, many western countries could move unilaterally.
Would there be any quid pro quo? Not as such. Recipient countries could impose a minimum qualifying period for state pensions. The main counterweight to liberal migration policy would be a relentless policy of exposure and punishment for anyone, irrespective of origin, who incited violence not merely against religious or racial groups but against any individuals, irrespective of the country in which they resided. Most human rights charters have provisions for amendment in emergencies.
The obvious European country to initiate a laisser-faire policy would be Ireland, which has a low population density and needs the safety valve of immigrant labour for a potentially overheated economy. But even the UK has a lower density than, say, the Netherlands, which is not obviously suffering from a low quality of life.
Given the extreme hostility to immigration in Germany and Italy, a common European Union immigration policy is unthinkable except on highly restrictive lines; but one can live without it. It is hardly likely that immigrants will try to smuggle themselves from the UK and Ireland into some smoulderingly hostile German city.
The potential concession that an economic analyst has to make is that wages of workers competing with migrants could be relatively or even absolutely depressed. A high-quality and under-publicised research study* shows that native wages have not been depressed in the UK. Immigrants have tended to perform three types of job. They have worked in public services, especially health, where pay is determined by the government. Wages are well below market levels and the effect of newcomers is to reduce shortages. In London 23 per cent of doctors and 47 per cent of nurses are non-UK born. At the other extreme, "in relatively low paid and insecure sectors (such as) catering and domestic services, unskilled natives are simply unwilling or unable . . . totake the large number of available jobs". Companies benefit from immigration "but it is not likely that natives are significantly disadvantaged: if migrants do not fill these jobs they simply go unfilled or uncreated". An estimated 70 per cent of catering jobs are filled by migrants.
There are also the highly skilled information technology workers. According to the Home Office study, the inflow of these technicians has enabled the IT sector to grow faster rather than to depress pay in it.
The study confirms that migrants are more polarised than the rest of the population, with larger concentrations of wealth and poverty and high and low skills. Not only are they highly concentrated in London and the south-east but there are also large clusters both in wealthy Kensington and in the impoverished East End. "Levels of entrepreneurship in self-employment also appear to be high among migrants," it adds. It is not only Pakistani and east African businesses that have been attracted to the UK: about 150,000 French entrepreneurs are said to have arrived since 1995.
In general, earnings behaviour follows what is known in the US as the "assimilation hypothesis". Wages in a particular age cohort start off lower for migrants but, as skills are acquired, eventually overtake those of comparable native workers. And, contrary to the popular view that immigrants are a burden on the public purse, they contribute 10 per cent more to government revenues than they receive in government expenditures.
About 400,000 people arrived legally in the UK in 1998 with the intention of staying a year or more; but some estimates suggest that up to another 200,000 entered the country illegally.
The net effect of strict official restriction and feeble enforcement is, as one would expect, nightmarish conditions for those who depend on criminal gangs to enter the country. Harriet Sergeant, in Welcome to the Asylum**, explains how the process leads to "slavery and child labour".
She advocates a government drive for better statistics and better control. But given that very few illegal immigrants are in fact sent back, the alternative laisser-faire policy might make surprisingly little difference to the net numbers but ensure that arrivals were recognised as human beings.
The author's main objection is that the UK would be swamped by, for instance, the 25 per cent of Slovak citizens who say they want to emigrate. But would they in practice? If evidence from the European Union is anything to go by, it is surprising how few people would make the leap.
The present policy has reached a dead end. Why not try five years of laisser faire, then review the strategy?
*Migration: An Economic and Social Analysis: the Home Office **Centre for Policy Studies
Copyright: The Financial Times Limited