Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 119)
TUESDAY 10 JANUARY 2006
PROFESSOR NIGEL
HARRIS AND
DR KHALID
KOSER
Q100 Mr Winnick: Dr Koser, the impression
is sometimes given that Britain has taken in the last half century
more migrants than other nearby western European countries, France,
Germany and the rest, and therefore they paint a scenario where
we have such a terrible burden, as they put it in so many words,
as compared to our EU neighbours in western Europe. What would
be your response to that, Dr Koser, Mr Harris?
Dr Koser: I am afraid I do not
have the data to hand but if you are looking at regular legal
migration of workers and people joining family members, then I
am certainly not aware that the UK has had a particular high proportion
of migrants. I think the figures you are referring to, and perhaps
are often referred to in the media, concern asylum seekers and
perhaps irregular migrants. Perhaps I can say a few words about
each of those. It is true that certainly up to the mid-1990s the
UK did attract very large numbers of asylum seekers, more I think
than most other European countries. In the past two or three years
those numbers have declined very significantly. From the Home
Office figures the number of asylum applications in the UK has
gone down really rather dramatically and it has now been overtaken
as the main source country in Europe for asylum seekers by, I
believe, France and Germany. Turning to irregular migrants, of
course that is the main concern for many people in the media and
many parts of the public. The simple truth is we do not know the
numbers involved and I think any speculation is really rather
difficult and rather dangerous.
Professor Harris: Just on asylum
seekers, of course the British figures did not reach the level
of the Germans in the early 1990s with the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Germany went through a period of very rapid increase in asylum
seekers which, if I am not mistaken, in absolute terms was larger
than that in Britain, so one cannot identify the British as a
special case in any of those respects. Where it might be seen
as a special case is in economic migration in the second half
of the 1990s into the next century because Britain has changed
its immigration policy to recruit economic migrants particularly
from the new accession states and that is quite different from
France and Germany which have experienced economic stagnation
whereas Britain has had a very tight labour market. That is something
special in the European context but that is because of deliberate
government policy.
Q101 Chairman: Dr Koser, just so
we understand your work, the UN work has been based on governmental
figures and as you said it is very difficult to measure irregular
migration. Some of the witnesses to our inquiry have said that
the whole problem with these figures is that there are whole flows
of people who are irregular, who are illegal, who are not counted
by the figures, so you cannot produce a global or national or
regional picture based on official statistics. Is that a fundamental
problem with the work the UN has been doing here? Is one of the
reasons why the figure of migration is apparently so small on
a global scale that large parts of this are simply not counted
by anybody both within developed countries and within less developed
countries?
Dr Koser: Yes I think you are
quite right of course to point out the difference between developed
and developing countries. We in the UK have a very advanced system
of censuses, counting systems, the labour force survey, and so
on and so forth. We have one of the best systems for counting
migrants and we do not know how many irregular migrants come to
our country, so it is not surprising that poorer countries in
the world simply have no idea at all. So, yes, there is no doubt
that official statistics on migration that only record legal migrants
would have to be multiplied by some factor which we simply do
not know to get a full picture of the entire migration taking
place in the world. Having said that, I think you are right to
point out that most people in the world do not migrate. Something
like 3% of the world's population are migrants, and the reasons
people stay at home are because they like staying at home, because
of inertia, because of social networks that keep them at home,
because of some of the traumas involved with moving, and migration
control as well. I think people are recognising that it can be
quite difficult to move to the countries to which they move. Migration
is a relatively small proportion of the world's population.
Professor Harris: Just to add
to that, when we talk about "at home" we are talking
about national entities, we are talking about migration between
countries. Something like 80% to 90% of the world's migration
is internal. In China there are 98 million people living outside
their province of birth, India has enormous movements of millions
of people internally, so all we are speaking about is that the
external migration is tiny in comparison to the internal migration.
Dr Koser: Of course we all recognise
that the statistics are very difficult for irregular migration.
I think the other point to make about irregular migration is that
it is actually quite a broad category of people. We are not talking
about people who cross borders illegally without passports in
the back of trucks and so on and so forth. A large proportion
of irregular migrants are people who have entered legally and
then for example overstayed visas. One of Australia's main irregular
migration problems is UK students with short term work permits
who have overstayed their visas, so irregular migration is not
just about people crossing borders in an irregular or illegal
fashion.
Q102 Chairman: Just to move on, in
your UN report you recommended that there should be improved coherence,
consultation and co-operation at national, regional and global
level. My first question is: if these flows are so difficult to
do much about in the long term, what is it you hope to achieve
by more coherent policies and more developed co-operation at national
and regional level?
Dr Koser: If I could just correct
one thing before I answer the question. This report was written
by an independent Commission although it was reported to the United
Nations. It was set up at the behest of the United Nations Secretary
General but written by an independent Commission. Let me speak
on behalf of the Commission rather than my own personal views
here. I believe the Commission believes quite strongly that, as
you indicate, migration is inevitable and it will continue to
be so for the foreseeable future because of differentials in demography,
in development, and in democracy, and I think the Commission believes
quite strongly that at the moment the world is not taking full
advantage of the potential benefits of migration. Too many migrants
are moving in an irregular fashion. Too many migrants are not
being able to realise the skills they have. Too many migrants
are being smuggled and trafficked. I think there is also great
concern about the human rights abuses and other abuses of the
migrants who are moving. I believe the Commission's opinion was
that this is a fact of life, migration will continue, but let's
try to make sure it takes in place in a more orderly fashion that
respects the rights of migrants and makes sure that both sending
states and receiving states can somehow benefit from that migration.
The Commission was not about trying to stop migration; it was
about trying to make migration more successful.
Q103 Chairman: From a personal point
of view, because I think that is the only way to pose the question,
how well would you say the British Government's current and projected
policies match up against that aspiration in the United Nations?
Dr Koser: I will talk about the
Commission and then myself. The Commission made a point of not
naming and shaming specific countries.
Q104 Chairman: That is why I asked
you personally.
Dr Koser: We have had quite significant
consultations on the basis of this report with the UK Government
and I think the UK Government has a fairly coherent and co-ordinated
and comprehensive approach to migration. Being honest, I think
certain parts of the Government would admit there is a degree
of lack of coherence and perhaps, for example, there is not enough
co-ordination between the Home Office which has certain control-orientated
agendas and DFID which has clearly a development-orientated agenda.
To give you a very good example, it is very hard to see how the
UK can promote achieving the Millennium Development Goals in poorer
parts of the world such as Africa and at the same time allow recruitment
agents to bring in doctors and nurses from poorer parts of the
world. That strikes me as a classic example of incoherence and
confusion about the direction of the Government, and there perhaps
should be more co-ordination between different parts of government.
I think on issues such as consultation the British Government
is very good at consulting experts and academics and trying to
speak to the media and NGOs and civil society and so on and so
forth. Do not forget this report tried to take a global perspective.
Many of its recommendations do not apply to the UK because the
UK has pretty good policy but of course it is also trying to speak
to Mozambique and other poorer countries in the world at the same
time.
Professor Harris: The report produced
by the Migration Commission finds that UK immigration policy has
failed on three grounds. I have to say that the criterion of what
is a successful immigration policy is the area of dispute. Is
it stopping all immigration? Is it getting the immigration that
you want in terms of the labour market or in terms of many other
criteria? So the criteria are where the dispute is. We find on
the criteria that we adopted that British immigration policy has
failed on three grounds. Firstly, it has not met the labour needs
of the British economy and irregular migration is the measure
of its failure to do so and indeed continuing labour scarcities
within the economy. Secondly, it has failed because it has sacrificed
the human rights of the migrants in doing so in managing a regime
which is exceedingly brutal in terms of the irregular migrants
coming in and going out of the country. Thirdly, it relies on
stripping the third world of its human capital, the same point
that Dr Koser made. On those three grounds it is incoherent. It
fails on the central issue of not meeting British labour demand,
which is what the Labour Government in 1997 was moving towards.
In sum, it has failed on those grounds.
Chairman: We will come back to each of
those points in due course. Janet Dean?
Q105 Mrs Dean: What practical measures
is the UN taking to encourage a coherent global response to migration
and what impact will these have on the UK?
Dr Koser: Again, I worked for
the independent Global Commission rather than the United Nations.
What the Commission has been doing has been trying to disseminate
this report widely which, as the Chairman has indicated, speaks
about coherence and a more comprehensive approach. It has been
trying to address governments, indeed this Government, we met
with Tony McNulty just before Christmas, and has been trying to
promote the principles in the report. I have to be honest, in
my opinion one of the problems with migration management is that
most states see it as a question of state sovereignty and national
priorities and are not willing to listen to an international body
such as the Commission or for that matter the United Nations.
It seems to me the great contradiction in migration today is that
it is a global issue that people try to manage at a national level
I think that is a contradiction that is regrettable. My own personal
opinion is that reports like this will not have much impact on
the large, advanced immigration countries such as the UK, Australia,
Canada, the USA because I believe that they are not willing to
be told what to do by an outside independent body, and that is
my opinion on that.
Q106 Mrs Dean: In your own view though
what more could the UN do to try and get countries to look more
globally rather than at their own national situation?
Dr Koser: Again, I cannot speak
for the UN because I am not a UN employee, but in my opinion,
given its limited resources and given its political constraints,
the UN needs to adopt a triage approach and look at the really
problematic issues and, frankly, the really problematic issues
are not immigration control in the UK, they are refugee movements
in the south, they are human trafficking and human smuggling and
so on and so forth. So I would not be surprised if the UN focused
on what I suspect they and I certainly believe to be the truly
important migration issues. Again I think it is important for
all of us to put our concerns about national migration policies
into a broader global context, and in that context the UK has
not got much of a concern.
Q107 Mrs Dean: The report outlines
the enormous changes that are taking place in the global economy
and the impacts of globalisation on national labour markets, and
concludes that states should pursue more realistic and flexible
approaches to international migration based on a recognition of
the potential for migrant workers to fill specific gaps in the
global labour market. Does the Commission consider that the UK's
"Managed Migration" policies fulfil this definition?
Dr Koser: The Commission does
not comment on the UK's policy specifically. Speaking personally
if I may, and I reflect here what Professor Harris says, migration
is not a silver bullet. Migration alone cannot fill the demographic
deficits that we have in this country, solve our pension crisis
and fill labour market gaps, but it is certainly one part of a
broad suite of policies that can go some way towards resolving
these pressing problems that we are about to experience in the
UK. I think I would agree with Professor Harris that thus far
migration has not been used in as effective a way as it might
have been to begin to address some of these issues. I think Professor
Harris is exactly right, the fact that certain parts of the economy,
not just in the UK but in many other advanced countries, effectively
rely on irregular migration is a perfect example of the fact that
we are not making migration policy work. It appears that we need
the labour migrants in certain parts of the economy but we are
not allowing them to come in in a regular fashion, and I think
that is an incoherence that needs to addressed. The Commission
suggests, and this is controversial and it deserves more discussion
and more thought, that one way to resolve this would be to introduce
more temporary migration programmes. I think it recognises that
there is a great political unwillingness to countenance large-scale
permanent migration and that perhaps temporary labour migration
might be one way to overcome the labour market gaps, at the same
time being politically palatable. As I say, there are problems
as well with temporary migration.
Professor Harris: We agree. Our
Commission also thought that was the way to move. More importantly
in terms of the scarcity of skilled labour, particularly among
medical professionals, there is a need for partnership with developing
countries. That is to say the Government of the UK and the Government
of India in a partnership managing the circulation of health professionals.
Instead of Britain just stealing the health professionals from
sub-Saharan Africa or from India, it could enter into a partnership
in which health professionals circulate so that it is not a one-way
flow. That is to say, doctors come here, have their professional
experience enriched, then return home without loss of seniority,
et cetera. We are attempting at the moment to enter into discussions
with DFID about how far we can begin some pilot schemes here because
it seems to me that the world should move towards a global management
of health professionals, in this case, but if we cannot get that
we should seek a bilateral management of the movement of health
professionals, which would be to the advantage of India because
it does not lose its doctors permanently, it has their professional
experience enriched by their working overseas, and which would
be to the advantage of Britain which is able to staff its National
Health Service.
Q108 Gwyn Prosser: Dr Koser, in your
exchanges with the Chairman this morning you have been using the
terms "irregular" migration and "illegal"
migration. Is there a difference between these terms or are they
interchangeable?
Dr Koser: Yes, they are used interchangeably
but the Commission decided that "illegal" migration
is a particularly pejorative term that makes people feel marginalised
and unwanted and so the Commission made the decision not to use
that rather commonly used term and instead to use the term "irregular
status", so I think the report refers to "migrants in
an irregular status".
Q109 Gwyn Prosser: Both your report
and the RSA's report tend to conclude that irregular migration
is almost a product or certainly directly connected to the international
global situation and it is likely to remain that way and the situation
to grow. In that context, is there any advantage in governments
just accepting that as the position rather than clamping down
on borders and cracking down on irregular or illegal migration?
Dr Koser: I cannot speak for the
RSA report but this report does not say that irregular migration
is inevitable, if I can use that word; it says migration is inevitable.
The fact that it is irregular is because there are not enough
regular opportunities for people to move in a regular fashion.
I think it would be fairly unacceptable for any country, particularly
an advanced country such as the UK, to simply say we accept that
some people move in an irregular fashion and work in an irregular
way. The reason is because of course many of these people have
their human rights abused and jeopardised. The great mystery about
irregular migration is we do not know how many people there are
out there in the world who are trying to get for example to the
UK but at the moment are stuck in Bulgaria working as prostitutes,
or whatever it may be. There is a large number of people who are
migrants in an irregular fashion who are vulnerable in many ways.
The UK certainly cannot just sit back and say, we accept this
is going to happen, we accept it will fill certain labour market
gaps, so let's just allow that to happen. I just do not think
it is an acceptable thing for an advanced economy to do.
Professor Harris: Irregular migration
is very interesting because it is the real world labour market
operating in the domestic economy and it cannot be controlled
while labour market demand remains so high in Britain. It is absolutely
impossible to force any government to use physical force to prevent
workers moving to work, which is effectively what this is about.
There are all sorts of ways of looking at that but can I make
two points. The first is that when people ask how many, it assumes
that there is a fixed movement from country A to country B and
settlement in country B in an irregular status. That is not the
case. It is constantly moving. We are now building for the Olympic
Games in Stratford and certainly it will increase the level of
irregular migration into Britain for the period of construction.
As with any big construction project, it is labour demand which
is the source of the issue. The only way in my Commission's belief
to control irregular migration is to recognise existing labour
demand and to allow employers within whatever framework to recruit
directly. Without that we are feeding a black economy and a larger
and larger part of the British economy is slipping below the statistical
threshold, which means of course that macroeconomic policy begins
to look pear-shaped, ie it is impossible if you do not even know
what the size of the labour force is you cannot begin to manage
the economy in any sensible way. So the black economy is at the
end. That is not an immigration problem; that is a problem of
people operating outside the official economy to be dealt with
as a separate issue regardless of immigration. Immigration undoubtedly
feeds that, as it does also with all the other illicit international
transactions in narcotics, in trafficking, et cetera, et cetera,
so it is the disappearance of the economy which is at stake here,
the disappearance of the British economy into the statistically
unrecorded and the disappearance of the international economy.
While governments remain the central issue in regulating it, they
have to find means of managing the black economy.
Q110 Gwyn Prosser: Dr Koser, although
our inquiry is not specifically about asylum we are interested
in the connection between asylum and immigration. It has been
said that the overemphasis on the crackdown on illegal or irregular
immigration can have the effect of not giving the protection and
support we should be giving under our obligations to the genuine
asylum seeker. Is there any way of resolving that tension?
Dr Koser: First to reiterate your
point, yes, there are very serious concerns not just in the UK
but elsewhere that what I believe to be quite legitimate efforts
to try to stem or stop or reduce irregular migration can also
have an impact on asylum and refugees, and the reason of course
is that an increasing proportion of asylum seekers, as far as
we are aware, are moving in an irregular fashion. It is increasingly
difficult practically for asylum seekers to arrive in countries
like the UK (but not just the UK) in a legal, regular fashion.
You cannot any more go and get a visa in Afghanistan and come
to the UK so you have to use a smuggler to do it, very simply.
So irregular migration is bringing in not just irregular economic
migrants looking for work, as Professors Harris has indicated,
but also people genuinely fleeing for their lives who are entitled
to some sort of international protection. So it seems to me that
you have the problem of at least three sorts of people moving
in one single channel. You have economic migrants, people who
want to work and, as Professor Harris has said, will continue
to want to work, and we cannot do much about that. You have people
pretending to be asylum seekers but are not in fact asylum seekers.
That is another confusion in the whole system. You have genuine
refugees who are indeed fleeing persecution and life-threatening
situations and who deserve international protection. The challenge
for policy is somehow to try to distinguish between all three
of those. It is a challenge that I do not think is being met at
the moment. All this report says and I think all that advocates
would say is that by all means, yes, do take whatever policies
you think are appropriate to try to reduce irregular migration
but please make sure that the rights of asylum seekers and refugees
are fully respected and not jeopardised in that process. I recognise
it is very difficult to do in practical terms.
Professor Harris: A brief addition
to that. There is another category which is people who are real
asylum seekers who become irregular migrants. There is evidence,
for example, that Turkish Kurds coming into the country slip into
the irregular labour market of Stoke Newington and that area but
they have genuine grounds for fleeing political persecution in
Turkey, so you have got this other category. The important thing
is that these categories do not mean a lot and people move between
them. We speak of irregular migration but what do we mean: a Brazilian
girl who comes on a tourist visa to London, gets pregnant, is
obliged to stay and is obliged to work. She is only trying to
earn enough to get on to Paris before she goes back to Brazil.
It is the categories which are so misleading. The fundamental
problem is that the British economy depends on being open. There
are 40 million people entering and leaving each year and it is
expected that is going to rise to 80 million and well beyond that.[1]
That means you cannot control the categories. People enter as
students and work, they enter as tourists and work, et cetera,
et cetera, so really the important thing is how do we identify
the real problem? Is the real problem people flowing in and out
or is it people who settle? I believe, and the Commission believes,
that the British public is concerned with settlement not with
movement, and therefore we must facilitate movement (both movement
for work and other purposes) but the control of settlement is
what is the central political problem and there the criteria can
be quite different from entry and departure.
Q111 Gwyn Prosser: But would you
not agree that the definitions and categories are enormously important
for any state which wants to control immigration and measure the
movement?
Professor Harris: I agree. All
I am saying is that we have to treat them recognising that people
are not trapped in the categories and they are going to transfer
between the categories. There are a large number of people who
are irregular migrants who once arrested they claim asylum because
that is a legal exit from having been arrested and they no doubt
had grounds for being asylum seekers, you understand, so there
are no very clear-cut criteria here in which the Government can
tread confidently that it recognises the truth, particularly in
the case of asylum seekers. In the chaos of persecution and civil
war and so on, people get out and they will say almost anything
when they get to the border to avoid having to go back.
Dr Koser: The very simple answer
to your question is that according to the 1951 UN Convention on
the Status of Refugees, of which the UK is a signatory, the manner
in which an asylum seeker arrives cannot be held against him or
her in terms of considering his or her application. I think the
UK respects that particular provision of the Convention. That
is the only way to take this forward. If someone arrives in an
irregular fashion in the back of a truck and says, "I am
here to claim asylum", then they have to be dealt with as
an asylum seeker by UNHCR offices and dealt with in that manner.
There is no real way out of that. Asylum is a way for people to
enter the country like that.
Q112 Chairman: Equally, just to pursue
this point, the Government with Parliament's support not long
ago changed the rules to prevent people making an asylum application
for four or five years after they first came into the country
once they had been arrested because that was, frankly, a blatant
loophole. Whilst there may have been some of those people who
actually all that time had an asylum case without realising it,
do you think that Parliament was wrong to try and change the rules
in that way because it was something that was clearly capable
of exploitation?
Professor Harris: You are inviting
me into a political minefield.
Q113 Chairman: Just a moment ago
you said those people no doubt had a well-founded case to asylum
and I think some of us as constituency MPs who have dealt with
those cases would question your statement.
Professor Harris: I was not covering
all people.
Q114 Chairman: Because many, frankly,
do not.
Professor Harris: All the people
who claim refugee status or who claim to be seeking asylum no
doubt are not doing so. All I was saying is that we cannot rest
confident in the security of those concepts. That is the point.
Dr Koser: The specific answer
to your question is the key issue is the time that is given to
people to apply for asylum. I have interviewed many asylum seekers
and I have asked them, "What did you know about asylum when
you got here? and they have said, "Look, I came from a mountain
in Afghanistan, I was fleeing for my life, I do not even know
what asylum means." If you say within two days you have got
to apply then I think that is unreasonable; if it is a week or
two weeks that is acceptable.
Q115 Gwyn Prosser: Do you see regularisation
as an effective long-term response to irregular migration?
Dr Koser: Let me pick this apart
a little bit if I may. I actually disagree with one thing Professor
Harris said. I think the concern with irregular migration for
many people is the flows rather than the "stops" if
I can use that word. We are concerned about people crossing our
borders and we seem to forget there are large numbers of people
(we do not know how many) who currently are present in the UK
and other countries in an irregular fashion. The Commission believes
that on the one hand you need policies to deal with the flows
to stop people arriving but on the other hand you have to accept
that there are, however, many thousands of people who are here
already in an irregular fashion, as Professor Harris has said,
working and contributing to the economy. The Commission believes
that you cannot simply turn a blind eye to those people and say,
"Forget it, let's let them continue working in an irregular
fashion." What it recommends is a very careful consideration,
and I think that circumstances would vary by country and by population,
of two possible options for those people who are currently present
in an irregular fashion. One is return. I think return has not
been used as strongly as it might be in the UK. Of course, there
are many people who cannot be returned but return is certainly
one way of dealing with these people. The other possibility is
regularisation, I think logically those are the only two options
we really have to deal with the irregular migration population.
The grave argument against regularisation, to answer your question,
is the question of whether this is a magnet. If I live in Kosovo
and I know that you are going to have a regularisation next year
then I am going to come in time to have it. What the Commission
recommends is a one-off regularisation; not a rolling programme,
a one-off which says to all irregular migrants in the UK today
we will regularise you full stop, and then we do not do that again.
That may be an answer. I think personally that the magnet argument
is a strong reason not to adopt the idea of a rolling programme
where we do it every three years.
Q116 Gwyn Prosser: Is there not a
worry there because every time a government does say "we
are having a one-off amnesty" everyone knows it will not
be a one-off?
Professor Harris: As in Spain
and the United States where each amnesty is only a prelude for
another one three years later. This is why I think we should move
towards what the Commission proposed in terms of temporary visas,
three year or four year work permits issued in sufficient numbers
to mop up the irregular migration but simultaneously allows people
into the country to apply for that work permit. That seems to
me to be different to a one-off amnesty that leads to a rush.
It is that you may if you are already working here apply to be
considered for the issue of a work permit to validate your position.
The problem is the cost of all that. At the moment the Government
tries to register all the people from Eastern Europe and it costs
£50 (or two days' tax free pay). Which worker from Eastern
Europe is going to bother to apply for regularisation when it
costs £50? So whatever scheme is introduced it has not got
to constitute a major disincentive to irregular workers to apply
for it.
Q117 Gwyn Prosser: Professor Harris,
do you still hold to your statement that irregular migration is
a fundamental, albeit unacknowledged, part of Managed Migration?
Professor Harris: Yes, I think
it is the only thing that makes migration work. It is what meets
basic labour demand in the UK for unskilled labour because the
Government does not meet it, so it makes possible the rest.
Q118 Steve McCabe: Professor Harris,
you say in your report that there should be a clear separation
between migration for work and those who are admitted for settlement.
That is one of the distinctions. Could you just briefly tell us
why you think it is important that we make that clear separation?
Professor Harris: Because as the
British economy becomes more and more globalised I believe the
numbers of people passing through the UK, whether for a day, a
year or five years, is going to increase enormously. If the British
economy is to thrive and household welfare is to be secured, we
have to have a system which allows people to circulate through
the country whilst reassuring the electorate that this does not
change the composition of the population. So there the issue is
who is admitted for long-term permanent settlement. That, it seems
to me, is the basis of the distinction. We are going to have many
millions more people flowing through the country for short periods
and many of them working for short periods or long periods, but
we have to separate that out from changing the social composition
of the population, which seems to me is what worries electorates,
that the country is being transformed behind their backs without
their decision. In the case of Switzerland, for example, which
in the 1950s and 1960s relied very heavily on temporary migration,
it was still extremely difficult to make the transition from being
a temporary worker to being a Swiss national. Instead of concentrating
on people crossing borders we have to concentrate on people making
the transition from work to settlement. We frame a scheme in the
report of how that might work, that is to say the period of time
during which you work before you can be considered for settlement.
That can be changed, that is an optional thing.
Q119 Steve McCabe: Thank you. I think
you used the example of the US/Mexico border to show the problem
of very restrictive controls and you say the more restrictive
the controls the higher the cost the migrant pays and consequently
they stay in the country longer. Essentially you conclude from
that that the tougher or more restrictive the controls the longer
the person will remain in the country they have come to. Given
that, are there any kind of immigration controls at all that you
think would help the circulation of migratory labour or are you
arguing for no controls?
Professor Harris: No, no, no,
migration controls are there to reassure the electorate that the
system is under control. At the moment it is not under control
because labour demand is being met irregularly. The question is
to frame such a system that will meet the labour demand through
the regular system. I think that is feasible and should be explored
with powerful incentives to return, to repeat Dr Koser's point.
That is to say, if workers come here, first of all we propose
that they come here to earn and to learn. This becomes a way of
enhancing the skills of workers who come to Britain both in language
and in other trade skills, et cetera, et cetera.
1 Note by Witness: We have since checked the
figures and there are 80 million entering and leaving each year
and it is expected to rise further. Back
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