Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480
- 488)
TUESDAY 8 JANUARY 2008
Mr John Martin and Mr Georges Lemaitre
Q480 Lord Lamont of Lerwick:
I want to go back to your answer to Lord Griffiths about GDP per
capita, because this is a very, very important point. That was
just in the very short run. If it is very marginal it is possible
that that is outweighed by the lifetime costs including pensions,
social provision, et cetera.
Mr Martin: I would agree with you that in theory
you ought to pay attention to the lifetime pattern of claims on
public services. This is much more difficult to calculate because
you need to be able to follow people from almost the moment they
enter your country to the moment they exit by dying or leaving
your country or returning to their own.
Q481 Lord Lamont of Lerwick:
But if they are unskilled?
Mr Martin: If they are unskilled, you could
conceivably find a situation in which the net present value would
be negative to the public finances and in that case the opposite
would apply. If you look at the recent streams of immigrants to
the United Kingdom in terms of their average skill levels, that
would be unlikely to occur, I would argue, based on a current
cross-section of employment and earnings outcomes and likely taxes
and benefits. But you are certainly right, it is quite possible
to occur. The only study that I have seen of this kind is one
that was conducted in the US about ten or 15 years ago. That showed
clearly that for low-skilled workers that was the case, there
was a small net lifetime negative impact on public finances, but
for those with skill levels above the average there was a very
large positive lifetime impact on public finances.
Q482 Lord Skidelsky:
In most of the discussion the economic impacts have emphasised
the importance of its impact on GDP per capita. Is it right to
ignore its impact on GDP entirely? Is that the only economic criterion
that one would want to take into account?
Mr Martin: It is the most obvious first choice
of an economist! What we are essentially concerned about is the
standard of living in the country and, in particular, we might
want to be concerned about the standard of living of the native-born
population, distinguishing between immigrants and the native-born
population. The standard welfare theory would argue that would
be the criterion that we are most concerned about. There are arguments
that one could construct that would say that at least there is
some interest in the overall size of the economy. For example,
if you took a view that the larger the size of your economy, the
more powerful and important you were as a country in the world—
Q483 Lord Lawson of Blaby:
Or the ability to wage war.
Mr Martin: Exactly, the ability to wage war.
That may well be a reasonable view to take.
Q484 Lord Skidelsky:
But that would not be an economic argument, in your view?
Mr Martin: Economic or non-economic, that is
a rather difficult one. You are an historian. I will not venture
on to the terrain that I was just about to venture on to! It seems
to me that the distinction between economic and non-economic becomes
a little blurred here when we venture down this route very far.
Q485 Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market:
Can I ask you: have you any comments on the Government's submission
to the inquiry? In particular, in your view, are the Government's
conclusions about the economic impacts of immigration based on
an assessment of the available evidence?
Mr Martin: I have read this submission which,
I think, broadly speaking, seems to me to be a pretty fair reading
of the evidence, as I understand it and as I am familiar with
it, for the United Kingdom, and, also, incidentally, it does indeed
cite evidence for other countries as well, again, with which,
broadly speaking, I concur. There is, perhaps, one area where
I think it could do with some fleshing out. It does seem to me
that more attention might be paid to the questions arising from
integration. In particular, the fact is that the UK has seen a
very large increase in inflows in a fairly short period of time
and it will, inevitably, take some time for the full effects of
that to be felt, both through the economy and society as a whole.
If we look at the experience of other OECD countries, we see that
the integration experience, at least in some of these countries,
has not been as satisfactory for the more recent cohort of immigrants
as it was in the 1960s and 1970s, and there is a great deal of
concern about how one could try to improve that integration experience—what
kinds of policies, both economic and social, in particular for
the children of the immigrants once they start entering your education
system? One of the things that we have seen in our Pisa study
of the literacy and numeracy skills of 15 year-olds in OECD countries
is that in many countries the children of immigrants of the first
and second generation do particularly poorly in the education
systems. I think that is something that would warrant very close
attention in the United Kingdom. Now, much of that has to do with
the country of origin of immigrants, because clearly in some countries
children perform better than they do from other countries—again,
related to parent status—but I do think that is, perhaps,
one area where the Government's submission could, perhaps, have
devoted a little bit more attention toward.
Mr Lemaitre: On this point, I think, again,
we need to distinguish between discretionary and non-discretionary
movements, because some of them are as a result of migration policy,
some are controlled and others much less so. If you look at the
sorts of migration that are subject to policy control, the Tier
1 and the Tier 2, inflows, we have very highly skilled migration
and demand-driven migration, where people have a job on arrival.
Those are almost unambiguously positive—there is hardly
any question. The problems that have arisen in the past and in
other countries are the sorts of migration where people arrive
without a job on the horizon, where their qualifications are not
necessarily recognised and where they do not speak the language
of the country. The Tier 1 and Tier 2 have a certain amount of
control over this because you are selecting very strongly in favour
of youth and education, and Tier 2 where people have to have a
job. The other types of migration are often lower-skilled. In
other countries people, on arrival, have had jobs, have thrived,
but those jobs have sometimes been eliminated through structural
change in the economy, and for people who do not necessarily speak
the language of the country very well, there are problems retraining,
etc. The historical record of Europe shows that the problems are
not necessarily with the first generation low-skilled but with
the children of the lower-skilled, essentially because the latter
have problems in helping their children navigate through the complex
society's education systems in the countries. So this is the sort
of impact that does not really show up in the document here, that
is, the different impacts for discretionary and non-discretionary
migration. There are very positive consequences for the type of
migration policy where there is some control but policies need
to be put in place to overcome the challenges associated with
other types of movements, which, in the past, have not been met.
First-generation migrants need to have a certain capacity to be
retrained; their children need to be helped in the educational
system, particularly the low-skilled, in order for those outcomes
to remain positive over time.
Q486 Lord Layard:
I want to pursue the statement made that more recent waves of
migrants have been less well-integrated than earlier waves, because
I think that is very important. Could we be sent evidence on it?
I wonder if you have any sort of explanation of why that might
be. Is it because, as it were, the bigger the existing stock,
the less the need to integrate?
Mr Martin: I think we need to distinguish between
two sets of countries here. Let us take the case of the United
States and Canada, on the one hand, and let us take the case of
Britain and Ireland on the other. In the case of the United States
and Canada, it is clear that there has been a decline in the average
(I use the word in inverted commas) quality of immigrants over
the past two decades, judged in terms of the educational attainments
on average. That is very much related to the change in the countries
of origin of these immigrants. For example, in the case of the
United States it is very clear: the main source of immigrants
is Mexico and other Central American countries where average educational
attainments are below those in the United States or below those
in the countries which previously supplied immigrants to the United
States. In Canada, there is an associated effect in the sense
that Canadian employers now seem to discount completely foreign
work experience and educational qualifications acquired abroad.
In the cases of Britain and Ireland in the past 10 years, you
have seen an influx, on average, which is better educated than
the native population. That is certainly the case in Ireland and
it is, to my belief, also true for the United Kingdom, particularly
when you look at the immigration from Eastern Europe. So you have
two different forces at work, if you like: the average quality
of immigrants into Britain and Ireland has gone up, whereas the
average quality of immigrants into the United States and, to some
extent, Canada, has gone down.
Q487 Lord Layard:
The remark was about the degree of integration, which you said
was less, as a reason why—
Mr Martin: That is certainly true in Canada,
without a doubt. Also, to some extent, it has been argued in the
United States in terms of the earnings experience; the degree
to which recent cohorts of immigrants to Canada have converged
to the earnings of the native population has been significantly
slower—less convergence—than the previous cohorts
of immigrants in the 1970s and 1980s. Ditto for the United States.
Mr Lemaitre: If you look at the situation of
immigrants, again, that arrive without a job on arrival (and I
emphasise that point,) the ones that have the most difficulties—relative
to native-born persons of the same educational attainment—are
actually highly educated, not the lower educated. With the lower
educated, one can arrive, as we have seen with recent migration
in the UK, with a very limited knowledge of the host-country language
and can take on a low-skilled job, but in order for a more highly-skilled
person to want to work at their level they need to have a better
command of the language, their qualifications need to be recognised
and their experience needs to be recognised. These are the ones,
in the Canadian experience of the last 20 years, who have much
greater difficulty, despite the selection process and the criteria
that are applied. The recent immigrants have more difficulty in
finding jobs in the labour market than in the past. So the requirement
to have a job on arrival is a very critical one. If you do not
have that in place, you need to have some sort of means of ensuring
that qualifications are recognised, and that on arrival immigrants
have a very good command of the language. Clearly, that is not
possible in all countries but it is possible in the United Kingdom.
Q488 Chairman:
Thank you very much indeed, once more, for spending your time
with us this afternoon. We have kept you rather longer than we
might have expected but that is testament to the quality of your
evidence. Thank you very much.
Mr Martin: Thank you very much.
|
