Annex A
FOUR FAVOURITE FIBS
(THE GOVERNMENTS SHIFTING ARGUMENTS FOR LARGE-SCALE
IMMIGRATION)
1. 600,000 vacancies need to be filled
Disproved by the facts. Net immigration since
2001 when the government first made this claim is approaching
900,000 but vacancies are still at about 600,000. The reason is
that immigrants fill jobs but also create demand. To argue from
vacancies is therefore to advocate an endless cycle of immigration.
It is also to fall into the "lump of labour" fallacy.
2. Immigrants comprise 8% of the workforce
but contribute 10% of GDP
Rejected by the Statistics Commission. This
takes no account of the higher unemployment among immigrants and
the lower participation by women. Correcting for these factors
shows migrants making up 10% of the working age population and
contributing 10% of GDP.
In May 2006, the government revised their claim
to 10.5% of adults and 11% of GDP. (House of Lords answer HL 5379).
Even this calculation was biased by the omission of children.
Correcting for this omission gives 11.2% for the immigrant population
and 10.9% for their contribution to GDP—slightly negative.
3. Immigrants earnings are 13% higher than
those of indigenous workers
Dismissed by Statistics Commission for the same
reason. Correcting for lower participation rates and higher unemployment
among immigrant communities makes average wages across the working
age population of immigrants the same as for the population as
a whole. Only about one in five of the foreign born population
earns more that the average salary for full time work—the
same proportion as the UK born.
4. Immigrants are needed to pay our pensions
The House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee
dismissed this argument in November 2003. They reported "We
conclude that . . . it is neither appropriate nor feasible to
attempt to counter the trend towards a more aged society in the
UK through a manipulation of immigration policy".
The Turner Commission on pensions reached a
similar conclusion in their interim report.
9 December 2007
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