ISSUES
: Our Changing Population
Chapter 1: Population in the UK
15
Low wages, likewise, are laid at the
feet of recent arrivals. The fault line
here is between those who argue that,
while immigrants may slightly bring
down wages sectorially, their boost to
GDP makes up for it, and those who
counter that it doesn’t feel that way
to the people working in the affected
sectors. This is an infuriating diversion:
the people to blame for low wages are
the people who pay low wages. The
sectors crammed with workers not
earning a living wage (this, according
to the Living Wage Foundation at
the weekend, amounts to six million
people) have spent decades whittling
down pay. Migrant labour is merely
one tool in their kit. The key victory
has been the propaganda push that
has reclassified low-paid work as
‘low-skilled’ to justify harvesting most
of its output as profit.
Immigrants have been successfully,
egregiously framed as a threat. All
sources of immigration have become
one. The debate refuses to distinguish
between a student and an engineer
and a cockle picker and a refugee.
Never mind that our universities are
a major export, and without foreign
students our balance of payments
would be stuffed; never mind that
sharing expertise across borders is
what allows creativity and innovation
to flourish; never mind that the
exploitation of workers is a case for
employers to answer, and it is not for
the exploited to apologise for being
too plentiful; never mind that we are
signatories of the refugee convention
and were, in living memory, proud of
that fact. The result is that we will now
stand by and watch people freeze
and, in some cases, literally rot in
makeshift European camps, because
they’re probably ‘economic’ migrants,
and even though we know they’re not,
we can’t have them because they take
up space and we’re too tiny.
The deliberate lack of sophistication
has led, inexorably, to a lack of
humanity, sitting on the terrain like
a toxic fog, choking any pride we
could reasonably take in our national
character. Those purporting to protect
Britain from the outside threat of the
stranger are actually destroying its
values from within.
1 November 2015
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0
300,000
600,000
900,000
1,200,000
1,500,000
Natural change in
ve year period
Net migration in
ve year period
2035 to 2039
2030 to 2034
2025 to 2029
2020 to 2024
2015 to 2019
Projected natural change vs net migration, United Kingdom
1,249,500
935,600
925,100
925,100
925,100
1,081,500
1,172,900
1,027,600
806,900
638,500
Source:
What do the 2014–based National Population Projections show?
Office for National Statistics, 29 October 2015
What is a long-term international migrant?
A long-term international migrant is defined as someone who moves to a country other than that of his or her
usual residence for a period of at least a year, so that the country of destination becomes his or her new country
of usual residence.
What is net migration?
Net migration is the difference between people moving into the UK (immigration) and people moving out of the
UK (emigration). If net migration is positive then it means that more people have moved to live in the UK than have
left to live elsewhere.
The latest headline figures
Our latest provisional estimates of Long Term International Migration (LTIM) show that net migration stood at
336,000 in the year ending June 2015. This is up from 254,000 in the year ending June 2014. This is a statistically
significant increase.
636,000 people immigrated to the UK in the year ending June 2015, a statistically significant increase compared
with 574,000 in the previous year. Emigration was stable with 300,000 people leaving the UK in the year ending
June 2015 compared with 320,000 in the previous year.
Source:
Net migration to the UK was estimated to be 336,000 in the year ending June 2015, Office for National
Statistics, 26 November 2015
