Immigration is good for our economy.
The NHS couldn't function without its migrant workforce. It is good for the elderly in care homes who are nursed by immigrant workers. It is good for taxpayers who benefit from lower costs to public services. It is good for employers in low-wage industries like fruit-picking and food packing. It is good for shoppers to whom it delivers low prices. It is good for the economy since immigration adds £6bn a year to British economic output; officials statistics show that immigration boosted our economy by £1,650 per head over the past decade. It keeps inflation and interest rates down.
Despite all the truculent rhetoric about immigrants ?stealing our jobs? the unpalatable truth is that they do the low-status jobs which many Britons turn down, preferring a life of idleness on benefits. Sainsburys told a House of Lords committee on immigration recently that the strong work ethic which motivates many foreign-born workers often rubs off on the British-born staff with whom they work. Many immigrants, like those who run the night desk in our hotels, are far more talented and highly-educated than many of those who do most of the complaining.
The notion that we are being ?swamped? with immigrants is bogus. It is true that 5.6m people have come into the UK since 1997. But 5.5m Britons have gone abroad, many of them to live in other parts of the EU. The idea that our housing and social services cannot cope is therefore a nonsense.
None of this suits popular mythology. Immigrants are spongers on our benefits system, it says, when in fact 97 per cent have jobs. Another myth is that immigrants are responsible for increased crime. But again, despite the glee with which the media highlights Somali muggers, Rumanian beggars and Moldovian prostitutes, a wide-ranging study from the Association of Chief Police Officers on crime levels among eastern European immigrants reveals that offending rates among Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian, Romanian and Bulgarian incomers are pretty much in line with the rest of the population. Another myth bites the dust.
And yet if you tell anyone that they are speaking about immigrants in EXACTLY the same way as Hitler spoke of the Jews in the 1930s - ie as subhumans they would be shocked and offended.