Economic immigration must be presented as supplementing the UK workforce
Channel crossings and record levels of working migrants coming to post-pandemic Britain have seen
immigration very much back in the news.
It’s an issue we need to talk about, because immigration is only going to become more important for the UK in the future.
On the demand side, Britain’s ageing population and skills shortages will mean an ongoing demand
for migrant workers. We’ll need increasing numbers of health and care professionals to provide the
care people expect, and younger workers from overseas to help generate the tax revenues and
social contributions necessary to support an aging population. On the supply side, the UK is uniquely
exposed to the largest and still-expanding pools of workers in the world: India and Nigeria, and their
large numbers of young people looking for jobs and opportunities in the decades ahead.
In this context it is all too easy to dismiss, even deride, public concerns around immigration: can’t
the sceptics see that migration is inevitable and largely positive? That approach is wrong. The past
decade has confirmed that. Indeed, that approach has allowed those concerns to be exploited by
those with the opposite agenda. Opponents of open immigration policies were able to paint the UK’s
labour immigration system as unbalanced, unfairly stacked in favour of employers, at the expense of
the long-term productivity of the economy and interests of the ‘ordinary worker’. Both major
political parties now speak in these terms.
All this should give pause for reflection to those advocating more open approaches to immigration
today: beware another backlash. But it should not conceal the large amount of common ground too
in this debate. There is a widespread desire to source skills and contribution in areas of
shortage, acknowledgement that to meet the needs of the UK’s economy and society immigration
will continue to play a key part, but is not, and cannot be, the only answer.
Economic immigration thus needs to be clearly presented as supplementing, not supplanting, what
the UK domestically already has, or realistically could have, available. Its value must be set out while
clearly acknowledging political and public concerns around the appropriate balance with other
interests; is the UK investing enough in the skills of its school leavers? Or in re-training elder
workers? Or in overlooked categories of the under-employed?
If British business wants more liberal migration policies, perhaps the quid pro quo for that should be
more employer engagement with longer term workforce planning between key stakeholders to
develop workable, strategic resourcing solutions for key sectors?
A more open labour immigration approach should also help strategically shape migration sustainably
on mutually beneficial terms with those countries from where the UK receives migrants. This means
‘global skills partnerships’, helping to develop, before they arrive, the skills of the potential migrant
workers to contribute to the UK economy and society, but in a way that also builds capacity and
expertise within their country. The story should be ‘brain gain’, not ‘brain drain’.
Such balanced, strategic thinking also needs to be applied to the UK’s approach to the challenge of
the humanitarian claimants arriving across the Channel. While this of course is a wholly different
matter, the same principle applies. A more imaginative compromise, involving give and take from
both sides, is required to stop the chaotic and dangerous flows while showing humanity. This would
see those arriving across the Channel from France returned, with the UK in return agreeing to take in
more, not less, refugees overall, from France.
In both asylum and labour immigration policy, the centre can be reclaimed, but it requires innovative
thinking to build more robust solutions to the UK’s immigration challenges and opportunities.
Jonathan Thomas is Senior Fellow at the Social Market Foundation. His latest report on migration
policy, Routes to Resolution, is published here: