MigrationWatch UK

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MigrationWatch UK is an independent right wing^[1][2][3] pressure group and think-tank that seeks to drastically reduce immigration to the United Kingdom and argues for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and to write its own.^[4] It views the United Kingdom as overcrowded and sees immigration as making this problem worse. The group denies that immigration brings significant economic benefit to the United Kingdom. It also views large-scale immigration as being a burden on the infrastructure of the country.^[5][2]

It is chaired by Sir Andrew Green, a former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. David Coleman, Professor of Demography at Oxford University, is an Honorary Consultant.

Contents 1 History 2 Wages 3 Net Economic Impact 4 Asylum 4.1 Questions over asylum numbers 4.2 Further disagreement over numbers with the British government 5 HIV testing and Human Rights Treaty 6 The role of the press 6.1 The Daily Mirror controversy 7 Controversy 8 Notes 9 External links

[edit] History

Sir Andrew Green, a retired diplomat, founded the group. He was an ambassador to Syria from 1991 to 1994 and to Saudi Arabia from 1994 to 2000. He became interested in Britain's asylum laws in 1996 during the embarrassing case of Mohammed al-Masari, a dissident Saudi physicist who operated a campaign against the Saudi regime by fax from London. He tried to remove Masari from Britain because of Saudi requests and because he viewed Masari as an Islamic extremist. However he was unable to do so because of the asylum laws, despite having the support of the Prime Minister, John Major.^[6]

Masari's presence and activities were damaging British relations with Saudi Arabia and he felt frustrated. Additionally at the time Green served as a non-executive director of Vickers, an arms company with links to Saudi Arabia. An arms contract was under negotiation and the contract was thought to be under threat if the British government failed to deport the dissident.^[7] When he retired, he started to look into the matter more closely. He perceived immigration to be out of control. Compounding the problem as he saw it was a situation in which no-one was opposing the asylum regime and policies. He set out to form a pressure group to educate and influence public opinion.

He then looked to extend his brief from asylum into the wider issue of immigration and again he was highly dissatisfied with the huge scale of immigration into the UK. He then became acquainted with Dr David Coleman, 57, reader in demography at Oxford University, through the letters page of The Times. Dr Coleman, who has published 90 papers and eight books on the growth and movements of populations, is a regular contributor to the newspaper.

One of these letters talked of "a pervasive but unofficial institutional multiculturalism" and advocates that "migrants should in general accommodate themselves to local conditions, not oblige the customs and institutions of their new home to make way for them". Another argues that Sir Winston Churchill was right in his belief that immigration from Commonwealth countries should be tightly controlled. MigrationWatch was thus born.^[1]

[edit] Wages

MigrationWatch has claimed that migration into the UK has and will significantly cut the real wages of British citizens.^[8] It has expressed much concern that immigration from Eastern Europe is depressing wages.^[9] However Christian Dustmann, director of the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration at University College, London claimed that there is no strong weight of evidence of significant wage depression. Either it did not exist or it was very modest.^[10] Similarly David Blanchflower, a member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, said in January 2007 that there was little evidence that immigrants from eastern Europe had significantly depressed the wages or employment chances of British workers.^[11] John Denham, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, claimed that although immigration was economically beneficial overall "The day rate for a brickie in Southampton has fallen by 50 per cent, which is good news if you are having a kitchen extension built, but, if you are a brickie with a family to feed, is not fine at all".^[12]

[edit] Net Economic Impact

On 3 January 2007, MigrationWatch issued a report stating that the net gain to the British economy of immigration amounted to only 4 pence per week per person (or £120 million per year)[3]. MigrationWatch's methodology has been criticized by organizations such as the Confederation of British Industry and by the Liberal Democrat MP Nick Clegg, who stated: "Another day another spurious statistic from MigrationWatch. London's health and transport systems alone would collapse without the services of migrant workers. This so-called study doesn't even attempt to calculate how many pennys that is worth to each and every one of us"[4].

In response to controversy over his position as professor at Oxford University, MigrationWatch honorary consultant Professor David Coleman wrote an article for the Daily Telegraph on 9 March 2007. The article mentions the net gain of migration to the British economy [5], but the figure given by Prof. Coleman stands at 50 pence per week per person, over twelve times higher than MigrationWatch's own estimate.

In April 2007, MigrationWatch produced a revised version of the January report [6], which no longer supported their four pence per week per person claims. A misinterpretation of comments made by Joan Ryan led MigrationWatch to assume that a contribution made over eighteen months by migrants from Eastern European accession countries who joined the European Union in May 2004 actually referred to overall annual contribution by all migrants from all over the world.

[edit] Asylum

MigrationWatch helped to publicize the rise in asylum seekers in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It pointed out that in 2002, asylum seekers were arriving at a rate of about 100,000 a year and were being removed at a rate of 10,000 a year. This helped to cause a public outcry and galvanized the government into action. Asylum seeker numbers dropped dramatically in the years subsequent to that.^[3] In August 2004, MigrationWatch criticised the home secretary, David Blunkett, when published figures showing record numbers of immigrants may have been delayed on ministerial advice.^[13]

MigrationWatch claimed that the asylum system was skewed in favour of bogus applicants and does not efficiently deport those who have no right to stay.^[14] However others have pointed out that asylum figures mirror the political strife in the countries of origin. From the mid-1980s the majority of refugees came from war-torn Yugoslavia. In the current decade they come from Iraq and Zimbabwe. This suggests that asylum seekers are not bogus in general.^[14]

Complicating the issue though is evidence that there has been abuse of the asylum system that MigrationWatch has correctly pointed out. Anwar Rizvi, an interpreter in the asylum courts was a Whitehall whistleblower who claimed that the government's asylum system was paralyzed by fraud and abuse; he was sacked in November 2004. Rizvi had told The Sunday Times that dozens of asylum seekers were claiming they were gay or suffering from stress. Court documents showed others avoid removal by claiming they had headaches, nightmares and loss of appetite. He also alleged that the Home Office had an "unpublished policy" of allowing thousands of failed asylum seekers to settle by granting them "exceptional leave" to remain here.^[3] Further complicating this picture is the fact that "exceptional leave to remain" is supposed to be given by law to act as a mechanism to allow people to stay if immigration officials believe they have a case but can't fit them into the terms of the 1951 refugees convention. Thus some of these asylum seekers were indeed genuine and the government's "unpublished policy" may not have been wholly illegitimate.^[15]

[edit] Questions over asylum numbers

Nine out of ten refugees whose asylum applications were refused in 2001 remained illegally in Britain, according to a study by MigrationWatch. This figure was correct. However critics pointed out that a further one-fifth (some 4,500) were given "exceptional leave to remain" meaning they qualified under other conditions. This gives a rejection tally of 68% - something that the government had contended. This number does not include those who won their case on appeal. That further reduces the number of rejected applicants to 47%. According to the Refugee Council, quoting figures put before Parliament, the number of cases withdrawn and given leave to remain in 2000 was 5,000 - some 16% of all the applications that year. This brought the failed asylum seeker rate to 31%. Critics further point out that in the last quarter of 2001, almost 3,000 people (14% of applicants) were failed on "non-compliance grounds", meaning they had incorrectly filled out paperwork. Most often this occurs because asylum seekers need legal advice to complete it but they only have ten days by law to use a publicly available lawyer.^[15] In this instance and in others MigrationWatch has been heavily criticized for selectively revealing information and thus distorting the truth.^[16][17]

[edit] Further disagreement over numbers with the British government

• MigrationWatch claimed that the number of applications has nearly trebled in the past six years from 30,000 in 1996 to 86,000 in 2002.
• The UK Home Office claimed that applications for asylum, excluding dependents, increased by 18 per cent in 2002 to 84,130.^[17]

• MigrationWatch claimed that government figures showed net non-EU immigration approaching 200,000 a year. That number had more than doubled since 1997 and was a rapidly rising trend.
• The UK Home Office claimed that including dependents, the number of asylum applications was 103,080 in 2002, 13 per cent more than in 2001.^[17]

• MigrationWatch claimed that in the period 1989-99 nearly 63 per cent of the 356,200 applicants and dependants were refused permission to stay, but only a quarter of those refused were believed to have left the country.
• The UK Home Office claimed that in the 11-year period from 1989 to 1999, refusals totalled approximately 226,400.^[17]

[edit] HIV testing and Human Rights Treaty

MigrationWatch advocated that the Government should "cut loose from the straitjacket" imposed by its obligations under various conventions that made it impossible to operate the system in what it saw as the country's best interests.^[18] It has called for the British Government to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and write its own Human Rights Act.^[19] Its opposition to the existing ECHR is because it may not be possible for some convicted terrorists to be deported at the end of their sentences to a country in which there is a real risk where they might be tortured. (Article 3 of the ECHR prohibiting torture cannot be subject to derogation, and case law has extended its application so as to prevent deportation of anyone who might be at risk of torture in their own country.^[19][20]. Opponents of this view argue that even terrorists should not be subject to torture.^[21]

It has said it was dismayed by the decision to drop plans for mandatory testing for HIV for all immigrants. It says that it is necessary to prevent disease and that 47 governments currently carry out such a policy.^[22] Critics pointed out that recommendations from all kinds of bodies, including the World Health Organization, suggested that the government not institute such a policy. The government itself thought that the consequence would be an increase in the rate of illegal immigration among groups who knew they might be harbouring the infection and would not get the all-clear from a compulsory test. Some ministers had argued that it is inherently racist as it would mostly target Africans from countries with the highest rates of the disease.^[23]

[edit] The role of the press

Many British newspapers have cited MigrationWatch in their commentary on immigration policy in Great Britain. The Times cites MigrationWatch figures regularly, such as. "Nor is the government very keen to quantify the net benefit to the economy made by immigrants. They may swell productivity but they also swell the population, and will also need schools and hospitals and housing, and care in their old age. According to Migrationwatch, the net effect of immigrant labour on GDP is £1 per week per person."^[24]

The Sun newspaper has quoted MigrationWatch at least 81 times^[25] leading with headlines such as "They're pouring in to country",^[26] "An open door to terrorism",^[27] and "Migrants invasion warning".^[28] The Daily Mail has referenced MigrationWatch at least 99 times.^[29] It has led with headlines such as "Racist? No, Britain is simply full"^[30] and "Shortage of homes 'fueled by migrants' ".^[31] The Daily Mail wrote "MigrationWatch is a reputable thinktank run by retired senior diplomat Sir Andrew Green. It publishes the true facts about the scale of illegal immigration into this country."^[32] Tony Kushner writing in the journal, Patterns of Prejudice has written that as a consequence, those campaigning for refugee rights been isolated, marginalized and silenced - something very rare in modern British history. According to him this press campaign has made it possible to couch the crusade against asylum-seekers in a discourse of morality: the need to protect ‘our’ people and culture against the diseased and dangerous alien. In addition a distinction has been made between helping the genuine refugee and exposing the bogus asylum-seeker. MigrationWatch according to him has been part of this and "has constructed for itself a spurious statistical rationale".^[33]

Its defenders claim its warnings have been vindicated and that MigrationWatch's research has opened up the debate on immigration for the first time since the late 1960s.^[34] They also claim that MigrationWatch is merely advocating a legitimate position that net immigration to the UK is to the country's detriment.^[35]

[edit] The Daily Mirror controversy

The Daily Mirror columnist Brian Reade had previously compared Sir Andrew Green and Migrationwatch to the Nazi party and the Ku Klux Klan in an article on immigration, the Mirror has since offered an apology accepting that the allegations were untrue and are to pay damages and costs for the slur.^[36]

[edit] Controversy

Philippe Legrain has said that there are various psychological studies that confirm that opposition to immigration tends to originate from an emotional dislike of foreigners.^[37][38][39] Quite often, intelligent advocates then construct an elaborate set of rational arguments to justify that prejudice. When immigrants are unemployed, they are considered to be scrounging from the state; when they are working, they are stealing the jobs of native citizens. When they are poor, they are driving living standards down; when they are rich, they are driving general prices up. Immigrants cannot win in such a situation: they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. MigrationWatch is viewed by its critics as being such an intelligent advocate. They see its claims to just deliver facts and statistics and "provide the public with full and accurate facts placed in their proper context"^[40] as a thinly veiled advocacy organization for the reduction of immigration where providing data acts as a tool to criticize immigration. It has not to date publicized statistics or data that significantly detract from its cause and stands accused of actively distorting data.^{[1][17][16][41]}

An example of not looking at the positive aspects that immigrants provide to the UK, that critics so often refer to, occurred in 2003 when Sir Andrew Green was asked what the cultural benefits of migration were. He replied that they were "rather difficult to specify beyond a wider range of ethnic restaurants for the middle classes and new kinds of pop music for youth".^[16]

Baroness Caroline Cox is on the advisory council to MigrationWatch. She was expelled from the Conservative party in 2004 for openly supporting the United Kingdom Independence Party. UKIP's hardline anti-immigration stance - "we are bursting at the seams" - has been seen as resembling MigrationWatch's ideas. Her presence according to its critics gives an important clue to the organization's inward-looking, anti-European ideology. It wants to renegotiate the European Convention on Human Rights and withdraw from the Geneva Convention that protects refugees. Baroness Cox also worked for the anti-EU European Foundation of Bill Cash and Margaret Thatcher. This has been seen as further evidence of an anti foreigner mentality that holds its views regardless of the costs and benefits of immigration.^[16]

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Official website