Immigration is changing rural England life

Britain's face is changing. More than half of all babies born in London last year were the children of foreign-born mothers. Across England and Wales, the figure was approaching a quarter. Recent polls, including the Ipsos Mori political monitor, last month, have put immigration at number one in the public's list of concerns. This used to be a polite way for people to tell pollsters that they were racists. Yet race is no longer the issue: not since the arrival of more than 600,000 white Eastern Europeans after the expansion of the European Union in 2004, in what has become the biggest-ever influx of foreigners to our shores. After a decade of broadly pro-immigration policies, Labour is on the defensive. Jacqui Smith's appointment as Home Secretary in June surprised Westminster, but she knows why Gordon Brown chose her for the job. When he was chancellor and she was Chief Whip, an MP for a Midlands marginal seat, she submitted political strategy papers to him that singled out immigration, particularly from Eastern Europe, as a top concern of voters, and one that the Government needed to address. Brown admired her political acumen. Yet, since her arrival in the Home Office, it has been business as usual. The arrival of EU migrant workers has continued apace, while The Sunday Telegraph reveals today that the Home Office is moving towards an amnesty that could allow hundreds of thousands of failed "legacy" asylum-seekers to settle legally in Britain. Meanwhile, there is little appetite in the Conservative leadership to challenge Labour over the issue. David Cameron has resisted calls from the Tory Right to talk more about immigration, for fear of surrendering the political centre ground. A poll on the ConservativeHome website, last week, suggested that 39 per cent of party supporters want more focus on immigration, while only 31 per cent were happy with the current stance. But a change of strategy at this stage would bring accusations that the leader was lurching to the Right only to shore up his own position. The asylum amnesty will apply to some of the backlog of 450,000 cases that were identified last year, while John Reid was home secretary, as the leftovers from a decade of Whitehall incompetence. These individuals were assessed by officials, often many years ago, and judged to be economic migrants rather than refugees. Instead of being removed from the country, they were left in limbo for years. Many, understandably, have settled, started families and found work in the black economy. Calls for an amnesty have won the backing of church leaders and more than 80 MPs, led by Jon Cruddas, the former Labour deputy leadership contender. If asylum-seekers were given permission to remain in Britain and find work, the campaigners say, they would go from being a burden on the economy to being an asset, paying taxes instead of claiming benefits. This claim is disputed by the pressure group MigrationWatch, which calculates that the extra burden the regularised migrants would place on the Welfare State would outweigh the taxes they paid. Ministers refuse to call the legacy case review an "amnesty", for fear of the political backlash that the word brings. Yet, for many failed asylum-seekers, it will look and feel like an amnesty. That brings a disadvantage: the prospect that it will encourage further illegal immigrants to try their luck in Britain in the expectation of another amnesty a few years later. It is also unfair to low-skilled workers who have sought entry to Britain through legitimate channels and been turned down, only to find that their counterparts who broke the law and entered the country as stowaways are now being granted permission to stay on as legitimate migrant workers. When Spain declared a three-month amnesty for illegal immigrants in 2005, about 700,000 people took the opportunity to regularise their status. The country's Socialist government claimed that the move raised ï¿½1 billion in taxes. The opposition said it incurred one-off costs and sparked far-Right attacks on immigrants. MigrationWatch has identified three previous "amnesties" in Britain, none on the scale of the current operation. In 1993, the Conservative government granted "exceptional leave to remain" to 32,000 adults. In 1999, a "backlog clearance exercise" under Labour gave 29,000 people indefinite leave to remain. And in 2003 David Blunkett, as home secretary, launched the "family exercise", under which 70,000 adults and children, all of whom claimed asylum before 2001, have been granted settlement rights. In 2004, the all-party Commons Home Affairs Committee declared: "Amnesties set up a vicious circle which should be broken by discouragement of unfounded claims, fast and efficient processing of those claims when made, and rapid removals when claims have failed." Recent reforms to asylum and immigration have mainly amounted to tinkering around the edges, from the New Asylum Model, which has speeded up the handling of some claims, to points-based assessment for skilled migrants, to the rebranding of the Home Office's immigration directorate as the Borders and Immigration Agency. None of the changes has had much effect: the flow of foreign citizens into Britain via work permits, student visas or other schemes has been largely untouched. Increased security at Channel ports has had some impact on illegal entrants. Yet, while the Government cannot prevent stowaways from finding their way into Britain and claiming asylum, the bulk of current immigration is the result of a deliberate decision by ministers. When the EU expanded in May 2004, members including France and Germany banned nationals from the "A8" joining countries, chiefly Poland, from taking up jobs immediately. Britain, Ireland and Sweden were the only countries to open their labour markets overnight. The result was the biggest wave of immigration this country has ever seen. It is a testament to British tolerance, as well as to the hard-working character of most of the new migrants, that this historic event has sparked no riots or protest movements. Yet its impact on our public services, housing and culture has yet to be fully felt. Six years ago, the Cantle report on the riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley found that in those towns, the white and Pakistani Muslim communities were leading separate lives. We do not yet know how quickly our newest arrivals will integrate. Research on central and Eastern European migrants, published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation earlier this year, concluded that "the vast majority spent most of their time with recent or settled migrants from their own country and with migrants from other countries". As our map on page 17 shows, the new migration hotspots are not the multi-ethnic inner cities that absorbed previous waves of immigration, but rural towns and villages where low-paid farm and hotel work is being done by Eastern Europeans. In Scarborough, North Yorkshire, Polish grocery shops have sprung up. In Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, a policeman has taught himself to speak Lithuanian so he can chat to locals on his beat. The biggest winners, apart from the migrants themselves, are the farmers and hoteliers who employ them at minimum-wage rates. The losers are the British craftsmen and cleaners, farm labourers and semi-skilled workers whose wages have been forced down as they compete in the labour market. Overall, immigration increases the size of Britain's total economy, but its impact on what really matters - gross domestic product per head, or average wealth - is very small. Andrew Green, of MigrationWatch, claims that the positive effect is equivalent to 4p a week, or a Mars bar every three months. should we put our foot down against illegal immigrants overpopulating england? i think so