Vol. 71/No. 48      December 24, 2007

According to The Times of London, foreign nationals now account for about 8 per cent of the 29.1 million people working in the United Kingdom. A government report in October stated that in the final quarter of 2006 four million people, or 12.5 percent of the working-age population, were born overseas, up from 7.4 percent a decade ago.  
 
Influx from S. Asia, E. Europe
In 2006, according to government statistics, the largest number of new immigrants were from South Asia, mostly from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka. In recent years large numbers have also arrived from eight Eastern European countries that joined the European Union (EU) in 2004, especially from Poland.

The immigrant workforce is not only concentrated in the major cities. A Times article in early November spotlighted the town of Boston in Lincolnshire, where the population has increased from around 56,000 in 2001 to 70-80,000 today. The immigrants there are listed as being mainly from Portugal, but also from Poland and other Eastern European countries.

Leaders of both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party argue that the immigrants are “stealing British jobs” and placing a strain on social services. With this chauvinist rhetoric they blame the foreign-born for the capitalist economic crisis here.

In August, Conservative leader David Cameron said immigration over the past decade had been “too high” and needed to be controlled because of the alleged pressures on hospitals and housing. Two months later he called for a “coherent population strategy” and said immigration should be “substantially lower,” including by a reduction in the numbers of immigrants admitted from outside the EU. He pledged that a future Conservative government would establish a border police force with powers to track down and remove undocumented immigrants. Cameron said his views had nothing to do with “race.”

Trevor Phillips, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, applauded Cameron for “attempting to deracialise the issue of immigration and to treat it like any other question of political and economic management.” Phillips, a Labour Party politician who is Black, has become a sharp critic of “multiculturalism.”  
 
Brown defends ‘British jobs’
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for “British jobs for British workers” at the annual Trades Union Congress in September and made a similar statement at the Labour Party Conference later that month He also announced plans to require both skilled and unskilled immigrant workers to learn English.

In a debate in Parliament, Cameron attacked Brown’s “British jobs for British workers” remark as contrary to EU law. He held up literature from two ultraright groups, the British National Party and the National Front, which have employed the same slogan. In the same debate, Labour member of Parliament Keith Vaz condemned Brown’s comments as “employment apartheid.”

On October 31 a new UK Borders Bill became law. It establishes compulsory identity cards for “foreign nationals” beginning in 2008 and grants the government expanded powers of detention and deportation.

On November 14, a unified UK Border Agency was announced, bringing together immigration cops, customs agents, and visa authorities under one command. Westminster also announced a £650 million [1 pound = $2.05] contract to develop a “passenger screening system” to be used along with fingerprint visas as part of a “electronic border security system,” under which all foreign visitors will be checked against immigration, customs, and police watch lists. In October the government decided to maintain restrictions on workers from Bulgaria and Romania that limit them to work in certain seasonal jobs in agriculture and food processing. Workers from other Eastern European countries that have recently joined the European Union, such as Poland, are still allowed to work in the United Kingdom without restrictions.

Employers who rely heavily on their superexploitation of immigrant workers have opposed some of these measures. Some bosses attacked the decision on Bulgarian and Romanian workers, warning of labor shortages as the flow of workers from other Eastern European countries slows. The bus company First Group issued a statement saying that the decision “will have an impact on our ability to fulfill our vacancies in the future… . It is vital to maintain the supply of labor for the sustainability of a cost-effective public transport system.”

An October 17 editorial in The Times argued that the United Kingdom “has benefited, and continues to benefit enormously, from immigration.” The paper cited a government report that found that 17 percent of economic growth between 2004 and 2005 was due to immigration. “Many new arrivals have entered unfashionable sectors of employment,” the editorial continued, “such as agricultural labor and social care, which have faced recruitment problems for decades. Their wages are modest but they are hardly a drain on the benefits system.”

Nigel Hastilow, a Conservative parliamentary candidate for an area near Birmingham, resigned his candidacy November 4 after an uproar over comments he made to a local newspaper on immigration. Hastilow referred to Enoch Powell, who was fired as a Conservative spokesperson in 1968 for a speech in which he predicted “rivers of blood” if immigration was not controlled. Hastilow said Powell had claimed “uncontrolled immigration would change our country irrevocably… . He was right. It has changed dramatically.”
 
 
Related articles:
Washington state rally protests cop harassment of immigrants
Vancouver rally protests cop killing of Polish man  
 
 
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