The Folly of Mass Immigration (Part I of V)

Anthony Browne is environment editor of the Times. He has previously been economics correspondent for the BBC and the Observer, and deputy business editor and health editor at the Observer. He is author of The Euro: should Britain join? (Icon Books) and Do we need mass immigration? (Civitas). His series of articles on immigration in the Times, led to the Home Secretary denouncing him in parliament as “bordering on fascism”. In fact, a former Labour party member he has only ever voted Labour in general elections.

The argument of the ‘People Flow’ report that mass immigration is normal, irreversible and beneficial to host societies is a damaging illusion. Rather, the current experience of developed western countries, faced with huge inflows of people – refugees, asylum-seekers, economic migrants – from poorer parts of the world, is unprecedented and damaging. The process can and should be stopped, in the interests of the rich diversity of nations it will otherwise crush.

There are two ways to tackle serious social problems: evading them by linguistic trickery, or confronting them openly and honestly. One is easy, though it merely postpones the day of reckoning. The other is difficult, but it alone holds out the promise of a solution.

Europe has a problem of illegal mass immigration, much of it in the guise of unfounded asylum claims. Europe can either address it directly, or just legalise and relabel it. The new Demos/openDemocracy report on migration, People Flow, embraces wholeheartedly the easy, evasive, relabeling route. Mass migration from the developing world to Europe cannot be stopped, it argues, so it should be taken out of the hands of the illegal people-trafficking industry, legalised and facilitated, in order to “harness the positive effects of people movement.” The report seeks to “replace the illusion of control with the concept of flow management.”

From this premise, the report makes many vaguely sensible suggestions for legalising and promoting mass migration. Its proposals imply the “free movement of migrants in and out of Europe”. This, of course, is an open door policy implying mass immigration without limits – a process that would enormously increase mass immigration to Europe from the poor countries of the world, and transform Europe beyond recognition.

A failure of vision

The desire to regularise, and thus sanction, irregular immigration is founded on four assumptions. First, that mass immigration is a normal part of human life; second, that it cannot be controlled; third, that almost all immigration is beneficial to the host society; and fourth, that immigration is a right not a privilege and that the host society has no right to choose who can live amongst it.

Together, these assumptions take the politically fashionable and emotionally comfortable route of focusing almost exclusively on the needs and desires of actual and potential immigrants, and almost completely ignoring the needs and desires of both Europeans and sending countries. Thus, they fall into the trap of so much of the current immigration debate – failing to imagine and project a vision of the sort of world that it might be desirable to create in the long term.

The active promotion of mass immigration does nothing to stem its causes. On the contrary, by fuelling the brain drain from the developing to the developed world, it increases the former’s dependency on the latter. It intensifies a world of flux, divided families, splintered communities, cultural alienation and ethnic resentments – a world where those who can, live in the west, while those who cannot live in the rest.

A different, humane vision is needed, one of a world of “sustainable societies”. This involves capacity building in the developing world so that most people are able to live in their society rather than feeling they have to leave it. Such a world will be enabled to celebrate the diversity between nations, rather than demographically engineering nations to look alike.