An Irish newspaper has been caught out blatantly smearing a pair of Polish migrants to the country.

The Irish Independent published an article purporting to quote an interview the couple, Magda and Robert, gave to the Polish Gazeta paper, but a comparison with the original reveals that the quotes were, at best incompetently and at worst maliciously, butchered in translation.

The Independent reports that:

‘Magda’ (36), not her real name, described her life on the dole in Donegal as a ‘Hawaiian massage’…

Magda doesn’t identify the town in Co Donegal where she lives but she does call it a “s***hole”…

“Sometimes I sleep till noon and the nearest beach is five minutes away”…

[Robert] in turn bragged about the county’s wonderful golf courses.

In fact, as a commenter on the social news site Reddit picked up, the original report suggests a different story. Rather than describing her life as a Hawaiian massage, Magda is actually doing a course in massage therapy, developing a skill which she is exchanging for services [all quotes via Google translate]:

Now I have an appointment with a carpenter, that I will make a bookshelf, and I will massage his back, because the boy has problems with the spine.

Rather than simply calling the town she lives in a “s***hole”, she says:

Donegal, a county on the northern tip of Ireland, for some the most beautiful place in the world, but for others – the biggest shithole. Wherever you look carefully, green hills and beaches to the horizon, like a postcard.

On the other hand you can go to the beach for an hour and meet one old woman in [a macintosh].

On sleeping:

Day start is always the same: go to the beach to see the sunrise. It charges me for the rest of the day. Once, I slept until noon, now pity that life.

And as for golf, it is mentioned twice in the piece. Once by the author, and once by Magda herself:

On weekends, the middle class come here to play golf, and it attracts tourists in summer.

Hardly bragging.

Little wonder that the Polish ambassador to Ireland has written to the paper, saying:

The danger of an anti-immigrant atmosphere developing during harsh economic times is well-documented throughout history. I would hope that a major newspaper such as the Irish Independent would be conscious of this and take great care when fact-checking such a potentially inflammatory article.

See also:

• Net A8 migration down 88 per cent – Shamik Das, November 26th 2009

• Polish politician attempts to suppress film exposing country’s anti-Semitic issues – Lidia Wieczorek, November 4th 2009

• Conservative party paranoia on Poland – Will Straw, November 11th 2009

• Five questions for Poland’s Chief Rabbi – Will Straw, October 29th 2009

• Griffin’s historical ignorance of Poland’s war role – Will Straw, October 20th 2009

Don Flynn is the director of the Migrants’ Rights Network

Today’s article in the Daily Telegraph by employment minister Chris Grayling and immigration minister Damian Green gives a picture of hundreds of thousands migrants arriving and marching straight down to the job centres to claim benefits.

Whipping up a storm of innuendo and misrepresentation, they link students, tourists and people “coming in the backs of lorries” to the fact that 370,000 claiming work-related social security benefits were born abroad.

Here’s a much-needed reality check:

Of this 370,000, over one-half are actually British citizens. They didn’t arrive here yesterday – many will have come ten, twenty or more years ago.

Another point: 370,000 sounds like a big figure, but it represents a fraction of just over 6 per cent of the 5.5 million people in receipt of these benefits. Not such a large figure after all.

It might also be worth mentioning that people born abroad make up around 14 per cent of the UK workforce. If they were represented in that proportion amongst benefit claimants we’d need many more of these ‘foreigners’ to get down to the dole queue and sign on.

The statistics the ministers are quoting also say nothing about the real cost of the benefits claimants – both foreign-born and native – to the public purse. It’s all very well saying on such-and-such a date 6 per cent of social welfare recipients were born abroad, but how many were amongst the long-term unemployed, and how many just needed help for a month or so before their next job turned up?

Anyone closer to the ground in this debate knows that benefits are only paid out when strict tests of entitlement are gone through by social security officials.

Most non-EU migrants who have arrived within the previous five years (two years if the spouse or partner of a person settled here) are barred from receiving the large number of income-related, child and incapacity benefits which figure on the immigration rule’s ‘public funds’ list.

Even EU nationals, who are supposed to have the same rights as UK citizens in these matters, have to have been in employment or self-employment, or the partners of someone who has, and to show that they are ‘habitually resident’ in the UK before they receive benefits.

So why has the government released these numbers now? When so much of the news about the economy and unemployment is as dire as it is, and the tsunami of joblessness that is now sweeping over us is associated with austerity measures, is it any surprise that some of its ministers are yet again speaking about migration and abuse of the system?

See also:

• DWP evidence says migrants aren’t benefit cheats. DWP’s spin says… – Alex Hern, January 20th 2012

• How to create a Telegraph migration scare story – Matt Cavanagh, September 9th 2011

• Express and Mail fail the migration stats test – Sunder Katwala, August 26th 2011

• The bad news in yesterday’s employment stats (and it’s not about migration) – Declan Gaffney, July 14th 2011

• When will politicians stop taking the public for fools on immigration? – Declan Gaffney, July 2nd 2011

Chris Grayling is spinning away in the Telegraph today, implying that immigrants are likely to be benefit cheats. Needless to say, the statistics don’t quite show what the minister for work and pensions says they do.

In his piece, Grayling writes:

[Waiting until the introduction of Universal Credit] and doing nothing was not good enough. So we’ve done a complex research exercise to match information about people’s nationality when they entered the country with the list of people now on benefits.

As a result we now know that there are 371,000 people who were foreign nationals when they entered Britain who are claiming benefits. The majority come from outside the EU…

All of this represents an almighty mess. It should never have been allowed to happen. And Labour should be embarrassed by what it left behind.

But Jonathan Portes reveals the problem behind claiming 371,000 foreign-born benefit claimants represents an “almighty mess”:

371,000 people, out of a total of 5.5 million, who are claiming working-age benefits, were non-UK nationals when they first registered for a National Insurance number; of these 258,000 were from outside the European Economic Area. Of this latter group, 54% are now British nationals, so presumably the rest are not.

Meanwhile, for comparison, we can also look at the Labour Force Survey. This says that, of the total number of people in work (about 29 million), some 4 million were born abroad. Of these 2.7 million were born outside the EEA.  And of these, 1.3 million are not (yet) British citizens.

So, summing up these numbers in very rough percentages:

• migrants represent about 13 per cent of all workers, but only seven per cent of out-of-work claimants;

• migrants from outside the EEA represent about nine to ten per cent of all workers, but about five per cent of out-of-work claimants

• foreign nationals from outside the EEA represent about 4.5 per cent of all workers, but a little over two per cent of out-of-work benefit claimants.

Rather than showing that migrants come to the UK from overseas to leach of the welfare state, the data in fact shows that migrants impose less than proportionate costs on the UK.

Of course, this isn’t Grayling’s spin. Forced to defend his dog-whistle anti-immigrant rhetoric on the Today programme, he argued that:

It’s important to have a system everyone has confidence in… [and it's] extraordinary we didn’t have any data on nationality of benefit claimants… otherwise how can people have confidence that we are paying out to people who are entitled.

When confronted with the fact that his own data has little evidence of benefit tourism, he claimed:

We have yet to establish the full picture. [...] It may be there isn’t a problem now… but we have seen in recent yrs illegal immigrants get NI numbers…

I want to make sure we know fully what is going on and can answer questions in Parliament about it.

This government’s attitude to evidence is fast becoming clear: Ignore it if you can, spin it if you can’t, and act on it only if it confirms your prejudices.

See also:

• How to create a Telegraph migration scare story – Matt Cavanagh, September 9th 2011

• Express and Mail fail the migration stats test – Sunder Katwala, August 26th 2011

• The bad news in yesterday’s employment stats (and it’s not about migration) – Declan Gaffney, July 14th 2011

• When will politicians stop taking the public for fools on immigration? – Declan Gaffney, July 2nd 2011

• New Migration Watch report misses opportunity for balanced debate on migration – Ruth Grove-White, February 22nd 2011

Ruth Grove-White is a policy officer at the Migrants’ Rights Network

This week the coalition government has new cause to regret strapping itself to a pledge of reducing net migration to the “tens of thousands” per year by 2015. The latest outlook report from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) shows that even the government’s expert advisors assume this target will not be met.

The independent OBR produces a five-year ‘Economic and fiscal outlook’ every six months, based on an assessment of the UK economy and public finances.

The latest report predicts shaky growth during the coming period, with the government facing significant risks that they will fall short of meeting growth targets.

At the same time, a higher than predicted level of net migration is built into the OBR forecast, with the report (pdf) stating:

“Our assumption for [UK] population growth is based on average net inward migration of 140,000 per annum over the forecast period, in line with our March forecast and with the long-term assumption underpinning the ONS’s low migration variant population projection.”

This is embarrassing for two reasons. Firstly because the government is having a hard time convincing anyone its immigration target can or will be met - and it appears the OBR is among the sceptics. Who could blame them though? Immigration statistics from the Office of National Statistics repeatedly show the government is way off course, with annual net migration to the UK in 2010 252,000, the highest calendar figure on record.

A recent YouGov survey (pdf) for the Sunday Times found just 16% of the public believes it likely the government will deliver on its pledge of net immigration reduction by 2015. Having over-promised on this target, the government is now facing the prospect of a very public under-delivery.

Secondly, the OBR forecast reflects the view of many economists that continued immigration, at levels higher than the government intends, could play a vital role in supporting growth in the UK.

As reported in The Independent, the OBR indicated (pdf) this time last year:

“Net migration can directly affect the economy’s trend growth rate by affecting potential labour supply growth.

“If migrants have a similar employment rate and level of productivity to the existing average, a reduction or increase in population growth of 0.1 per cent would translate one-for-one to a reduction or increase in trend growth of 0.1 per cent respectively.”

Evidence given to the Migration Advisory Committee over the past 18 months has indicated significant risks to the UK of cutting economic migration from outside the EU. Notably, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) estimated (pdf) the immigration cap could cost the UK £2 to £4 billion by 2015.

And despite efforts of the anti-immigration lobby to demonstrate otherwise, the view of the OBR (pdf) is:

“…existing analysis suggest little evidence of a significant effect from immigration on earnings or employment, although there is some evidence of a small effect in the low-skilled sector.”

More difficult to assess but potentially no less important, are the economic implications of withdrawing wider rights to migrants. The government is currently engaged in trying to reduce family migration as well as to end settlement opportunities for most migrant workers.

But making it more difficult to work here is likely to be short-sighted, potentially reducing the attractiveness of the UK as a destination for skilled migrants into the future. Economists know that migration and diaspora networks bring value to wealthy countries. We should be demanding the coalition government’s immigration policies support economic growth in the UK rather than undermining it.

See also:

• Crazy May’s immigration policy will make us all poorer – Alex Hern, November 21st 2011

• New student visa system turning prospective entrepreneurs away from the UK – Will Straw, November 18th 2011

• Kellner: May’s immigration rhetoric “seems to have backfired with public opinion” – Shamik Das, November 14th 2011

• FT slam dog-whistle May’s “preference for popular pandering over rational policy” – Shamik Das, November 8th 2011

• Anti-foreign student rhetoric risks real harm to our global reputation – Sally Hunt, September 22nd 2011

A group of leading economists has today written an open letter urging the Home Office to reconsider its decision to send economic migrants who aren’t wealthy enough home after five years.

The Financial Times reports (£) the expected proposal:

…is expected to limit economic migrants from outside the European Union to a five-year stay. After this, those who did not earn a sufficiently high salary would have to return home.

Although the Home Office is yet to make its final policy announcement – one of a range of measures designed to reduce annual net migration to under 100,000 by 2015 – an independent committee that advises ministers on immigration has suggested that the salary threshold should be set between £31,000 and £49,000.

The independent migration advisory committee, which is in charge of the plans, has concluded (£):

a £35,000 minimum salary would reduce the number of non-EU migrants and their dependants granted settlement by two-thirds but would cut 0.29 per cent of the UK’s gross domestic product within five years.

The letter’s signatories, which include economics professors from Oxford, Cambrige, UCL and the LSE, argue (£):

“Had such a policy been in place when some of the signatories to this letter were considering coming to the UK, they might have chosen not to come at all, or would not have been allowed to remain. As economists and researchers, we believe that this would be deeply damaging to the competitiveness of the UK science and research sectors and to the wider economy.”

And referring back to the acknowledgement that such moves would depress growth, the authors conclude (£):

“Three months ago, George Osborne, the UK chancellor of the exchequer, said: “This crisis provides an opportunity to make some difficult trade-offs in favour of growth that might get parked in the ‘too difficult’ box in calmer times.” Here is his chance: by insisting that the Home Office completely rethink these proposals, he and business secretary Vince Cable can, at no fiscal cost, make a clear choice for growth.”

Instead of looking at the merits and downsides of this scheme, and deciding whether the UK can take the hit it will inflict, the government is seemingly set on going ahead with it, and attempting to mitigate the damage it will inevtiably cause.

Nowhere is this clearer than with Eric Pickles’s Curry College:

The communities secretary, Eric Pickles, is to make a UK curry college to teach British workers the secret of perfect pakoras, a showpiece of the government’s integration strategy to be published shortly.

Pickles’s “curry college”, as it is being called, would see the government backing a school to train British people from all backgrounds to become chefs specialising in Indian food as an answer to the crisis in the £3.2bn curry industry triggered by the Home Office’s ban on bringing in chefs from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

Unfortunately, training up curry chefs is slightly easier than training up future Nobel Prize winners. If the government decides to stop throw them out, that’ll be a loss for the nation.

See also:

• New student visa system turning prospective entrepreneurs away from the UK – Will Straw, November 18th 2011

• May “looking shoddy”, but not toast yet – Alex Hern, November 15th 2011

• Kellner: May’s immigration rhetoric “seems to have backfired with public opinion” – Shamik Das, November 14th 2011

• UK set for among slowest growth in EU – Will Straw, November 11th 2011

• FT slam dog-whistle May’s “preference for popular pandering over rational policy” – Shamik Das, November 8th 2011

The UK’s student visa system is turning prospective entrepreneurs away from the UK, according to a leading Indian newspaper; Will Straw reports from India

The revelation shows that despite surviving a week of political scrutiny, Theresa May’s policy is storing up long term trouble for Britain. An eight-page supplement distributed with Thursday’s Economic Times of India focused on the UK’s Higher Education system.

The article reported:

“The change in work-visa rule after completing a degree in the UK has caused concern among prospective Indian students. Many feel that the opportunity to work in the UK was the incentive that attracted them to invest in education overseas.

“However, students should realise that the true value of studying in UK is to gain a competitive edge in the Indian job market, which faces a skill gap in many growing sectors.”

The perspective should be troubling for a country where businesses cite the Government’s increasingly strict immigration policy as a drag on growth.

Given UK universities are second only to the United States on quality it is an increasing concern that individuals taught in the UK are being prevented from realising their potential or setting up their own businesses on British soil.

As Sally Hunt, General Secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), wrote on Left Foot Forward in September:

“The changes to student visas as part of the government’s clampdown on immigration risks making the UK a less popular destination for foreign students, which, based on today’s figures, would be bad news for UK universities as they struggled to adjust to huge government funding cuts.

“It is not just universities and our thriving educational export sector that would suffer though. In June, the home affairs select committee warned government plans to limit visas could result in a £3.6 billion loss from the British economy.

“The government might think soundbites around immigration play well to a domestic audience, but they risk doing real harm to our universities and our reputation on the world stage. UK universities are enriched by the students and academics that come to this country to study, carry out research and share their knowledge.

“Politicians must be very careful not to restrict academic access or make ill-judged comments that give the impression UK universities are closed for business.”

Despite all the evidence, the government appears resolute in its attempt to reduce immigration regardless of whether it enhances the UK’s productivity or not.

The home secretary has survived the Brodie Clark scandal but the damage her policy is causing the UK is yet to be fully understood.

See also:

• Anti-foreign student rhetoric risks real harm to our global reputation – Sally Hunt, September 22nd 2011

• How Tory immigration populism is costing us £3.4 billion – Awale Olad, July 26th 2011

• The crazy economics of reducing foreign student visas – Stephen Henderson, February 24th 2011

• Give the international student market the credit it deserves – Ranjit Sidhu, October 1st 2010

• Visa changes threaten Universities & fan anti-immigrant fears – Peter Bloom, October 15th 2009

The home affairs select committee today questioned Brodie Clark, the former head of the UK Border Force, and Rob Whiteman, the chief executive of the UK Border Agency, about the allegations that a number of individuals were allowed entry to the country without going through all the proper border controls.

With the session – which was supposed to be an hour, but ended up lasting two and a half – now concluded, where does it leave May?

Andrew Sparrow for the Guardian thinks she is now “looking distinctly shoddy”, the Times agrees that she remains “under strong political pressure”, and even the Mail says that Clarke’s testimony “turned the heat squarely on Theresa May”.

Clark did indeed deliver some damning testimony. He unequivocally stated, again and again, that he had acted with full ministerial authority in implementing the trial of “lighter touch” border checks in 28 ports and airports.

Clark said:

Let me say at the outset that I introduced no additions to the Home Secretaries trial, nor did I extend it or alter it in any way whatsoever. [...] I did not enlarge, extend or redefine the scope in any way…

In the first month of the trial I reported weekly to the Home Secretary exactly as she required…

Mr Chairman, I never went rogue, and I never extended without the Home Secretary’s authority that original trial.

This unequivocal denial of May’s claims may still lead to a “he-said, she-said” end-game, of the sort which looks likely in the parallel hearings on phone hacking, but as the Guardian point out, two positive points have emerged for her from this hearing.

The first is easy to understand:

The party are protecting her. The home affairs committee normally conducts its proceedings on a relatively non-partisan basis (unlike, say, the Treasury committee, which becomes intensely political). But today most of it Conservative members were clearly in “protect Theresa” mode.

They went for Clark like prosecuting counsel.

The second requires delving slightly into some of the esoteric information about procedure and policy which caused the hearing to run quite so long. Some of the border checks which were suspended weren’t done so under May’s trial, but under guidance from 2007 stating that they could be if there was a health and safety emergency (the best example of which being that if the queues get too long in Calais, they start backing up onto the motorway).

It is this guidance which was used to occasionally suspend checks such as fingerprinting in Heathrow; as Andrew Sparrow explains:

It is clear that the guidance dating back to 2007 saying that checks could be relaxed on health and safety grounds in some circumstances created a grey area.

Clark thought this meant what he was doing was acceptable. Whiteman thought it wasn’t, and he based this partly on the basis that ministers did not actually seem to know anything about this long-standing loophole.

What is clear from the hearing is that Clark’s treatment at the hands of May and UKBA was pretty poor, but that in itself is not enough. Civil servants are, unfortunately, often sacrificial lambs to appease the capricious opposition, and just because this one managed to describe his sacrifice to a select committee does not make it a resigning matter.

See also:

• Kellner: May’s immigration rhetoric “seems to have backfired with public opinion” – Shamik Das, November 14th 2011

• FT slam dog-whistle May’s “preference for popular pandering over rational policy” – Shamik Das, November 8th 2011

• Migrationwatch’s 70 million cap proposal is dangerous and unfeasible – Ruth Grove-White, November 1st 2011

• The government must stop spreading untruths about immigration – Donna Covey, October 18th 2011

• May is wrong: We can have a liberal immigration policy – Matt Cavanagh, October 7th 2011

A majority of the public (56 per cent) and nearly two-fifths of Tory supporters (38%) believe home secretary Theresa May should resign over the borders fiasco, the latest Sunday Times/YouGov poll (pdf) has revealed.

Only 49% of Tory supporters and just 26% of all voters believe she should stay.

Yet in policy terms, 78% of those polled back the government’s policy to reduce net immigration from hundreds of thousands a year down to the “tens of thousands”, with 64% of Labour and 62% of Liberal Democrat voters backing it. Just 10% of voters believe the policy is wrong.

YouGov President Peter Kellner, however, says the government’s immigration policy “may not be as big a vote-winner as these figures suggest”, explaining:

“The home secretary’s current hard line seems to have backfired with public opinion:

1. Few people regard immigration as central to their own lives. To be sure, they see it as a major NATIONAL problem: our latest tracker survey on national issues finds that 48% regard it as one of the top three (out of a list of 12). Only the economy concerns voters more.

But when the same people are given the same list and asked to pick from the top three concerns ‘TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY’, the proportion falls to 14%.

2. While an overwhelming majority supports the goal of cutting immigration to ‘tens of thousands’ a year, a mere 16% think it likely that this goal will be achieved.

Even Tory voters say, by two-to-one, that it’s unlikely that immigration will be reduced to this level.

3. Most people think that Theresa May has NOT been ‘honest and open’ in what she has said about the relaxation of border controls.

She cannot even count on Tory voters to believe her truthfulness: they are evenly divided.

Expanding on that first, key point, the fact immigration isn’t one the three main concerns for voters and their families for 86% of people, Kellner concludes:

“Most people see the issue less as one that impinges on their daily life than as a test of political honesty and competence. They would like the numbers to be reduced sharply, but they are just as sceptical about this government as they were about the last one as to whether this will actually happen.

“The result is disillusion. Cameron and May are discovering what politicians down the ages have known – or, at least, should have known: voters despise tough talk that they think is for show rather than for real.”

The poll verdict appears clear: The policy may stay – but May mustn’t.

See also:

• Ineffective ban on Islamist group shows May’s desperation – George Readings, November 11th 2011

• FT slam dog-whistle May’s “preference for popular pandering over rational policy” – Shamik Das, November 8th 2011

• The government must stop spreading untruths about immigration – Donna Covey, October 18th 2011

• Kitten heels May gets in a cat flap – Alex Hern, October 4th 2011

• Home secretary forced to “water down” immigration speech – Liam R Thompson, November 12th 2010

Recent events should convince us further – as if any more convincing were required – that it is in suburbia the next election will be won or lost, writes Rupa Huq

Earlier this week the loss of the late Labour peer, pollster and party strategist Philip Gould from cancer reminds us that among his key modernising measures was the broadening out of Labour strategy in the 1990s the away from its natural comfort zone by a recognition of the suburbs as the key electoral battleground.

Vindicated by Labour’s best election result ever in 1997 he wrote:

“The unfinished revolution is rooted not in Labour’s traditional industrial heartlands but in the sprawling suburbs of an emerging middle class.

“Labour lost elections because it turned its back on this new constituency, ignoring the postwar rise of a newly aspirational electorate.”

Certainly Tony Blair at the start of his premiership was able to embody a sense of optimism and aspiration and to demonstrate himself to be remarkably attuned to “the national mood” – for example in his reaction to the death of Princess Diana in 1997 which sharply contrasted with Buckingham Palace’s own ill-judged media handling of events.

Indeed, suburbia is a close-bedfellow of the much used New Labour term “middle England”. The next electoral challenge for London’s suburbia will be next year’s GLA and Mayoral elections of 2012 – now less than six months away.

The current Mayor, and his studied shambolic demeanour, is not a man of true substance; despite making much of his claim to be a mayor for the suburbs none of Boris Johnson’s actions have really lived up to this.

The removal of the congestion charge western extension, the so-called Boris bikes sponsored by Barclays and record fare hikes have done nothing for those in outer London. The much heralded outer London commission touted at the time of 2008 Mayoral election turned out to be a gimmick that largely sunk without trace.

West London, in particular the Ealing and Hillingdon GLA constituency, should be good Labour territory: it contains Labour MPs Stephen Pound, Virendra Sharma and John McDonnell but the party has failed to crack it since the seat’s creation. The turfing out of Tory Richard Barnes – one of Boris’s deputies – would be a big scalp for Labour.

Ealing in one of the key battlegrounds to winning back City Hall, and win it back we must. As Ken Livingstone says, behind the loveable moptop/ upper class twit exterior, Boris is just as ideologically driven as George Osborne and David Cameron – as evidenced by his defence at any price of the city and bankers who caused the world’s financial woes.

Admittedly the mood in 2011 is very different to 97 when Gould masterminded victory or 2000 when Ken first got in. In place of optimism is insecurity, both in social and cultural terms. The Tories may have reeled people in with their inheritance tax promise but this only really affects a small minority of people – it was more to assuage Daily Mail concerns.

In terms of other policy areas, Gillian Duffy’s comments to Gordon Brown in 2010 may have identified the flashpoint issue of immigration and its repercussions, although contemporary suburbia is much more ethnically mixed than it ever was, showing there is a difference between the numbers game and settled population with suburban needs like anyone else.

Housing is another suburban issue Labour should have acted further on in office but the Tories are making more of a mess now – Boris sneakily removed the 50% affordable housing requirement in new London developments.

Suburbs tend to be populated by families who are hit hard by the removal of child and other benefits – and I speak from experience here.

On all these issues Labour needs to show it is not a party of the metropolitan elite and ex-coalfields but can be relevant to those in the ’burbs too, otherwise our vote totals are likely – to use a metaphor nicked from recent Policy Network research – to go even further south.

See also:

• Ken v Boris: Six months out, Livingstone steps up the pressure on transport and crime – Shelly Asquith, November 8th 2011

• Philip Gould: 1950–2011 – Shamik Das, November 7th 2011

• Why isn’t Boris coming up with any solutions to London’s housing crisis? – Jenny Jones AM, September 9th 2011

• Another day, another Tory council planning to charge kids to play – Shamik Das, June 1st 2011

• Leading Labour strategist says Labour must recapture the south – Toby Thomas, September 24th 2010

Theresa May, fresh from yet another blunder, has been carpeted by her normally loyal right-wing cheerleaders in this morning’s papers, the Mail, Telegraph and Times (£) in particular, with the most damning criticism of all coming from the Financial Times (£), which concentrates on “the true scandal” of a fear-based immigration policy.

In an editorial headlined “Britain’s door only ajar for business”, the FT says (£):

The UK government’s approach to immigration has been rightly criticised for policy goals that obsess with keeping people out while paying mere lip service to welcoming people in, to the detriment of business and growth. Now Theresa May, the home secretary, is under fire for how her department implements policy on the ground.

In this case the government and its critics show an equal preference for popular pandering over rational policy…

Westminster is consumed with what can be pinned on Ms May, and government and opposition joust to paint each other as unconcerned with terrorists entering the country. This circus ignores the true scandal: that at a time when Britain needs growth more than ever, the country is far from being “open to business”.

Of the way visitors to our country, tourists and businessmen, are made to feel unwelcome, treated with suspicion, treated like criminals, the FT adds (£):

This does not begin at the border. Long border queues are just a small part of a larger pattern in which non-European business people, skilled workers and artists - all of whom most Britons would rather visit the UK than competitor economies - are not being made to feel welcome.

A series of little humiliations for entirely legitimate travellers can begin on first contact with the UK foreign service - or rather with the corporations handling the process. Few Britons know that the UK has contracted out the administration of visa applications to Computer Sciences Corporation and VFS Global, a US and a Swiss-based private information technology business.

While final judgments are made by Foreign Office staff, this does not eliminate confusing and erratically applied rules, unpredictable waiting times, and customer service designed to make Kafka proud.

Echoing the Public and Commercial Services Union’s warning that UK Border Agency job cuts will “esacalate” the “backlog woes”, the FT concludes (£):

Cutting UKBA staff by more than a fifth by 2015 will make an intelligent immigration policy less achievable.

So will the obstinate view that the only goal of immigration rules is to keep people out.

Years of pandering to irrational fears over immigration, rather than taking on the arguments of those who are anti-immigration and making the case for immigration - regrettably from Labour as well as Tory governments - have led us to this point; visitors treated like dirt, businesses deterred from investing, xenophobia on the increase, UKIP on the rise, and, with the coalition’s savage cuts thrown in to the mix, massive delays for Britons and foreigners alike at the UK border.

It’s not just May that needs shelving, it’s the whole immigration policy – of both parties.

See also:

• So is Britain really “full up”? – Matt Cavanagh, November 1st 2011

• Migrationwatch’s 70 million cap proposal is dangerous and unfeasible – Ruth Grove-White, November 1st 2011

• The government must stop spreading untruths about immigration – Donna Covey, October 18th 2011

• May is wrong: We can have a liberal immigration policy – Matt Cavanagh, October 7th 2011

• Yet again, Tories fawn over the far right – Alex Hern, October 6th 2011