How Can We Solve The Immigration Issue?

Last Friday, David Cameron made a speech in the West Midlands regarding that well-discussed issue of immigration and, particularly, that of migration from the EU. His main announcement was a deportation of EU migrants who are not working after six months in the country. This, amongst other things, rendered his speech vacuous and disingenuous as he portrayed EU migrants as a feckless drain on the British taxpayer. This couldn’t be further from the truth; the vast majority of migrants from the EU come here to work – often with a job lined up – under the “free movement of labour”, which the Prime Minister stated in his speech that he believes in. These people have often made positive contributions to our society and economy and to label them as ‘scroungers’ is extremely misleading and will not bring immigration down.

Ed Miliband, on the hand, has jumped on a different, and more pertinent, issue regarding immigration from the EU. That is the issue of clothing retailer Next – run by Conservative peer and donor Lord Wolfson – advertising hundreds of jobs in Poland before advertising them to local people. Is it really any wonder that net migration continues to rise when jobs are being advertised in Poland before they are here? This is yet another example of employers hiring cheap labour from EU countries on short-term contracts in order to maximise their profits, which is sending both immigration and unemployment through the roof. Miliband has rightly said he will ban the practice of advertising jobs abroad before advertising locally and, coupled with his plans to introduce a living wage, this will see these jobs become more viable to local people causing immigration and unemployment to fall.

Now, the immigration issue is an incredibly complex one there are no hard and fast answers for how to deal with it. But once again, Miliband and Labour have real plans to improve things for the working people of the United Kingdom whereas all Cameron has is empty rhetoric and no serious answers to the problems of working men and women while leaving in place the structures that are causing these problems but benefit his party’s wealthy donors.