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News Articles for October 2010
October 27, 2010
One in Twelve Social Houses Occupied by Foreign Nationals
October 25, 2010
EU Deal Means British Jobs for Indian Workers
October 14, 2010
Decade of immigration means ½ million more school places to be found in next five years – and 1m over ten years
October 7, 2010
Mrs Bercow and Migrationwatch
Full Text of Press Release : October 2010
One in Twelve Social Houses Occupied by Foreign Nationals
Today's English Housing Survey provides further evidence of the pressure placed by immigration on the housing sector. Foreign nationals now occupy 8.4% of the social housing stock. Among occupants aged 16-40 that figure rises to 12.6%.
Commenting, Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migrationwatch UK said "This finally destroys the myth that less than 2% of council and housing association tenants are recent immigrants. It further underlines the failure of the previous government to address the housing crisis despite encouraging massive levels of immigration".
Note to Editors:
In April 2008 the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the Local Government Association (LGA) published a study by the IPPR which claimed that less than 2% of social housing was taken up by foreign born people who arrived in the UK in the previous 5 years. That formulation was deeply misleading as today's figure illustrate.
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EU Deal Means British Jobs for Indian Workers
At just the time that the government is calling on the private sector to create jobs, they are negotiating in secret an agreement between the EU and India that would allow an unlimited number of Indian specialists to do work in Britain that has not been first offered to British workers. This could well blast a hole in Britain's immigration controls - that is the conclusion of a paper issued today by Migrationwatch.
The EU/India Free Trade Agreement due to be signed in December will permit Indian corporations to transfer specialist staff to EU countries, notably the UK, without any upper limit on numbers.
This has potentially serious implications for Britain:
- the initiative will be in the hands of Indian companies who win a service contract in the EU.
- there is, apparently, to be no limit on numbers.
- staff only have to have worked for one year with the Indian company concerned.
- there is no test to see if a British worker is available.
- the concessions become irreversible by individual member states because they will have been granted under the trade arrangements which are matters for Commission competence
- the UK will be the main target of Indian companies, largely for language reasonsbut also because they are already well established here.
- the period that workers are allowed to stay will, in theory, be limited to three years but, in practice, it will be impossible to find and return any who overstay.
This Agreement could, of course, present very serious problems in implementing a cap on economic migration to which the coalition government are committed. The concessions under it would have to be operated outside any cap or the level of the cap would have to be adjusted to allow for demand for Intra Company Transfer visas from India. There may be scope for a minimum salary but such conditions are notoriously hard to enforce.
Commenting, Sir Andrew Green Chairman of Migrationwatch said, ‘It is time the government came clean about what is in this agreement. It looks as though the Indians are about to drive a bullock and cart through Britain's immigration system despite government talk about creating jobs in the private sector. There is no point in a limit on economic migration if specialists from India are excluded from the cap by a separate agreement. British IT workers are already suffering the impact on jobs of tens of thousands of Indian IT staff working in Britain; we already have 48,000 unemployed British IT specialists.’
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Decade of immigration means ½ million more school places to be found in next five years – and 1m over ten years
Over the next five years – to 2015 – over half a million more school places will be needed for the children of recent immigrants to the UK - those who arrived after 1998.
This will cost a total of £40 billion over the period – according to a new report from think-tank Migrationwatch.
By 2020 the need for extra places increases to one million at a total cost over the ten year period of almost £100 billion if immigration continues at current rates.
So far, educating the children of immigrants who have arrived over the past twelve years has cost the taxpayer more than £15 billion. In 2009 alone it was almost £4.5 billion or more than £12 million a day.
‘These are some of the consequences of one of the most reckless and unpopular policies of any Government in generations and they are now coming home to roost,’ said Sir Andrew Green, Migrationwatch chairman.
‘The public are waking up to the speed and scale at which fundamental changes are being forced upon them, thanks to the policies of the previous administration, and our schools are but just one example. It will be replicated in many areas of our national life such as health, housing, natural resources and infrastructure and the costs will continue to increase for many years to come - all against a background of severe financial stringency.
‘What is also becoming clearer all the time is that there has been little if any planning or preparation for this surge in the need for education and other public services,’ he said. ‘Some schools might have spare capacity from earlier periods of higher birth rates but they will not necessarily be in the same places as the new demand’, he added.
Sir Andrew said it was, of course, the case that many immigrants both contributed through paying tax and by working in teaching and other professions but this was offset by the fact that the employment rate among some immigrant communities was considerably lower than the UK average. Only about 40% of immigrants come for the purpose of work.
Looking further ahead, the paper finds that between 2008 and 2033, official population projections suggest that an additional 2.3 million births will result from migration.
Assuming that all of the additional children are educated in state schools, the total costs of their schooling would be around £ 190 billion over a 25 year period. This calculation is made using very conservative assumptions about school leaving age etc. It does not make any allowance for additional education requirements of migrants (eg: help with languages etc.) so the eventual cost could be much higher than this.
If the official population projections are broadly right, an additional 1.3 million school places would be needed by 2033. This would be equivalent to almost 4,000 new schools staffed by around 55,000 additional teachers.
‘Almost every family in England is being affected by the growing crisis over school places but no-one will talk about its causes. While there are many benefits from controlled and managed immigration, our paper graphically demonstrates how families throughout the country suffer when governments duck the issue and fail to plan for the consequences, ‘said Sir Andrew.
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Mrs Bercow and Migrationwatch
In a discussion programme on Sky News on 18 August, Mrs Bercow associated Migrationwatch with Mosley and Hitler. When we heard about this, we asked for a copy of the programme and obtained a transcript of precisely what she had said. After taking advice from counsel we asked our solicitors to write to her seeking an apology and an undertaking not to repeat such an allegation. In their response, solicitors for Mrs Bercow said that she "did not intend to (and did not) allege that Migrationwatch is a fascist or racist organisation", that she was expressing an honest opinion about the handling of a Migrationwatch report by the Daily Express and that she had a right to do so in a democratic society.
Migrationwatch are strongly in favour of free speech. We accept her assurances about her intentions, and consider that important and sensitive issues such as immigration should be debated without descending into derogatory language and associations.
In view of the assurance contained in her solicitor’s letter, we do not intend to take the matter further.
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