Press Archives 2006

8 August 2006

JCWI response to the Home Office announcement of migration advisory committee

Media contact: Rhian Beynon, Communications Officer
Telephone: 020 7553 7464

Habib Rahman, Chief Executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said:

"An advisory committee on managed migration could be a useful way of establishing independently what level of economic migration is needed - but only if it is truly independent and representative of a range of stakeholders, and only if it is remembered that the figures it is projecting on migrants are human beings with rights. Above all, its task of determining optimum levels of migration will be impossible if the irregular migrant population already present is not taken into account through a regularisation scheme.

"In the first place the Government does not have a good record on for listening to its own advice. On the very day that the Home Office published its own independently commissioned research showing that employers are reliant on migrant labour to fill unskilled vacancies, it went ahead with announcing a points based system which militates against the entry and rights of non-EEA migrants entering in the unskilled categories (1).

In the second place, an advisory committee which only listens to the voice of big business will not accurately predict migrant need. The voices of small business NGOs and local government, and the unions should also be taken into account. This is particularly important when on considers the growth in personal care likely to arise from the expansion of direct care and household employment (2).

In the third place, any advisory committee will also find it impossible to establish "optimum" levels of migration without first taking into account the irregular population, presumed to be around half a million, already present in the UK. Many of these individuals may be highly skilled, although their irregular immigration status means that many end up working in low status jobs in exploitative conditions with no way of enforcing their workplace rights (3).

They will only be deported at a high cost to the taxpayer and indirectly public services of £4.7 billion (4). Announcing a programme of earned regularisation for these individuals would be a way of ensuring they access rights and contributing to protecting employment conditions for all and assessing the skills and capacity of the migrant workforce already here so to building a more accurate basis on which to project further requirements.

Notes:

(1)Home Office2006, Employers Use of Migrant Labour published the same day as the points system was announced in March

(2) See the Sector Skills Development Agency report Working Futures

(3) See Making the City Work:Low Paid Employment in London by QMU

(4) See the IPPR's factfile on irregular migration and JCWI's Recognising Rights, Recognising Political Realities