You asked for a link to info on alternative immigration policies of nations outside w europe and n america. see link – it is fairly balanced and readable brief report on Japan (of relevance as an advanced democracy).

http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?id=487

I could highlight an extract -

“Although modeled on the US system, the law from its inception was not designed to encourage migrants to settle in the country. Nor did the nationality law facilitate the acquisition of Japanese nationality by resident foreigners. “

There is much on the fiscal impact of immigration scattered through Vol 2 of the HoL report on: The Economic Impact of Immigration:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldeconaf/82/82ii.pdf

By web references, Prof Rowthorn submitted his paper in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy 2008 Vol 28(3) pp560-580 on: “The fiscal impact of immigation on advance economies,” to the HoL Select Committee but it is not reprinted in Vol.2 Evidence, most likely because the submission was a published paper in an accessible academic journal.

Sometimes it is possible by diverse means to find ways over, under, or bypassing paywalls but I have not managed to do so in this case, sorry. The Oxford Review of Economic Policy – an excellent journal for keeping up with the academic literature on policy issues – is very protective of its copyright. For personal subscribers, each issue of the journal costs £17.
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/ecopol/access_purchase/single_issues.html

However the link is from something Bob Rowthorn wrote in 2004. I was under the impression he was analysing the fiscal effects of immigration from eastern europe (where most of it has come from), which would mean to be any use he has to study the contribution and costs of the A8 migration after 2004 when such migration actually happened. The evidence he presented to parliament is similarly from 2007.

Is there anything more recent he has written that I can access without paying?

Rowthorn’s paper on the economics of immigration is here:
http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/Rowthorn_Immigration.pdf

See also the HoL Select Committee on Economics Affairs, 1st report of Session 2007-8:

The Economic Impact of Immigration Vol 1. Report:
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldeconaf/82/82.pdf

Vol. 2 Evidence
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldeconaf/82/82ii.pdf
Minutes of Evidence: Professor Rowthorn

Yeah, Bangladeshi peasants get screwed everywhere, but even minimally skilled labour does get paid a reasonable whack in the Gulf.

I don’t know about the situation in the States, there’s some sort of work ethic thingy there I hear? Brits are perhaps a bit saner. I really don’t think you can be sure that the sort of really strenuous and frankly unpleasant work involved in bringing in many crops would find so many takers here – not at £10 an hour anyway, let alone £5.80.

But you make an interesting point: I was surprised to learn that in the UK, agricultural wage costs are a paltry £2.5 billion, compared to a total intermediate (seeds, vets, animal feed, fertilisers) input cost of £13 billion, never mind the capital cost of the land itself. https://statistics.defra.gov.uk/esg/quick/agri.asp.

However, the margins achieved are narrow, even with the subsidies, so while you’re probably right that it’s the richest farmers who really benefit from cheap labour, I think the point remains that without it, many farms could go down and some labour-intensive crops would be dropped altogether.

Alternatively, if somebody wants to violate copyright law and send me the thing

However, your argument goes far further than denying them full civil equality (voting rights, jury duty etc) and that is where I take exception to it.

Although you can characterise this discussion as favouring different levels of repression it might be better to look at it in a different way.

For example whereas you are seeking to add burdens to the migrant I would simply not extend certain privileges.

I think the argument is strong enough for me – that migrants are economically beneficial – to not justify the steps you recommend.

Where you say “gaining citizenship is out of the question” is what prompted me to claim you would create second class “citizens.”

The idea that someone resident in this country who works and contributes would be debarred from citizenship by virtue of their birth would of course legitimise prejudice, they would legally be unworthy of the privileges the majority enjoyed. I think this is where your argument falls down morally, where it has already failed economically.

“The policy is not illiberal or extreme – you will see that it is the norm in most of the world should you chose to investigate.”

Unfortunately, much of the world is illiberal and extreme, there is safety in numbers but rarely truth.

Charlie, the UAE pays very good wages for the privilege of granting nearly all the people who actually do any real work there so few rights.

So if we were competing with France and Germany to attract our hard working Poles, yet offered really poor health and social security safety nets, why should they choose Britain – apart from if our employers paid much higher wages of course, which rather defeats the object ? Knowing that you’re working in a civilised country is presumably part of the appeal.

And the Gulf states do have trouble getting skilled labour in, incidentally:

http://www.ameinfo.com/149665.html

” Over 160 construction projects in the UAE are being delayed because of a shortage of skilled labour, reported Gulf News. Samir Khosla, vice-chairman of Dynamic Staffing Solutions, said many contractors are now looking at technology as a way to reduce the labour component. At present, there are $160bn worth of projects in Dubai alone and around one million labourers in the construction industry, with about 95% of the workforce being foreigners. “

Thank you for your comment in response to my note at 34. Very interesting view point.

Please however allow me to challenge your comment below -

“It seems churlish to argue that migrants are economically beneficial but if we do it my way they’ll be more be even more economically beneficial. Even if that does result in millions being repressed, the creation of an even more illiberal state and the demotion of migrants to the status of second class citizens (not even citizens in fact), which would justify and legitimise other forms of prejudice”

Migrants – aliens – are of course not citizens and that is simply a matter of fact. Nor should they be regarded as citizens having equal rights to nationals. I don’t understand why you should imply that I am suggesting anything extraordinary. Are you proposing that the aliens should be given the right to vote or to sit on a jury in judgement of nationals – of course not – so it is only the degree of “repression” as you describe it that we are debating.

The policy I have outlined is the norm around the world where large numbers of migrant workers are required for the economy to function. The policy is not illiberal or extreme – you will see that it is the norm in most of the world should you chose to investigate.

“Unless every accessible and liguistically suitable European country adopted your policies, none could, because they wouldn’t get any migrants and their competitors would gain a lasting economic advantage”

by saying that I am not aware that countries with the policies that I referred to (such as the UAE) have any difficulty in attracting labour – whether that be highly skilled professionals typically from the west or labourers from south asia.

If migrants are indeed intending to come to work and to adhere to the laws of the land then it follows that they should not have any concerns with such a policy.

Now, I can’t prove that some of the previous BNP voters didn’t decide not to vote this time around, or put their vote to another party, or died en masse, leaving a vacuum for the disillusioned Labour voters, but it doesn’t seem all that likely, in all honesty, does it?

I don’t know. That’s why I was relying on the polling data. I’d have thought, given that the majority of BNP voters don’t usually vote, that lots of them couldn’t be bothered to vote this time round.

Frothing Bigots = BNP
Traditional Flat Cappers = Labour.

This time.
Frothing Bigots = Mostly BNP (vote went down)
Traditional Flat Cappers = nae bugger.

Now, I can’t prove that some of the previous BNP voters didn’t decide not to vote this time around, or put their vote to another party, or died en masse, leaving a vacuum for the disillusioned Labour voters, but it doesn’t seem all that likely, in all honesty, does it?

The poll you cited was different to the one I cited. Secondly, a lot of these people aren’t ‘former Labour supporters’, but grew up in areas where Labour was the main party and hence their parents voted for Labour.

Come on Sunny, this is unworthy even of you. The statement that I have made, repeatedly, is that the BNP gets most of its support from the disillusioned, and the rest is twice as likely to be from former Labour voters than those of any other party. That comes from the polling data that you cited. Which bit of this are you disagreeing with?

The additional polling data that I cited, that states that half of all BNP voters state that they grew up in a Labour-voting household is less directly informative (how did they know, for example) but still illustrative, which is why I mentioned it but didn’t refer to it in my analysis of the breakdown of where BNP voters are coming from.

No-one ’switched’. In the regions where the BNP won, the BNP vote was actually down on last time. What happened was that the previous Labour voters couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Labour this time around, and the BNP won through attrition – like Hitler when the anti-communist parties split the vote in ‘33, and he managed to agree to a coalition with the Catholic party.

If someone used to vote for the Labour Party (or the Tories or the Lib Dems) and now votes for the BNP, that person has switched his vote. That’s uncontroversial surely?

Rising house prices is one matter, house-price bubbles another.

The long term average ratio in Britain between house prices and average earnings is about 3.8. By the time the house-price bubble in Britain burst in the autumn of 2007, the ratio had increased to nearly 6.
http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/graphs-average-house-price-to-earnings-ratio.php

“American house prices rose 124% between 1997 and 2006, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell by 8%; half of US growth in 2005 was house-related. In the UK, house prices increased by 97% in the same period, while the FTSE 100 fell by 10%.”
Robert Skidelsky: Keynes – The Return of the Master (Allen Lane 2009) p.5.

Martin Wolf in the FT on Wednesday is very clear about the potential economic harm that bursting asset-price bubbles can inflict:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/38164e12-c330-11de-8eca-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

Wolf – rightly IMO – argues that central banks, including the Bank of England in Britain’s case, should have acted earlier to stop the bubble inflating, especially so in the context of a boom increase in household debt. By the time the bubble burst in Britain in 2007, household debt had increased to £1.4 trillion.

A chart in The Economist of 3 April 2008, based on IMF data, shows that the bubble in Britain inflated to larger proportions than in almost all other affluent countries.

I’ve tracked clear warnings in the press about the house-price bubble going back to 2002 and 2003 (links available) so HM Treasury and the BoE have no excuses for their failure to act.

Of course, house owners with no intention of moving stand to gain from house-price bubbles until the bubbles burst, as they inevitably do. House owners gain from the option to borrow, using their house as collateral, to finance holidays, the purchase of big ticket consumer durables and to fund, perhaps unwelcome, healthcare expenses.

Chris’s article is excellent.

There is, I think (and what is thinking worth), a conudrum in what you said.

Perhaps, therefore, the evidence of our own eyes can be systematically misleading, even when aggregated over everyone. Which in turn implies that the opinion of the majority might be wrong, even if it is not affected by the trash media .

.

Perhaps the opposite, that a consensus based on the opinion of the majority might be right. And that my sight, might be more realistic, if others agreed with my observations?

The poll you cited was different to the one I cited. Secondly, a lot of these people aren’t ‘former Labour supporters’, but grew up in areas where Labour was the main party and hence their parents voted for Labour. A better explanation is here by MatGB:
http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/6353#comment-182939

I’m afraid these assertions still don’t hold.

little is owned by the working class. Therefore foreign investment increases assets and income of the wealthiest Britons.

That extra money is still coming into the country as investment and eventually finds its way into the economy. I didn’t say that it directly helped the working class. I simply said there are some benefits to some people through rising house prices. No one said it helped everyone (incl shatterface above).

My mother, a single mother, raised us and moved from a council flat to her own house and bought it originally for 60k and its now worth over three times that. she’s not alone in that net worth increase in worth.

Innovation destroys more jobs than migrants ever have, do we ban James Dyson? Those costs and benefits are distributed unevenly yet we accept it.

good point.

‘Perhaps, therefore, the evidence of our own eyes can be systematically misleading, even when aggregated over everyone. Which in turn implies that the opinion of the majority might be wrong, even if it is not affected by the trash media.’

ANY form of communication between the individuals concerned will skew the results, not just the mass media. The ‘wisdom of crowds’ is an aggregate of independent experience: as soon as the individuals concerned start to adapt their opinions to their expectations of others that ‘wisdom’ is lost.

Social pressures can make us collectively dumber.

Are you really saying the housing bubble was a good thing – that the benefits outweighed the defecits?

As someone with little prospect of ever owning my own home I find this hard to swallow.

And please don’t use the word ‘meme’ as a synonym for ‘notion’. A meme is a cultural unit that propogates in a manner analogous to genes, i.e. by natural selection.

Spelling the English word ‘arse’ as ‘ass’ in a world in which the media is largely dominated by the USA is an example of a meme.

Unless every accessible and liguistically suitable European country adopted your policies, none could, because they wouldn’t get any migrants and their competitors would gain a lasting economic advantage.

Also, lumping people together is pretty meaningless, since there is such variety in their economic impact on the British economy. Some people such as the Poles, most EU immigrants, Phillippinos, Americans, Australians and Indians make a major contribution because they earn well and rarely claim income-support, unemployment benefit or disability benefits. On the other hand, those immigrants who have come here as refugees, and other less educated groups such as Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Turks do so far more than the UK born.

http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=563

One of their Lordships’ very jaundiced conclusions in the select committe report was that they “endorse the Government’s view that all low-skilled vacancies should be
met from within the EEA”. Personally, I feel the whole committee was hijacked by people who were determined to reach a conclusion before they started, but there you go, it’s difficult to put all the blame on Lamont and Lawson when the committee also included Skidelsky and Valance.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldeconaf/82/82.pdf

In my view, home ownership has three key benefits:

1) Instead of paying rent, you’re buying an asset (whilst still gaining a place to live).
2) You also gain because the payments are fixed, other things being equal, whilst rents rise. (And they stop altogether when the mortgage is paid).
3) Ownership tends to affect behaviour in positive ways.

All of this is a particular boon to the lower-paid, and a great way of spreading a nation’s wealth.

If price rises exceed pay rises, houses become less affordable. If the value of my house rises by 20% in a year I’ve gained nothing. I will still have one house, but my children will be less likely to be able to enter the market.

Also, as values increased, the housing market collapsed, taking much employment with it.

The price of bread also rose rapidly in the recent past, but I didn’t celebrate because I had a spare loaf in the freezer.