Tuesday, November 05, 2013
Standard BBC disinformation re migration today: re the UCL report on migrants and tax paid / benefits claimed
As ever across the Boob, in today's TV and radio reporting (on the UCL report on migration), no account is being taken that .....
1. Official migration in no way reflects total migration.
UCL's 'Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration' is the same source as the bogus (serious under-)estimate (by Professor Salt) commissioned by Tony Blair of the total number of illegal migrants in the UK.
The estimate of 600,000 failed to include non-workers and dependents -- which would take it to over one million -- and Professor Salt used a wholly inappropriate international comparison measure (the ratio in other nations between total legals and the number of illegals coming forward in amnesties) to make the crude estimate, thereby ignoring the unique constellation of 'pull factors' driving migration to the UK -- the combination of EU-style welfare and US-style free labour market; the fact that the international second language is our own; that the UK has easily the most lax immigration system re entry/detection/removal in the developed world; etc.
The total number of illegal migrants here in the UK (unidentified overstayers, clandestine arrivals, and those with forged or fraudulent documentation) is in the millions, though how many millions it is very difficult to estimate; realistically something of the order of two or three million, and possibly more.
2. There is no basis to claims that migrants claim no more benefits than the UK born.
The DWP has no mechanism routinely to assess the migration status of benefits applicants, so there is no basis of any claims that migrants supposedly have a low propensity to claim benefits.
3. Migrants are of very different types, and lumping all of them together is highly misleading, and is propaganda against any attempt to control unwanted immigration.
Migration is heavily polarised between, on the one hand, those in the highly-skilled category and a proportion of others who come to the UK on a migration application stream obliging work; and those, on the other hand, who come here under various forms of 'family reunion' and other non-working application pathways, or ostensibly to work but either not to do so or to work in the 'black economy'.
Obviously, the distinct absence of recourse to benefits by the former masks the distinct propensity to claim benefits by the latter.
# posted by Steve Moxon @ 7:22 am 
