Letting ‘illegals’ work makes good sense for humane and economic reasons, says rahila gupta |
|
Modern slavery in Britain is an affront to all of us, yet a simple solution exists: the abolition of immigration controls. The response to the idea of opening our borders is usually shocked silence, but the benefits of such a proposal massively outweigh the costs.
Immigration controls are not working. The Government spends £1.5bn trying to keep numbers down, yet there are currently half-a-million 'illegals' whose annual unpaid taxes amount to £1bn.
Britain's booming economy has an insatiable need for labour. Migrants help to keep inflation low. They constitute eight per cent of the population and produce 10 per cent of our wealth. To sustain our pensions system in the face of an ageing population, we need 500,000 additional workers per year.
Even with government encouraging the arrival of highly skilled workers, there was a
|
|
 |
|
|
net influx of only 185,000 people last year, many of whom were students who subsidise higher education with £5bn in fees.
Employment generated and taxes paid by the defence industry from selling arms to countries in conflict, or multinationals whose activities in the developing world lead to the displacement of people, would more than offset the cost of looking after refugees.
Fears of being 'swamped' are not borne out by current trends. We have open borders within a Europe with a population of 500m: more Poles arrived than were expected but they have been mopped up by a labour-hungry market.
Even when war and disaster hit Third World countries, people tend to move closer to home. After the invasion of Iraq, 1m people moved to Syria and 800,000 to Jordan. Only 950 Iraqis came to the UK in 2006.
Migrants do the dirty work that we will not do and send home remittances which are double British aid to the developing world. We have strong humanitarian and economic reasons for opening our borders, not least the eradication of slavery.  Rahila Gupta's book Enslaved: The New British Slavery will be published in September
FIRST POSTED AUGUST 23, 2007
|
Slavery never really left us
Pros and Cons of apologising for slavery
Casting off the collective guilt
