Immigration economics and the UK general elections

Immigration economics and the Media black curtain

Immigration economics and Conservativism denial

UK is shifting to the right: as Conservatives with David Cameron in front have just won the UK
general election, it can only mean one thing for immigration. Claiming that it is the most vulnerable
group and not the elites with most power that is responsible for countrys economic ills has been a
part of the doctrine of the political right not just in the UK, and it is oftentimes amplified by
powerful mainstream media outlets. In fact, it has been an incredible achievement of a conjunction
of politics and media: to silence the experts claiming immigration benefits the host country.
For example, a recent study by University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that the economic
benefits generated by immigrants from Bulgarian and Romanian in Sweden outweigh what they
take out from the system. The same study predicted that by opening up their borders for
immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania (which happened back on January 1, 2014), countries like
Ireland and the UK would only benefit from such a policy.
A major study by the UCL Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration on the fiscal consequences
of European immigration to the UK was published by the Royal Economic Society in November
2014. Professor Christian Dustmann and DrTommaso Frattini found that European immigrants to
the UK have paid more in taxes than they received in benefits, helping to relieve the fiscal burden
on UK-born workers and contributing to the financing of public services. In other words, labelling
immigration as an economic burden for the UK has no basis.
Finally, it is convenient to forget that the Irish Miracle, i.e., the rapid economic growth (with high
social inequality typical to neoliberal policies) that Ireland enjoyed between the 1980s until the
recent global economic meltdown happened due to immigration. In Spain, economic growth and
development that intensified during its democratization period after the death of General Franco
are at least partly associated with immigration from Latin American and North African countries.
Probably the most realistic (and still hardly attainable) scenario in which any Conservative
government would be forced to change its views on immigration would not be the one of a sudden
humanist influence, but a situation where the soundness of economic arguments associated with
immigration would become impossible to ignore. Without a strong independent media this seems
to be extremely difficult to achieve.