THE TELEGRAPH: Gordon Brown has warned political parties against ''scaremongering'' about immigration in the general election campaign.
In a major speech on immigration in east London, the PM acknowledged it was ''legitimate'' for voters to express anxiety about the numbers of incomers and their impact on their public services and lifestyles, and said politicians must address these concerns.
But he said that net inward migration to the UK was in fact coming down and that no mainstream party was advocating shutting the country's doors to newcomers altogether.
He urged the major parties to present ''a united front'' against those who would ''bring down the shutters around Britain entirely''.
The real choice for voters on immigration at the election was between Labour's points-based system, designed to restrict non-EU entrants to those with in-demand skills, and Conservative plans for an annual cap on migrants, said Mr Brown. >>> | Wednesday, March 31, 2010
NRC HANDELSBLAD INTERNATIONAL : Immigrants are expensive for Dutch society, but few people want to say it out loud for fear of the consequences, a study by a Dutch scientist has found.
The economic effects of immigration have become a hot-button issue in Dutch politics. The mere mention of the subject is often greeted with suspicion and loathing. But that didn’t stop scholar Jan van de Beek from writing his doctoral thesis on the issue. In his PhD research, which he defended at the University of Amsterdam on Tuesday, he answered two related questions: what kind of economic consequences did mass immigration to the Netherlands between 1960 and 2005 have, and why is it such a taboo to study the economic effects of these immigrants?
Van de Beek has come to conclusions the Netherlands may not like. Since the 1970s, little research has been done into the economic effects of immigration, for fear of playing into the hand of the xenophobic right. As recently as last year, populist politician Geert Wilders asked the Dutch cabinet to calculate the net costs or benefits imposed on society by immigrants. Cabinet refused to do so, which led to uproar amongst several opposition parties. The minister responsible called it “improper” to reduce citizens’ contribution to society “to a profit-loss analysis”.
The reluctance to study the matter has done well to conceal some unpleasant facts, Van de Beek claims. For one, the Dutch policy of recruiting workers from outside of Europe in the 1960s needlessly delayed the modernisation of Dutch industry. As the Dutch economy was modernised in the 1980s, many immigrants were laid off and became dependent on welfare. Even today, the Dutch welfare state mainly attracts immigrants that impose a net cost on the Dutch economy, Van de Beek found.
Van de Beek is a mathematician and a cultural anthropologist. He is interested in social problems and has a soft spot for numbers. “In 1999, I was writing my master’s thesis about Dutch asylum policy,” he said in an interview. “I wanted to devote a chapter to the economic aspects of the matter, because the asylum debate centres mostly on numbers. To my surprise, I couldn’t find any sources. Filling this gap became the subject of my doctoral research.” 43,000 euros per immigrant >>> Dirk Vlasblom | Tuesday, March 30, 2010
