How do we get it right on immigration?

By Tim Nicholls / @tim_nicholls

Labour has come under a lot of pressure of late to firm up its response to immigration and, frankly, there is much to talk about. Immigration is down, more people are being repatriated if their claims are illegitimate and the points-based system for working visas is taking effect.

But this is only one third of the answer: it concentrates only on the reactionary, punitive side of immigration policy and ignores the root causes. Labour is the party of root cause solutions and has done more for social and international development than any other government of the previous half-century. So why is an immigration answer singularly lacking?

It is because we have accepted the premise of the attacks launched on our policies, especially from the far right. The BNP claims that British jobs are lost and the only solution is to stop immigration at the border. In reply, we say that we are being tough on illegitimate immigration and that this is the right thing to do. But to paraphrase one of New Labour’s most famous arguments, we must not just get tough on immigration unrest; we must get tough on the causes of immigration unrest. We can do this by adding two prongs, explicitly, to our leadership on immigration: social development at home and economic development abroad.

In the UK, the far right, elements of the media and a few among the less-far right play on the fear of people in low-income areas that jobs are being lost to immigrants. Try as we might, sounding authoritative on immigration is not going to win this fight and dispel that fallacy, even if it is based on malice and xenophobia. Instead, we have to continue to work to make these areas less deprived: improve employment, increase community and hunker down on social policy initiatives. We will have to fight against inactive, often Tory, councils to reintegrate people into society, where they have been left on the cold of the doorstep for too long.

Abroad, simply speaking, we need to work hard to make life better for people so that fewer feel the need to travel thousands of miles to make a new, safer and better life for themselves. The Department for International Development is seen as detached from the lives of everyday folk in this country, but that is simply not true. A prosperous world is better for all of us and increasing the quality of life abroad will do more to stop outflows of people from deprived countries than an increase in border controls ever could. DfID is a world leader in its field and, if we can tie its work in to the answer on immigration (as well as international business and the environment), its relevance can be highlighted.

We need to challenge the premise of the question on immigration. We need to stop just talking about reactive measures. And we need to credit the electorate with the intelligence to understand this. I believe that this immigration policy trifecta can and will resonate with a large section of voters. After Griffin’s horrific performance on Question Time, I was challenged about Labour’s policies on immigration on the doorstep and it gave me the chance to try this out. It worked.

In essence, there is not much new policy work to do, but what we have must be secured and extended. We need to tie in the social and international development work that Labour is doing and has done: only then will we have a complete response on immigration.