Listen to Kenan Malik's excellent Analysis programme on Radio 4 tonight
[...]Listen to Kenan Malik's excellent Analysis programme on Radio 4 tonight
[...]They remain as large as ever.
Read my pamphlet for CentreForum. It was published a year ago, but I forgot to post it on here until now,
[...]British troops are dying in Afghanistan because the government deems the Taliban such a terrible threat.
Yet those who flee the Taliban and the war are denied asylum in this country.
This is an outrage.
With the closure of the Jungle, a makeshift refugee camp in Calais, children as young as 3 [...]
On September 16 I appeared on BBC Radio 4's Iconoclasts programme to make the case for abolishing immigration controls.
Listen here: Download Radio4-part1 Download Radio4-part2
[...]I am busy writing my new book on the future of the world economy after the crisis. The blog will resume in October. Thanks
[...]The British government argues that the country needs to try to become more self-sufficient in food. I debated the issue with Peter Kendall, the head of the National Farmers Union, on BBC Newsnight.
[...]By Tim Finch of IPPR. Excellent. Read it here.
[...]Click here to read the article. Sorry for the poor quality of the scan.
In case you're wondering, I'm the one (very jetlagged) in the photo on the right.
[...]The New York Times reports that:
about 226,000 fewer people emigrated from Mexico to other countries during the year that ended in August 2008 than during the previous year, a decline of 25 percent. All but a very small fraction of emigration, both legal and illegal, from Mexico is to the United States.There is an interesting article in The Times about Brits who had been living in Spain returning home because of the economic crisis.
Tellingly, though, they are referred to as "expats" throughout.
It seems that British people abroad aren't migrants, or worse still immigrants.
That's a term we reserve [...]
I'm in New Zealand for 2 weeks speaking about the economic benefits of diversity at a series of events in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch.
NZ is small country that will always be geographically remote, but it is intimately connected to the rest of the world through its wonderfully diverse people.
Their diversity [...]
Christopher Caldwell is an intelligent and educated man. His columns for the FT are often perceptive and original. But his views on immigration in Europe, presented in his new book, "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West", are paranoid and delusional.
Caldwell's book [...]
Three, perhaps 4, boats laden with migrants people heading from Libya to Italy sink. As many as 300 people could be dead.
Europe's border controls claim more lives. The official response? We need tougher controls.
[...]Our biggest domestic menace never was waiting outside Home Depot, hoping to clean your basement. Unauthorized immigrants are not about to destroy anything, not even when they get angry and loud and march in large groups. On the contrary, they are inspiring. Their ethic of self-reliance and hard work is one that Americans should [...]
As more Americans lose their jobs, the U.S. government is actively discouraging the recruitment of foreign workers, from dude ranchers and fruit pickers to lifeguards and computer programmers. Full article in WSJ.
In the NYT, Casey Mulligan points out how that preventing foreigners working to save American jobs is as absurd as [...]
Twenty years ago, nobody foresaw the imminent fall of the Berlin Wall; two years ago, no one was predicting the partial nationalization of the Western banking system. The future is unknowable; caution, skepticism, and, above all, humility are essential in seeking to peer into it.
What, then, do we know? We [...]
Ha-Joon Chang's suggestion that the world needs a dose of protectionism to tide it through the global recession is utterly misguided. Read my new article for Prospect here.
[...]The failures of global finance have brought the world economy to its knees, threatening a re-run of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Such a terrible outcome is much more likely if policymakers follow Ha-Joon Chang’s suggestion that the world needs a dose of protectionism to see it through [...]
After the Omnibus Appropriations Bill signed into law by President Obama scrapped a pilot programme that allowed a small number of Mexican trucking companies to carry cargoes north of the border - as NAFTA requires - Mexico has responded by slapping tariffs of up to 45% on 90 American agricultural and industrial [...]
I'm writing a new book, on the future of globalisation. It will look at the risks to globalisation from the ongoing crisis (such as protectionism, nationalism and political extremism) and ask what needs to change in the global economy - and what shouldn't. As with my previous books, this will involve a combination of [...]
Jenny Abura on the benefits of migrants' remittances to Uganda
Remittances to Latin America are falling Ecuador, which receives most of its remittances from recession-hit Spain, suffered a 22% fall in the last three months of 2008.
Finland's former finance minister on the need to protect the world's [...]
Hispanic immigrants who work in construction, hotels and other blue-collar jobs have suffered from the brutal economic climate. But immigrant gardeners appear to be weathering the harsh conditions well.
"Gardening isn't like working at a factory, where you depend on one employer," says Manuel Quezada, a 54-year-old veteran gardener, as he and his team put [...]
I was interviewed on Frost over the World on 20 February. They won't be making a film about the interview, but it was a great opportunity to meet a living icon.
' [...]Very kind review by Michael Englard in the Observer:
Legrain's book makes a timely case for the benefits of migration and crisply counters the views of its prominent critics
Legrain is able to communicate complex ideas through impressively chiselled prose.
Thanks
[...]
A vessel overladen with migrants, near the Italian island of Lampedusa.
Photo by Mashid Mohadjerin/ Reporters, from the World Press Photo Awards.
As the recession bites, unemployment soars, and protests against foreign workers proliferate, the publication of Office for National Statistics figures (pdf) showing that the number of foreign-born people in work rose last year would appear to confirm what opponents of immigration have been saying all along: foreigners are taking "British" jobs. [...]
As the recession bites, unemployment soars, and protests against foreign workers proliferate, the publication of Office for National Statistics figures (pdf) showing that the number of foreign-born people in work rose last year would appear to confirm what opponents of immigration have been saying all along: foreigners are taking "British" jobs. [...]
The Australian Prime Minister accused arsonists of “mass murder” today as the death toll from savage bushfires sweeping parts of the country reached 131.
What on earth motivates people to start fires like that? It's horrific.
[...]First they went after the gypsies... and now the vile Berlusconi government is trying to crack down on immigrants more generally.
Under a proposed new law, doctors would be able to snitch on illegal immigrants they treat, while foreigners who fail to leave Italy after receiving a deportation order could [...]
With the X-word currently dominating the headlines, there could be no better time for this intelligent, wholly persuasive defensive of immigration. Scourging the xenophobia that sprouts at times of economic downturn, Legrain insists that clamping down on immigration is "morally wrong, economically stupid and politically unsustainable". [...]
What do you get when you mix inhumanity with bureaucratic targets? Immigration raids that make up the numbers by rounding up the easiest targets rather than the most dangerous fugitives.
The New York Times reports that:
Federal immigration officials had repeatedly told Congress that among more than half a million immigrants with [...]The economy is shrinking, unemployment is soaring, insecurity is rife - no wonder people are angry. As wildcat strikes against foreign workers spread across Britain, people who fear for their own jobs may feel sympathetic. But however understandable the strikers' emotions may be, they have got it all wrong.
Foreign workers [...]
As the era of the dark side recedes a little, my sense of the looming reality is as follows. The men who ordered a man tied to a chair, doused in water, and chilled to hypothermia so intense he had to be rushed to emergency medical care, the men who presided over at [...]
Britain's banks aren't lending, which is strangling the economy. The package of measures to support lending to smaller businesses which the government announced yesterday will do some good. But it is not enough.
As I have argued previously, the government should direct nationalised Northern Rock to step into the [...]
UK foreign secretary David Miliband has written an excellent piece in today's Guardian about why the notion of a 'war on terror' is inaccurate and harmful. He argues that:
The more we lump terrorist groups together and draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists, or [...]
In Britain, the government is today publishing its long-awaited citizenship, immigration and borders bill. It proposes that prospective citizens should have to "earn" British citizenship after going through a probationary period. I have written a critique of the earned-citizenship proposals here.
I debated whether Britain still needs immigration in a [...]
Simon Jenkins on Britain's illiberal and senseless drugs policy:
Leaving ecstasy in class A on the grounds that "there is no such thing as a safe dose" is public stupidity. On this basis there is no safe alcoholic drink or cigarette. There is no safe tree, no safe ladder and, according to Smith, [...]
The British government wants to create a database that would keep track of everyone's calls, emails, texts and internet use.
Sir Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, who has firsthand experience of working with intelligence and law enforcement agencies, told the Guardian:
The tendency of the state to seek [...]
Joan Miró, one of my favourite artists, died on Christmas Day 25 years ago.
Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan
Are immigrants taking our jobs? It is an explosive issue, especially with Britain sinking into recession and unemployment rising. So opponents of immigration will doubtless seize on a new report by the independent thinktank MigrationWatch UK, which claims that those dastardly foreigners who have the cheek to look after your granny or pick English strawberries [...]
Are immigrants taking our jobs? It is an explosive issue, especially with Britain sinking into recession and unemployment rising. So opponents of immigration will doubtless seize on a new report by Migrationwatch which claims that those dastardly foreigners who have the cheek to look after our granny or [...]
I never thought I'd say this, but here goes: Boris Johnson is right.
Right to support an amnesty for the hundreds of thousand of illegal migrants in London and the rest of the UK. The reality is that most work hard, pay their taxes and contribute to Britain's economy and society, [...]
In recent years, Western governments have voiced concerns about Asian governments' vast sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) investing in Western companies. Some called this "investment protectionism"
But as Western banks faced collapse, they were delighted to receive capital injections from Asian SWFs - and Western governments didn't object. In a crisis, needs [...]
For years, the US has lectured China on how it should run its economy. Now, the tables are turned.
US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson went to Beijing to urge the Chinese government not to let its currency weaken.
The Chinese hit back in style. Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the Chinese central bank, [...]
Now, the United States tried a fiscal stimulus in early 2008; both the Bush administration and congressional Democrats touted it as a plan to "jump-start" the economy. The actual results were, however, disappointing, for two reasons. First, the stimulus was too small, accounting for only about 1 percent of GDP. The next one should [...]
The Chancellor told the Observer that:
You'd be very foolish indeed to say, "Well, that's the job done". You know this is something that needs constant attention. We've got the Budget next year, we've got the pre-Budget report in 12 months' time, the Budget after that. I put more money into the reserve on [...]
Tony Blair once said that ‘we're at our best when at our boldest'. Gordon Brown is - finally - heeding that advice. His plan to shore up Britain's banking system is our best hope of pacifying the financial panic, getting credit flowing through the economy again and avoiding a 1930s-style depression. No wonder it [...]
A German doctor whose family was twice denied permanent residency in Australia because of his son’s Down syndrome has been allowed to stay after the immigration minister intervened on his behalf.
Dr. Bernhard Moeller moved to Australia with his wife and three children nearly three years ago when he was [...]
Damian Green and I don't see eye to eye on immigration, but I find his arrest, questioning and the search of his home and office by counter-terrorism police outrageous.
According to the BBC, police suspect the Conservative immigration spokesman of “conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office” and [...]
(A) All domestic non-financial enterprises that currently have access to bank financing and whose loans, overdraft facilities, credit lines or whatever other financial arrangements expire during the coming year, have the right to an automatic one-year extension of the expiring arrangements on the same financial and non-financial terms as the expiring arrangements. This mandatory ‘creditor [...]
The reason why the government had to rescue Britain’s banks is not that their shareholders and executives deserve special favours, but because businesses and jobs depend on the availability of credit. There is no public interest in propping up banks that won’t lend.
For sure, banks should not be lending [...]
The private financial sector has to deleverage massively, but would (with credit markets and wholesale financial markets closed for business) do so in an unnecessarily destructive way if left to its own devices. The household sectors in the US, the UK and a number of other European countries [...]
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Alistair Darling's statement was a pre-budget report only in name; in reality, it was an emergency budget crafted by Gordon Brown. It was big and bold, but it should have been bigger and bolder. Worse, the main plank of the government's plan to support the economy [...]
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Alasdair Darling’s statement was a pre-budget report only in name; in reality, it was an emergency budget crafted by Gordon Brown. It was big and bold, but it [...]
Immigration to Britain from eastern Europe continues to fall.
In the third quarter of 2007, 59,000 people from the A8 countries registered to work in Britain; in the same period this year, only 38,000 did. The decline was mostly due to fewer Poles applying to work: their numbers almost halved [...]
The latest Transatlantic Trends survey of attitudes towards immigration in America and Europe finds that 47% of Europeans and 50% of Americans think immigration is more of a problem than an opportunity.
But young Europeans (aged 18-34) are much more positive about immigration than older ones. In both the [...]
I'm delighted to say that the Italian edition of Immigrants is out in January 2009.
The book is published by Baldini Castoldi Dalai editore and is available for pre-order from shop.it
[...]
Photo by Sergio Betancort © Prisacom S.A. From El Pais.com
They came from North Africa and reached Europe: the Canary Island of Lanzarote, Spain
[...]Net immigration to the EU - immigrants less emigrants - was 1.9 million in 2007, according to Eurostat. Since the EU population is just shy of 500 million, the immigration rate was 0.38%.
Spain had the highest level of net immigration: 702,000; Italy was second, with 494,000; Britain third, with 175,000. [...]
In a bid to reverse the brain drain out of Europe and attract talented foreigners to come work here, the EU is proposing to introduce a Blue Card visa, in a deliberate echo of the US's much-coveted Green Card.
The Green Card grants the holder the permanent right to live [...]
From the country that elected a former Nazi as president comes another outrage:
In an extraordinary on-air outburst, Klaus Emmerich, the veteran Austrian television pundit, declared: “I would not want the western world to be directed by a black man.” When invited to retract, Mr Emmerich stood by what he had said, adding that [...]
Spain's Socialist government is planning to tighten the country's immigration laws. It wants to limit the right of immigrants who are not yet permanent residents to bring their parents to live in Spain and to extend the length of time illegal immigrants are detained from 40 days to 60.
The [...]
The upside: Many Republican anti-immigration extremists will no longer be members of the incoming House of Representatives. Nine or 10 have lost their seats; their leader, Tom Tancredo, is retiring, as is Duncan Hunter.
The downside: Leading reform advocate Ted Kennedy is fighting cancer, and John McCain watered down his reform [...]
The British government's lunacy knows no bounds. Irrespective of how open to immigration you think Britain should be, the notion that the Home Office, advised by a committee of wise men and women, is capable of identifying the specific occupations where job shortages exist is ludicrous.
According to the government's new [...]
The doubts are over: Obama has won. What a great day! Not just for Americans, but for the whole world. He was the right choice, not because of the colour of his skin, but because of the content of his character.
The many Europeans who are snooty about the US [...]
This year’s Privacy International survey put Britain bottom of the European league for surveillance and civil intrusion. In his last column for the Sunday Times, Simon Jenkins urges us all to fight to defend freedom against government encroachment:
Never was the adage of Louis Brandeis, the US justice, more relevant: free [...]
A section of the border fence around the Spanish enclave of Melilla in North Africa has been torn down by a violent storm.
Perhaps the elements don't look favourably on this unnatural barrier.
Undocumented immigrants in the US can no longer get mortgages - even though their default rates are low.
Previously, established migrants could get mortgages with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, but now they need a US Social Security number.
"If you want to buy a house and you're here without [...]
I've written an article for the latest JCWI Bulletin on the government's proposals that UK citizenship should be earned. Read it here
[...]It is well known that the money that immigrants send home is the biggest - and best-targeted - source of development aid to poor countries. But immigration can also spur an increase in official government aid - in a bid to improve conditions in poor countries and thus deter their [...]
It is bad enough that governments conspire to keep foreigners out. It is even worse when governments conspire to keep their own citizens from leaving. Violating Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that every one has the right to leave a country, including their own, [...]
Phil Woolas, Britain's new immigration minister, is already making his mark. He told The Times that:
This Government isn’t going to allow the population to go up to 70 million. There has to be a balance between the number of people coming in and the number of people leaving.
It would appear that [...]
Tony Blair once said that the government was best when it was boldest. Gordon Brown is – finally – heeding that advice. The government's three-pronged plan to shore up Britain's banking system is bold and right. It is our best hope of pacifying the financial panic, getting credit flowing through the economy [...]
The time for half-measures is over. Britain is no longer in the grips of a credit crunch or even a financial crisis; it is suffering a full-on financial heart attack. Markets have seized up. Banks will no longer lend to each other. Credit to companies and individuals is drying up. [...]
Allowing Lloyds TSB to take over HBOS was an act of desperation: even though the merged entity would dominate the UK banking market, the government signalled that it would approve the merger in order to stop HBOS going under.
But now that the government has stepped in with its bank recapitalisation [...]
Tony Blair once said that the government was best when it was boldest. Gordon Brown is – finally – heeding that advice. The government’s three-pronged plan to shore up Britain’s banking system is bold and right. It is our best hope of pacifying the financial panic, getting credit flowing through [...]
What bank investors need from authorities is clarity. A concerted, pan-European drive to inject capital might provide it. As US fund manager John Hussman has suggested, that injection could be achieved via a “super-bond”, countable as capital and subordinate to customer deposits, but ranking ahead of both shareholders and even senior bondholders in the event [...]
The time for half-measures is over. Britain is no longer in the grips of a credit crunch or even a financial crisis, it is suffering a full-on financial heart attack. Markets have seized up. Banks will no longer lend to each other. Credit to companies and individuals is drying up. [...]
Gordon Brown's reshuffle has certainly captured headlines. But what does it mean for the trade and immigration debates?
That Peter Mandelson jumped at the chance to leave his job as EU trade commissioner for a non-job as UK business secretary (which has been stripped of the energy and enterprise portfolios) provides [...]
Ian Birrell has written an excellent article in the Independent on the perniciousness of Britain's new points-based immigration system. Read it here
I have written a couple of pieces for the Guardian this week about Frank Field's plan for "balanced migration" and the government's points system. Read them here [...]
With a stagnant economy and Led Zeppelin performing, Britons could be forgiven for thinking they had travelled back to the 70s. This week saw yet more throwbacks, with the proposal of Labour MP Frank Field for non-EU migrants to be thrown out after four years - sorry, for "balanced migration", [...]
Labour MP Frank Field's new proposal for "balanced migration" is many things, but it certainly isn't balanced. A "one-in/one-out" immigration policy is unfair, unnecessary and unworkable – and would deal yet another blow to Britain's faltering economy.
Field frets that Britain's "open door" policy will lead to a large increase in [...]
New Home Office figures provide more evidence that the recent wave of migration to Britain really is temporary: the Poles (and others) are looking elsewhere for work as the pound plunges and the UK economy sours.
So much for fears of being swamped.
[...]One of the casualties when Russian tanks rolled past Gori was the beguiling “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention” proposed by Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist: “No two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other.” Alas, you can buy Big Macs in both Moscow and [...]
We can’t give people so much security with their income that it affects their willingness to work... We can have equality in access to education and health but not in equality of income... We can’t have a situation where it is not work that gives access to goods.
Unexceptional stuff. Except [...]
The updated and revised paperback edition of Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them will be published in the English-speaking world outside the US on 5 February. 
ICE Air provides one-way flights home for immigrants that the US is deporting. Story at the
