Thoughts about Immigration and Brexit for a Lexit perspective.

Many people in the United Kingdom on the remain side worry about the abolition of freedom of movement after the EU referendum. Before I start anything, I will make some points from my Marxist perspective. Firstly, national borders are regressive barrier constructed by the idea of a nation, that enforces an idea of separateness. Secondly, I believe it’s a fundamental part of human nature to travel and migrate across the globe throughout Human history. I also believe that the idea of a nation state is a regressive construct, but in our society, as of today, it is a necessary evil. However, there were several issues that I had migration in modern Britain such as the importation of low paid workers into Britain. There is also the concern about our green belt sites that are rapidly being built on to respond to our rapidly growing population. The population of the United Kingdom has approximately increased by 8.5 million in the last 20 years. The population increase is dis-proportionally in England. However, this is not my main point as while this can be problematic we can mitigate against all of the negative effects of this. There is also the fact on a whole immigration has a positive effect on the treasury. I think a fair point is that Immigration benefits the population and mass immigration potentially brings problems to a said nation-state especially where there is a systematic lack of investment as we have today. From my own experience of what I see in society Multiculturalism, on the whole, is a positive thing, though it can potentially cause problems in certain communities when there is a lack of integration into great society. I also see a neglection of British traditions and history, how many people know about the importance of the glorious revolution in constructing our democracy. The main question regarding immigration during the EU referendum was largely on the principle of controlling our borders? Of course, there was unsavoury rhetoric as well.
             

I do support the idea that if we have a democracy and a nation-state we should have a choice to have our own policy of immigration and our borders. Of course, there is a major issue with the idea on the question of Europe, net migration is higher with no EU migration and we do have a clause in which we can deport EU migrant that fail to find any work after 3 months. We do choose to fail to use that clause and we do fail to cut non-EU migration despite the no tolerance policy. Even the current Home Secretary Nosferatu (Sajid Javid) calls her tenure as a hostile environment. This policy led to the Windrush scandal where individuals that should be British citizens were deported to their home countries even if they spent all of their lives in the United Kingdom. I do think there is a split in the Conservative Party between those who want to cut immigration based on their own nationalistic justifications and those who see mass immigration as good for business. The first is generally Brexiters the latter are generally being remainers. Which explains the confusion on the Conservative Policy on immigration, as we did see a record high Net Migration in 2016 of over 300,000 despite the rhetoric. The key question of immigration should we ask, does the public care about immigration? I suspect the majority of the population does not, I think the whole affair has been overplayed by our regressive media, which made the subject relevant. The majority who are concerned with Immigration I believe see a problem with the numbers instead of the racial profiles of those who are immigrating into the country. There was also the concern attached regarding the lack of school places, hospital beds, affordable housing, a lack of decent jobs being attributed to immigration. A lot of people dismiss these arguments, but it is simple if we have a larger population, but we do not prove the infrastructure accommodate immigration will cause legitimate problems.

     

 Many individuals address concerns about a lack of jobs or the lack of quality of jobs due to immigration, while we have little intervention in the market this phenomenon is very possible. If people cannot gain the jobs that their desire or required. The political establishment should have turned its head and listen to their concerns, of course, the Neo-Liberal politicians did not. This is partly why many deprived parts of the country voted to leave the EU. The other side of the debate on this subject there is the idea that employers would struggle to recruit in occupations such as fruit picking. There is a strong capitalist argument for this that the left could perhaps embrace while we still have a capitalist economic system. If there are fewer workers competing for the same jobs than employers, in theory, would have more of incentive to do more to attract more workers in methods such as increasing wages. Wages in this country have been very much stagnant in the last 8 years. I would prefer to live in a society with full employment where employers compete for employees and not the other way round. We should not export workers from abroad that cause labour issues in their own countries. There is also the issue of skilled workers to discuss, the issue of nurses and other skilled workers leaving the country have been a problem, hence we as a nation currently need to do more to encourage them to come and work in this country, this certainly needs to be done in terms of wages. Nurses despite their great hard work have been subjected by the reactionary public sector pay gap. There is also the issue that we are not training enough Nurses and medical Doctors for that matter. Abolishing NHS nursing bursaries in 2017 also led to a drastic reduction in the number of individuals who are training to be Nurses. We must focus on training our own professionals first before accepting those from aboard as we do deprive other countries of these vital skills. especially from third world nations.

To finish my series of essays about immigration I will discuss basic ideas of what we should do on immigration. Borders and immigration are necessary evils to combat the disabling forces that affect open borders (I do not think we truly have that in the EU or in the Schengen Area) and to control the market forces that wish to exploit cheap immigrant Labour. While we have the nation-state, Immigration should be moulded and be fluid to meet the nations need. For example, we currently need to encourage skilled migration to migrate to this country as opposed to low skilled Labour. Our Immigration policy must always be humanist and empathetic especially towards refugees fleeing conflict in Africa and the Middle East. We certainly do need to learn from our mistakes especially after the awful and perhaps racist Windrush scandal of 2018 that led to the resignation of Amber Rudd though her predecessors and the current Prime Minister Theresa May is more to blame for the issue people are not criminals for just migrating to this country. We should have a reformed based system similar to what we saw the Commonwealth countries in terms of Immigration policy outside the European Union. Due to our proximity to Europe, I suggest a basic travel visa and a basic work visa that an individual could easily apply for that would be a visa for the European Union giving similar benefits to the freedom of movement and a long-term visa for visits for longer than 3 months.  This could only occur if we have a meaningful hard Brexit deal which is unlikely now. The current proposal is a £6 visa between the EU and the UK, but I think that is for tourism and no other uses. A separate arrangement is required for Northern Ireland, Gibraltar, Akrotiri and Dhekelia. Sorting the Northern Ireland question would be the most difficult arrangement, but I cannot see a deal that will not have any Irish sea border controls. I know they are vague proposals, but I see it as a bit of a compromise.