Yes, Charles, but...

"Managed migration", the convenient slogan of the current debate, is simply not achievable, for any major country dependent upon international trade, like the UK.  The old image of the territorial state, capable of being turned at whim into a fortress, is no more. The 6bn human inhabitants of this clobe inhabit a unitary space.  With 9,000,000 visitors passing through the UK each year, and with perhaps 750,000 non-UK citizens working and studying in the UK each year, our borders are effectively "porous".  Asylum-seekers merely add (say) 50,000 to that annual total of arrivals.  And the millions of UK-citizens travelling abroad each year would be the first to complain if borders were effectively "controlled".  It is nonsense for the 2005 Labour Pledge Card to trumpet "Your Country's borders protected" - if that is intended to mean the physical borders of a territorial state.

The starting-point for honest policy-making must be a recognition that in the world of the future, the physical movement of peoples will be incapable of "management" in any meaningful sense of the word.

That does not mean to say, however, that our societal resources are "open to plunder" by all and sundry.  It merely means that old ideas of the "Territorial State" must be supplemented by new definitions of the "Membership State".  There are alternative ways of achieving a satisfactory degree of regulation, to meet legitimate political concerns.

First, it must be clear that the UK could not operate an alternative Open Borders policy alone.  At the very least, a consensus would have to be achieved within the EU, and I do not underestimate the difficulty of that.  The USA is large enough to operate its own pragmatic Open Borders policy (by way of huge, logically incoherent periodic amnesties) but the UK would not be.  The entire EU would have to be persuaded - properly understood, an EU Open Borders policy would be the precisely the galvanising factor which the European economy needs.

Second, it takes time to absorb the implications of a visa-less, permit-less world.  Everybody and anybody would be free to enter the EU, but would have no claim to welfare benefits.  Newcomers would be allowed upon the territory, but would not at first be admitted to membership of the society - they would initially be visitors.  And they would be allowed to work, to support themselves and their dependants.  That is the position, at present, for EU Citizens under the Registered Workers Scheme, for their first year. 

Under an alternative system, all newcomers would effectively be treated as "Working Visitors", and they would register for work in precisely the same way: they would be allowed to work lawfully and openly, and to receive work-related benefits (exactly as with EU workers).  That would, at a stroke, reduce the incidence of illegal working and exploitation under the present system.  It would also meet UK requirements for a larger workforce: Tesco is currently having to recruit in Poland, for shop assistants and lorry-drivers.

Working Visitors would not be entitled to Income Support, Job-Seekers Allowance, Housing Benefit or Invalidity Benefit, or Pensions, and they would have to make their own arrangements for health insurance: they could either buy cover in the private sector, or the NHS could offer them cover for a conventional advance premium payment. Their under-18 children would of course be entitled in their own right to free education, consistently with the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.  Even unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are accorded that support, and so should the children of working visitors.

For such Working Visitors, life would be no soft touch.  If of course they were simply here for a holiday, paying their own way from savings like most tourists, no issues would arise.  Similarly, if they were merely retiring, spending pensions already earned elsewhere, no issues would arise.  There are already many wealthy people who reside in the UK, paying their taxes by without making any demands whatever on the UK State.  All working visitors would have to find and pay for their own accommodation, without resort to Housing Benefit.  They would have to pay for their own health insurance. They would not be regarded as statutorily "homeless" if they could not house themselves: they would be deported, because they could not survive in this country as a visitor.

What then?  If Working Visitors stayed for a period of three continuous years, effectively paying their way and looking after themselves on UK soil (or being supported by their families or community groups) their status would be automatically reviewed after three years' residence.  At that point, they could apply for (a) UK Citizenship or (b) "Indefinite Leave to remain", acknowledging the fact of "settlement" but without any change of nationality.  If they continued to opt for working visitor status, they would remain excluded from the benefits of the UK Welfare State, still liable to be deported for destitution.

There would be exceptions to that rule.  

1. EU Citizens, as under present dispensation, would switch to full-Membership status after surviving for one year in the UK, working for their living.  They would therefore continue to enjoy the same advantages (i.e. of "early status transition") as at present;
2. Asylum-seekers would continue to have good reason to seek UK State protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention, for if granted, asylum would bestow earlier access to membership benefits (depending on the scope of the new five-year interim consent envisaged by the Government but not yet enacted); if asylum were not granted, the failed applicants would revert to the status of working visitor.

Everybody else, however, would be free to come to the UK and attempt to survive as a lawful working visitor, with access only to "work-related" benefits, as with current first-year EU citizens.  It would resemble an extension of the "Working Holidaymaker" scheme operated, for young globe-trotters, by a number of countries, including the UK.  If they were destitute, they would be liable to deportation: a tourist overstaying his six-month visa, and begging in the London streets, is already subject to that sanction.

If it be objected that "everybody would come", it should be stressed that life as a working visitor would not be a soft touch, and that major increases in immigration were unlikely.  Nor have the numbers entering for work from the new-accession EU countries been high, since May 2004.  There would be no question of visitors claiming resources which ought to be accessible to the resident population: a key card in the BNP hand would be removed.  Working visitors would have no access to public housing, or to any of the principal benefits of the Welfare State. They would have to pay for using the NHS, or rely on private health insurance.  They would not have access to free adult education.  They would "register" for work, thus ensuring that that a personal administrative link were retained with the authorities.  Registration would also be a prerequisite for the receipt of a state education for any dependent children.  The "borders" of the State would have been redefined in functional terms, rather than those of traditional territoriality.

This would resolve, in large part, the scandal of illegal and unsafe working - although there would inevitably be some willing to risk employment in an illegal labour-market, albeit much smaller.  With registered workers firmly established in the lawful labour market, trade union intervention would be much more effective.

Such reforms would create an open and comprehensible, if harsh, regime for those seeking to make their way anywhere within the EU.

What do you think?  Drop me a line

1063  ---------  2005