By Syed Kamall
The Windrush debacle is a stain on our record as an open, tolerant and welcoming society.
But if we fail to learn from it, it will be something worse than a stain - it will be destructive influence with the potential to drag our community relations back to the resentment and tension of the 1960s and 70s. As the child of a father who came to London in the 1950s to work on the railways then the buses, and a mother who followed in the 1960s, I am just grateful that my parents got themselves passports - otherwise, we might have faced the problems so many others did.
I regret the fact that the Labour Party is using it as an opportunity for playing party politics. After all, former Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson has admitted the decision to destroy the records was taken in 2009 while he was in office, even though records were destroyed later. And by the way - didn’t anyone think of scanning or microfiching these documents?
If you ignore the fake news of The Economist, which blamed Theresa May for the “hostile environment” at the Home Office you will see it was, Labour Ministers such as Liam Byrne and Yvette Cooper who initially used the phrase, “many people believe we should be tougher on tackling illegal immigration”. I believe part of the mess is due to targets over immigration. Since so-called “freedom of movement” from the EU means that we cannot put caps on EU migrants, most of whom happen to be white, it means we put restrictions on non-EU migrants, most of whom happen to have dark skin. This leads to a racist immigration system.
During the referendum campaign, I met a number of people who voted Remain who told me they were in favour of immigration but wanted to see “the right sort of immigration.” What they really meant was they preferred “the white sort of immigration.” So what is a fair immigration system? I believe there are three types - but only one makes sense.
The first is to close our borders and to let no-one in. Most companies and most reasonable people know this would be an act of economic self-harm since not all vacancies could be filled by the unemployed - despite the improvements in training offered - or by technology.
The second would be to let everyone in. In fact, the UK had an open-door policy in the Blair years. Andrew Neather, a former advisor to Blair admitted this when he wrote that Labour’s plan “to open up the UK to mass migration” was a deliberate attempt “to rub the Right’s nose in diversity”.
The result was a backlash as white working-class Labour voters deserted the party and voted BNP. In 2009, the former Labour voters helped propel two BNP MEPs into the European Parliament. As I remarked at the time, as in other countries, abandoned socialists crossed the thin line between socialism and national socialism.
While the election of BNP MEPs, BNP London Assembly members and BNP local councillors provided white metropolitan liberals with another subject to debate at their dinner parties and further opportunity to feel morally superior, the real effect was felt by millions of black, ethnic minority and Jewish voters who were worried about their future safety. Open door migration leads to hostility to immigration and immigrants.
The third solution for fair migration is to treat all potential immigrants the same, regardless of where they come from. Then we should decide immigration policy on what skills gaps they fill. An exception should be made on humanitarian grounds for apart for genuine refugees fleeing persecution.
Let’s look at a points-based system where the criteria are clear and regularly reviewed, say every 6 months, as certain sectors fill their skills gaps while others open up. And we could look to technology to help us. With the advent of big data, computers can scan jobs boards, university application data and economic performance data in fractions of a second and assess where the skills shortages lay. Smart automated systems can also make complex tasks much simpler. Such as today’s labyrinthine application systems for visas, often still designed for an age of filing cabinets and paper forms.
Today we can access academic qualifications online. We can look at whether someone’s personal history is real or not. Did they really live where they say they did? In some countries, some credit agencies even scan Facebook for credibility indicators to issue credit cards. If someone is willing for their references to be checked we can increasingly do that. And better, more credible data would also make explaining immigration policy easier. Instead of crude targets, we could show how industries or companies which genuinely need to fill vacancies from overseas are able to attract staff to help our economy grow. Of course, there will always be some who want no immigration and claim that migrants take jobs (even though these may be jobs they would not want to do themselves). However, I believe that a points system based on the needs of the economy could change the narrative on immigration from a crude focus on numbers to filling the skills gaps to grow our economy so that we are all better off.
We should acknowledge that there are genuine concerns to be addressed as to whether rather than filling vacancies, immigration would reduce the wages and standard of living for existing workers in some parts of the country, as we saw after 10 countries joined the EU in 2004. However, if we move to a genuinely fair and transparent immigration policy post-Brexit, no longer giving preference to mostly white Europeans, as a country we can be seen to have learned the lessons from both the EU referendum and the shoddy treatment of the Windrush generation.