Mayor of London and migrant regularisation
The Mayor of London’s office published its long-awaited report yester, (16 June) on the Economic impact on the London and the UK economy of an earned regularisation or irregular migrants to the UK. Not the punchiest of titles, but an example of doing what it says on the tin….
The main report , which was compiled by a research team based at the LSE, is 125 pages long. Copies can be ordered from GLA Economics, on 020 7983 4922 or glaeconomics@london.gov.uk.
An 18-page summary report is also available is also available for people who want to get straight to the guts of the argument. It discusses the difficulty inherent in gauging the numbers of irregular migrants resident in a country and the range of methods which might be used to produce a plausible assessment. Going through this exercise of concludes that a central estimate for the numbers of irregular migrants at the end of 2007 is 618,000, with a range of 417,000-863,000. It argues that between 67% and 73% of all irregular migrants live in London - with a best estimate of 442,000 for the capital.
The most significant route into irregular residence is the asylum system, with large numbers of people remaining in the country after their applications for refugee status have been refused. Woodbridge’s work on the irregular migrant population in 2001 (Woodbridge 2005) estimated that two-thirds were asylum seekers refused refugee status. The stock of refused refugees remaining in the UK has increased by 220,000 people since this date.
Around 62% of all irregular migrants are believed to have remained for at least five years. If a regularisation programme where to be extended to people who meet a five year residence qualification the central estimate is that this would cover 412,000 people.
The impacts of regularisation are looked at across a series of heading: expectations of the changes migrants will experience after being granted legal status; and impacts on the labour market, housing, and the quality of life.
Contrary to claims that irregular migrants subsist only in the twilight regions of work and society, the report takes the view that the small size of the informal economy, relative to other European countries, makes it likely that most irregular migrants are already working in the mainstream and paying tax and national insurance, albeit often on false identity papers.
The report finds that the employment rate of irregular and regular migrants varies by around 6% to the detriment of the former. If regularisation allowed this gap to be closed the additional value in terms of GDP would be in the region of £3 billion per annum.
Housing impacts in the short-term would be limited. Legal migrants have limited access to social housing and government proposals to limit it even further, to British citizens or others deemed integrated to the same level of British citizens, the impact of regularisation would be delayed to a more distant future, when formerly irregular migrants reach the stage of qualifying as British citizens.
The quality of life of both irregular migrants and their neighbours could be expected to increase after regularisations, as the new security of status encouraged people formerly on the margins to interact with the police and other public authorities.
The cost impact on public services is considered to be low. The expectation is that, on regularisation, this group of migrants will join others with legal recognition who are exempt from benefiting from public welfare and services under the ‘no recourse to public funds’ rule. With regard to health services, available to all legally and permanently resident in the UK, the effect of regularisation might actually be to reduce costs which currently fall on acute services, like hospital accident and emergency, which are required to be available to everyone when the need is urgent. The better integration of migrants into lower cost parts of the healthcare system, like GP services, will make a significant contribution to reducing emergency cases.
The reports recommend the careful design of any regularisation programme which is adopted in order to ensure that cost are contained at affordable levels.
The report was presented to a GLA economics seminar in City Hall on 16th June. The general tone of the discussion amongst the assembled audience, mainly consisting of representatives of local government and public service authorities in London, was that regularisation is definitely do-able, and the benefits that would come from bringing over half a million people into the mainstream of society would beconsiderable.
So, how do we act on this useful piece of work? Check MRN blogs on a regular basis for ideas on how we can shape up that side of the work.
Woodbridge j (2005) Sizing the unauthorised (illegal) migrant population in the United Kingdom in 2001, Home Office Online Report 29/05)
Great report but why did the Mayor have to start talking about illegal immigrants - has he read his own report?
The article on migrant regularisation printed on various Newspapers and articulates are no where near the real hardships faced by these so called illegal immigrants. The policy when formulated at the Govt. level need to be based on the facts and the true findings. One such daft proposal for instance is :- ” The person to be eligible to qualify under the Long term Residency Scheme previously operative was 14 years (legal and illegal stay combined) “. Now if you study the findings, If a person had been doing continous 4 years legal work then he would automatically qualify. In other cases , as a student , he would qualify after 10 years legal stay. But 14 years is like 2 life terms and what makes it more unrealistic is that with the surprises of being caught - How does the Govt. expect some one to go unescaped for 14 long years. As though it wasn’t worse enough , now they have removed the policy of granting Legality status to parents of children who were born and been in this country for more than seven years. From the above , what is understood is Govt. is being partial in making policies as it does not consider these illegal immigrants and their families as human beings. Some organised body need to provide the Govt. departments with actual assessment of what’s going on in the lives of these so called illegal immigrants. May be those not wanting these scores of people getting a Legal status have got some thing to benefit only if these people remain as they are.