Who’s having a rational debate about immigration? Plenty of people…
Does anyone else find it frustrating when prominent politicians moan about the lack of a ‘proper debate’ on immigration, especially in the lead-up to a general election when soundbites are the order of the day?
There was Home Secretary Alan Johnson talking about how “the public deserves a rational debate on [immigration], rather than what they sometimes get, which is at the extreme end of the scale” (quoted in the Independent in November 2009). And Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, who wrote in the Daily Mail also in November, that Gordon Brown risks “stifling debate” by his “clumsy manoeuvring over immigration”.
I would agree that, in the national press and political boxing rings, immigration issues are often polarised. But that doesn’t mean that the ‘real debates about immigration’ aren’t happening – they are.
The problem is that it isn’t such appealing news to report that, all across the country, academics, NGOs, trade unionists, public services and local authorities are variously researching, talking and sharing information about immigration in what can only be described as a rational manner.
And what’s coming out of all this is a picture of how complicated the impacts and interests bound up in immigration across the UK are, and how much the issues vary across the UK regions. Within this picture, the ‘facts’ about immigration are more nuanced. National statistics about immigration are exposed as unrepresentative or hopelessly limited. And it is clear how critical it is to understand the interests, rights and motivations of migrants to be a legitimate piece of the jigsaw when developing responses to immigration or, for that matter, setting immigration policies in the first place.
It would be great to see this sort of discussion reflected by politicians in the lead-up to the general election this spring, but I’m not so sure it’s what they do have in mind by a ‘proper debate’ after all…