Tagged with immigration

Corbyn is right: Migrants don’t drive down wages

CorbynIn his recent speech to Labour Party conference Jeremy Corbyn said, “It isn’t migrants that drive down wages, it’s exploitative employers and the politicians who deregulate the labour market and rip up trade union rights.” This is excellent and entirely correct. It is probably the best statement ever made by a Labour leader on this issue. It used to be regularly argued, and not just by far right or fascist groups, that immigrant workers take British workers’ jobs. This has more recently been supplanted with the notion that migrant labour has driven down wages. Both are equally wrong.

The claims that immigrants take jobs became harder to sustain as the level of the overseas migrant population reached record highs in Britain at the same time as a record high level of employment overall and a record high for employment of UK-born workers. Continue reading →

We should stand up to anti-migrant rhetoric by fighting for homes, jobs and services

14David Cameron’s net migration target has been exposed as an unworkable policy. In reality, it is classic scapegoating tactics, being used to distract people from the effects of government spending cuts, such as the crisis in the NHS and the increasing unaffordability of housing. All the Tories have to offer is yet more destructive cuts. Labour needs to offer both a progressive alternative and reject those who would seek to divide us.

As part of our alternative we need to fight for homes, schools and the NHS for all. We also need to stand together and stand up to the Tory efforts to pin their own economic failures on immigrants who make a great contribution to our economy, our cultural diversity and the richness of our society – without immigrants Britain would not have an NHS. The immigration mugs of the last election were a disaster, and should never be repeated. Continue reading →

Don’t believe Tory lies on immigration

solidarity with the migrantsWith the world’s biggest refugee crisis since 1945, it is perhaps predictable that the Tories’ reflex response is to sensationalise the issue, lie about the facts, and pull up the drawbridge. May kicks it off with the falsehood that the vast majority of migrants to Europe are Africans motivated by economic self-interest, when in fact 62% reaching Europe by boat this year were escaping persecution from Syria, Eritrea and Afghanistan. Foreign secretary Hammond portrayed them as marauders risking the collapse of European civilisation, when in fact the number of migrants who have arrived so far this year is precisely 0.027% of Europe’s total population. Cameron himself described them as a swarm intent of getting welfare benefits, when in fact the number of migrants reaching Calais of those arriving in Europe this year is just 1% and each asylum seeker in Britain gets a measly £36.95 a week to live on, only just over £5 a day, and is not allowed to work to supplement this sum. Continue reading →

Jeremy Corbyn in his own words

Labour Leadership Candidates and now they are 4_edited-1This is how Jeremy Corbyn introduced himself in the Newsnight Labour leadership debate on 17 June:

“I was first elected to Parliament 32 years ago, and I’ve spent that time in Parliament representing my constituency and standing up for rights and justice in Britain and all around the world. I believe that is the function of the Labour Party. But I also think that over the years we have lost our way. We’ve become cowed by powerful commercial interests, become frightened of the press, we’ve become frightened to stand up for what we absolutely believe in. I want a more equal society, I want a fairer society. I want a world at peace, not at war. I want the Labour Party to be the heart of the community that is demanding those things and demanding jobs, homes and hopes for everybody so that they can live in a society that is more equal. We’re moving in the wrong direction at the present time. Let’s turn it round and move the other way.”

Continue reading →