“Mass Migration 'is Damaging Britain':”
Yes indeed. And I’ve heard an unfounded rumour that the Pope is indeed a Catholic and I also understand that some people have seen bears actually going to the toilet in the woods.
Mr Portes’ article on which Zacs relies is indeed interesting and worthy of some comment:
“If we wanted to preserve access to the EU single market – as many of those who favour exit say they want – then the most obvious way to do so would be for us to join Norway (and Iceland and Liechtenstein) as members of the European Economic Area. But free movement actually applies to EEA members on pretty much the same basis.”
It is by no means the most obvious way. It is doubtful whether the three EEA nations mentioned suffer anything like the huge numbers of people settling in the UK from the EU. As Svejk correctly points out, what is more obvious is that there is no reason on earth why, in order to undertake mutually beneficial trade with a nation, you have to accept that nation’s population having unrestricted access to work and settle. That requirement was not born out of trade or the single market; it was born out of the EU’s avowed intention to integrate the countries of the EU into a single nation. Dozens of non-EU countries have trading agreements with the EU and none of them has to accept free movement of people.
“As Randall Hansen points out elsewhere on this site, the countries with fully-fledged points systems (Canada and Australia) introduced them as a way of targeting growth in both overall population and human capital; higher immigration is not necessarily the objective of those who want us to leave the EU.”
No it certainly isn’t. And since Mr Portes is fond of the obvious, it is obvious that the UK would not use such a system to grow its population beyond the level it could reasonably sustain. Uncontrolled migration from the EU is doing just that.
“So leaving the EU might – or might not – increase our degrees of freedom in immigration policy. But it would be no magic bullet – difficult policy questions would still remain.”
They certainly would still remain. But the big, big difference is that those policies would be under the control of the UK government.
“My link proves that the migration issue is a red herring. A Brexit will not solve immigration issues.”
It does nothing of the sort, Zacs. All it does is puts forward a particularly blinkered view of the problem and suggests that the UK must still comply with freedom of movement to a greater or lesser degree in order to sell our goods and services (and, incidentally, buy other people’s). No country outside the EU would even consider such a condition.
'…to genuinely go it alone on immigration policy might well require not just Brexit but an acceptance that we would be excluding ourselves from the single market'
It might. But consider this: the share of the UK’s output that is sold to the EU is rapidly declining. By contrast the value of goods that the EU shifts to the UK is on the increase. So who will suffer the most if the EU makes it difficult for the UK to trade with the EU? Furthermore, the UK cannot, as an EU member, negotiate its own trading deals. It forfeited that right long ago and our requirements now form just one twenty-eighth of the conditions that any new deals meet. However, of the UK’s top ten non-EU export markets, the EU has negotiated deals with just two. So we are saddled with trading with some of our best customers where no trading agreement is in place. Good for the UK? I think not.
The choice of who settles in the UK should be a matter for the UK government alone and it should be dismissed as a condition for doing business. At present upwards of 600m people have the right to settle here and absolutely nothing can be done to prevent it. No government can manage or plan its services and infrastructure on that basis and the UK is already seeing the results of that disgraceful and catastrphic betrayal of its people.