Yes, we have an immigration problem - but not the one you think - Stewart McDonald

We have an immigration problem. The problem is that we have far too few people moving here and a government in Westminster that wants to drive that number even lower. Even with a change of Prime Minister hurtling towards us, there is an iron-clad consensus between the two Westminster parties - a phrase I find myself using more often than any democrat should be comfortable with - that immigration is a social evil holding the good folk of this island back from living lives of peace and harmony. Like so many of the stories Westminster politicians tell about themselves and the country they govern, it is an absurd, offensive, and damaging fiction.Throughout the last Parliament, SNP MPs were comfortably the largest major bloc making an undiluted positive case for immigration. Labour, in their effort to woo back Leave voters in the north of England, had opened the doors to the likes of Natalie Elphicke - a politician so monomaniacally obsessed with immigration that she almost could not seem to help talking about it, like it was some nervous tic. (I once had to peel some Ukrainian MPs - in town for meetings with UK Ministers as Russian military forces marched into their hometowns - away from her after she started trying to impress upon them the urgent need to stop the boats.)When it comes to the Labour Party in Scotland, Anas Sarwar’s credo - to never knowingly voice his own opinion - remains firm. Last week, during an interview which touched on migration, Sarwar told a journalist that (hold the front page) he agreed with Keir. The Leader of the Scottish Labour Party agreed with the Leader of the Labour Party that migration to the UK was too high and, when asked about Scotland specifically, did briefly flirt with having an independent thought. He told the reporter that, when it comes to Scotland, we do have to ask “whether we are getting the balance right in terms of the right skills in the right places to help us with our needs”. Eh?Contrast Sarwar with the SNP’s Stephen Flynn, who said last week that “the NHS and wider public services would not function without our essential migrant workforce. Business would not be able to grow without our essential migrant workforce.” It’s as simple as that. Yet with the Westminster parties unable to bring themselves to state these simple facts and the Leader of the Scottish Labour Party unable to even whisper them, Scotland runs to the risk of a rocky five years ahead as Prime Minister Keir Starmer dances to a jig played by Nigel Farage.Nigel Farage, like George Galloway, is something of a folk devil in British politics. What Galloway is to foreign policy, Farage is to immigration: ghouls summoned by a perceived closing of the ranks in Westminster on a policy issue that people care about. But what Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer get wrong about immigration is that the British public are not up in arms about how many people are moving to this country - they are up in arms about the manner in which they come.Recent data from the World Values Survey shows that, of all the countries across Europe, the UK has some of the highest and most positive levels of feeling towards immigrants of any country in Europe. More people think immigration levels should be maintained or even increased rather than decreased and half the country expresses positive views about the cultural and economic benefits that immigration brings. People are, however, deeply concerned about skyrocketing levels of irregular migration. None of this is reflected in the Westminster debate.There are inevitable frictions and teething pains that come with immigration. It serves no one to pretend there isn’t, or that shipping in a whole new generation of young people from abroad will solve our economic woes overnight. But the current immigration debate in the UK features Keir Starmer trying to outflank Rishi Sunak who is trying to outflank Nigel Farage who is in turn seeking the political spotlight for his own selfish purposes.But the source of all this bile - Farage - needs to be called out, not copied. I listened to a radio interview with him earlier this week, where Farage railed against people speaking foreign languages in public and the great affront it represented to community cohesion. That was until the presenter gently pointed out that his own children are bilingual joint citizens and that it would not require a tremendous stretch of the imagination to imagine a scenario in which they had had the audacity to speak German in public. Spluttering, Farage moved the conversation quickly on.The debate on immigration is shaped by this hypocrite and charlatan’s fantasies and his pretence of speaking for the authentic British people. Neither Rishi Sunak nor Keir Starmer have the courage to dismantle his arguments wholesale and make the positive case for immigration. Scotland simply cannot afford this.As I wrote last week, the issues that the SNP Government in Scotland have spent its time mitigating are now coming to a head in England. The next UK Government will inherit crumbling schools and understaffed hospitals and overcrowded prisons and, yes, the urgent issue of small boat Channel crossings. Ambitious new Labour MPs will not want to trouble their boss with problems from the North.Scotland cannot afford to be held back by Westminster's anti-immigration rhetoric and policies for five more years. While some challenges do come with increased immigration, the overall benefits to our economy, public services, and culture are clear. Despite this, only the SNP has consistently made the positive case in Westminster for the immigration that Scotland needs. Returning a strong contingent of SNP MPs in the upcoming General Election is the only way to ensure that Scotland's voice remains heard.

Stewart McDonald is SNP candidate for Glasgow South