Time to face reality on immigration

THE DEATH of 19 Chinese migrant cockle-pickers in Morecambe Bay last Friday was a national tragedy - and not just because of the scale of life lost. It showed the depths of the underworld which has now become incorporated into British society.

Our country is coming to rely on illegal immigrants, who cannot claim benefit and who take the lowest-paid work. If they were all expelled from Britain tomorrow, large parts of the economy - and London’s especially - would be devastated.

Illegal immigration will continue for as long as Britain has jobs to offer and the people cling to the undercarriage of Eurostar trains to get here and live in squalor to avoid the law.

There are now two options: look the other way - or legalise them.

The disaster at Morecambe Bay gave yet another glimpse into the life endured by what may be as many as half a million people in the British Isles. Our illegal immigrant workforce is not in the margins: it is quite literally large enough to fill the city of Glasgow.

In London, the wheels of the city are oiled by "invisible" illegal workers who drive minicabs, clean offices, deliver pizzas, work as waiters and often act as au pairs - allowing middle-class mothers to return to work.

But this is neither an urban nor an English phenomenon. In Aberdeenshire, fishermen who cannot find crew often ask few questions about those who turn up for work with unusual surnames and the willingness to accept a surprisingly low wage.

When daffodil bulbs and raspberries are ready for harvest in Scotland, the roads to the farms often sprout a strange crop of Eastern European hitchhikers - whose English clams up when they are asked how they came to find work in the UK.

Teenagers taking barnyard accommodation in lieu of decent wages is the presentable end of a spectrum which ends in the bodies that the RAF dragged out the water in Morecambe Bay last week.

A profound error in British politics is to imagine that immigration is somehow a burden on society, or that the world’s poor traverse the globe with the aspiration of claiming dole in a housing estate.

Yet this is often what Britain’s insane asylum system directs them to. The most shameful example in Scotland was a group of Kurds who had fled Saddam Hussein - and found themselves in a Glasgow housing scheme. Hearing about work in Inverness - whose booming economy is restricted by shortage of manual labour - they were taken on by a fish-processing factory. But Scotland’s authorities heard that these refugees had had the temerity to find work - and dumped them back in Sighthill to become the unemployed.

Apart from the insult to the industry of new Scots who have already strengthened this country and are being denied the chance to do so again, this shows the political paradox which is now claiming human lives.

Britain is the asylum "capital" of Europe for one simple reason: we need these people. We are a growing, prosperous country with jobs to offer and low unemployment. Ask Gordon Brown: his ambitious growth prospects rely on a huge number of work permits being granted.

On the other side lies the political uproar created by the clichd image of the asylum-seeker stealing jobs and milking the welfare estate. This has powerful political resonance - which is why David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, makes such outlandish threats to crack down on asylum. He doesn’t mean it. Mr Blunkett’s rantings are designed to reassure the voter who thinks Mr Blair isn’t tough enough on asylum-seekers. He knows, as every minister knows, that the race against economic asylum is futile.

If Britain has jobs to offer, there is no force on earth that can stop the world’s poor trying to find them. Illegal immigrants keep business costs down and profits go up; the corporate tax haul increases, our money stretches further - and the workers do not show up in the asylum figures.

This is the realpolitik. Immigrants are here to stay: they run, hide, and because they must remain invisible to police, they all too often end up in the hands of pimps and criminals. This is what we saw in Morecambe last Friday.

If Mr Blair were not so terrified by asylum fears, he would grant full rights to the illegal migrants who can prove they are needed to help the country grow. This, however, is impossible in mainstream UK politics as the electoral price is too high.

The spectre of asylum looms large over British politics - having toppled centre-left administrations across Europe. The Prime Minister lives in its shadow. It is the electoral threat he fears most: so a half-way house is the best realistic hope. Britain should create a new class of citizen: with the right to work, but not to welfare. This way, the protection of law could be extended to those who are living in Dickensian squalor on our shores at the moment.

To allow work but deny welfare may sound mean-spirited. But it is better than the present system, which has created a subclass of people whom we never see or hear about ... until they die.

Scotland understands the migration problem better than most. It has, in Jack McConnell, a First Minister who appreciates the importance of reversing Scotland’s population decline.

An experiment will be brought into play on 1 May, when the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and others whose countries will be joining the European Union are given legal status to live and work here - a basic right which is to be shamefully denied them by mainland Europe.

There should be a scramble for the educated Eastern Europeans willing to take the jobs Scotland has to give. As England hesitates, Mr McConnell should use this golden opportunity to boost the Polish communities that Scotland nurtured after 1945.

If the asylum doomsayers are right, Britain’s welfare bill will soar because Poles can earn more on welfare here than they can at home. Anyone who knows the country’s people will laugh at such a prospect. Their migration can only be a blessing.

As the Europe Union continues to wring its hands about immigration (it is estimated one migrant a day dies trying to enter EU borders), the US continues to retain its global economic leadership by taking them in.

Recently, the Bush administration granted legal status to 2.7 million illegal immigrants and is now considering offering three-year permits for the rest. Both US parties understand that a see-no-evil immigration policy is the condition for a slave-wage system.

The investigation into the Morecambe deaths is apparently leading to a Liverpool-based gang of human traffickers. This is deplorable - but only a symptom of Britain’s refusal to face the hard facts of migration.