One of the arguments of the anti-immigration lobby in the UK is that a limited number of skilled immigrants is OK, but that we should not welcome unskilled workers. It’s claimed that unskilled workers push down the wages of the native population and are a drain on the taxpayers. As such, some people want to make our immigration system more complicated with a big, top-down system of points and quotas. They think that bureaucrats in Whitehall should micromanage who gets to work here, rather than leaving it up to the voluntary agreement of workers and employers. A points system would be a total nightmare for everyone concerned. How can Whitehall know who’s needed or not?
Moreover, the anti-immigration lobby’s case is simply disproved by the facts. Unskilled labour does not empirically lower wages or increase unemployment among the country’s poor. California is is “flooded” with unskilled immigrants. But as I’ve mentioned here before, a recent study by Dr Giovanni Peri of the University of California shows that in California), between 1990 and 2004, immigration induced a 4 percent real wage increase for the average native worker. Immigration even raised wages slightly for high school dropouts.
Unskilled immigrants are vital for our economy, increasing our prosperity and enabling higher skilled workers - like teachers, doctors, merchant bankers and CEOs - to work because they can employ someone to look after a baby or an incapacitated mother. Indeed, as Philippe Legrain has pointed out, the fastest growing sector of employment in Britain’s economy is in old-age care and the people mainly doing that are immigrants, allowing working age children to keep earning at work. And because unskilled workers are typically young and single, they contribute more to the government pot than they take. So why all the hysteria?
Tags: giovanni peri, immigration, philippe legrain