10th January 2012.
The government has a ‘Migration Advisory Committee’ (MAC). And this committee has now released a report entitled “Impact of immigration on employment of Britsh workers.” The most interesting feature of this report is evidence that the claim, often made in the past, that immigration has very little adverse effects on the employment of native people, may be too strong a claim:
The report finds that there is an association between the level of immigration fron non-European Union (non-EU) countries and the level of unemployment of British workers.
More specifically, as the Chairman of the MAC writes in his foreword to the report:
“we find a negative association between working–age migrants and native employment: (i) in depressed economic times; (ii) for non–EU migrants; (iii) for the period 1995-2010. A ballpark estimate is that an extra 100 non-EU working–age migrants are initially associated with 23 fewer native people employed. Such evidence suggests that successive governments since 2008 have been right to make non–EU migration more selective.”
On the otherhand the chairman also notes:
“We find no association between working–age migrants and native employment: (i) in buoyant economic times; (ii) for EU migrants; (iii) for the period 1975–1994.”
Also, “But this possible displacement of British workers only holds for those migrants who have been here for under five years. Both EU and non–EU migrants who have been in the UK for over five years are not associated with displacement of British born workers.”
The Chairman also stressed that the report talks only about an ‘association’. In other words, the report does not prove that immigrants cause any displacement of native workers, although that may very well be the case. It is worth noting that in general, it is difficult in migration studies to prove an ‘association’ is causal. But it is clear that immigrants from non–European countries such as from the Indian sub–contintent may in fact displace native workers.
Read the report:
MAC