8 Special reportMigration The EconomistNovember 16th 2019
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o understand whypeople oppose immigration, it is worth
visiting Tilbury, a port town outside London. Thurrock, the lo-
cal parliamentary constituency, is 81% white British. Many resi-
dents moved here from London as the capital filled with migrants
and house prices soared. London’s white-British population fell
from 60% to 45% in a single decade, between 2001 and 2011. Some
whites moved out because they sold their flats for tidy sums and
bought nicer homes with gardens farther from the centre. Others
did not like being a minority in the city where they grew up.
During the Brexit-referendum campaign in 2016, Brexiteers ar-
gued that leaving the European Union was the only way for Britain
to regain control of its borders. A whopping 72% of voters in Thur-
rock voted to leave. Most do not hate foreigners, but many feel be-
leaguered and disrespected. “We’re English, not British. If you say
you’re English apparently you’re a racist,” says Trish Byne, who
runs a tattoo and piercing shop in Tilbury with her husband, Tony.
“In the uk, indigenous people are ignored,” says Tony. “The rights
of minorities take precedence.”
“We’re in favour of immigration, but controlled immigration,”
says Trish. She wants immigrants to integrate, but fears that many
try “to impose their cultures and language and religion”. She men-
tions no personal experiences of harm, but says: “In London, I’ve
seen videos on YouTube of streets where English people cannot go
because there is sharia law.” She adds, of refugees: “You don’t know
what boat people have got in their backpacks, it could be terrorist
weaponry. That is not me living in la-la land; that is what I’ve heard
from people working on the docks.”I’ll give my cousins a free ride
Thoughtful writers such as Paul Collier and David Goodhart argue
that if too many migrants arrive too quickly, it disrupts communi-
ties and inflicts unwelcome cultural change on the natives. Mr
Goodhart complains that liberal politicians attach too little weight
to the views of people who like things the way they were. This argu-
ment should be taken seriously—for some people, any kind of cul-
tural change feels like a threat. The old find it hardest to adapt. “I
was born here and it was a lovely village. Now it’s a concrete jungle
and you can’t even hear people speaking English—it’s awful,” says
Ann Hoyle, 76. But many of the things that voters fear about mi-
grants are not true, and some of their objections can be answered,
up to a point, with smarter policies.
Whatever Trish may have seen online, there are no streets in
London where the native-born cannot go. Islamist terrorism is a
worry, but should be seen in perspective. Terrorists killed six peo-
ple a year in Britain in the decade to 2017. A Brit is eight times likeli-
er to be struck by lightning (though only half as likely to die from
it). Young male native-born Brits and Americans are more likely to
commit ordinary violent crimes than young male immigrants.
In all rich democracies, locals grumble that immigrants drain
the welfare state. “If I go to the doctor, I have to pay for it. Foreign-
ers come and they get childbirth and operations all paid for. They
should be made to pay, too. If they can’t, send them packing,” says
Joan Smith, a 73-year-old in Tilbury. Again, this is not an accurate
picture. Migrants pay taxes. In countries with flexible labour mar-
kets and thrifty welfare states, such as America and Britain, theygenerally pay their way, unlike the native-born. Over a lifetime, a
typical migrant from Europe to Britain can expect to pay £78,000
more in taxes than he receives in benefits.
Immigrants are a burden only if a host country’s policies set
them up to be one, by making it too easy to draw benefits or too
hard to work. Sweden committed both these errors with asylum-
seekers during the European migrant crisis in 2015-16, showering
them with free stuff while forcing them to remain idle for long pe-
riods. This was not sustainable, and the government curbed the
flow of refugees by five-sixths.
The simplest way to make sure that migrants do not abuse any
given benefit is to make them ineligible for it, for five or ten years
or permanently. “Build a wall around the welfare state, not around
the country,” urged the late William Niskanen, an economist. In
the United Arab Emirates, where migrants have no access to state
benefits and no chance of citizenship, citizens do not seem to
mind being outnumbered nine to one by foreign workers.
Another fear, that migrants will steal jobs from locals, is as
widespread as it seems logical. “Migrants in construction are
much better workers than the English, who show up late and leave
early,” says Danny Proctor, who manages building projects in Til-
bury. “Foreigners aren’t lazy like that. I have a lot of plasterers from
Lithuania and Poland. For 20 years they’ve been the best workers.”
An English plasterer listening to Mr Proctor might despair. But the
supply of jobs is not fixed. Migrants spend money as well as earn-
ing it, thus creating more demand for other people’s labour. Immi-
gration slightly raises the wages of most native workers. The rela-
tively small number of losers could be compensated out of the
vastly larger gains that accrue to the immigrants themselves.Fear of the unknown
Overcoming objections to migration is hard, but not impossibleThe backlashCheering the grandson of Bavarian immigrants