This year's start-of-summer crisis, the increase in people attempting to enter the UK illegally via Calais, continues to rage. The government has responded in kind, with Theresa May writing in the Sunday Telegraph that we must show that Britain's streets are not "paved with gold". The government wants to cut cash allowances for failed asylum seekers with families, and plans to change the law to force landlords to check the immigration status of tenants.Public feeling against immigration is powerful, but it's worth remembering the facts. With that in mind, here are four migrant myths debunked.Overstaying their welcome
Part of what's driving concern about the Calais migrants is a belief that illegal immigration is a serious problem in Britain, and that potentially porous borders like the Channel Tunnel contribute to this. It's difficult to tell exactly how significant an issue illegal immigration is:
Jonathan Portes writes that the last serious estimate, numbering the illegal immigrants in Britain at between 420,000 and 860,000, was made in 2009. But even if we assume it is significant, the root of it is generally accepted to be people staying longer than their Visas allow—Portes says around 80 per cent of illegal immigrants took this route—not people sneaking across borders.
"El Dorado?"
Last year, the mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, hit the headlines after claiming that Britain is an "el Dorado" for migrants because of its immigration rules and benefits system. We don't know exactly why many migrants come here, but this seems unlikely as a sole explanation.
It's debatable whether our benefits system for those claiming asylum is more generous than France's, and it's worth remembering that the UK is only the sixth most popular EU destination for non-EU asylum seekers. Some suggest that Britain's flexible labour market has created a "black economy" where it's easy for illegal immigrants to find work. Others say our historically large global standing and the fact our language is widely spoken could be contributing factors.
We're not full
A perception that Britain is "full," or nearly there, is part of what drives our periodic furores over immigration. The problem is, it doesn't really make sense as an assertion. We're not full in spatial terms—92 per cent of Great Britain is undeveloped. Pressure on public services varies by area—the housing crisis in the South East, for example—but as UCL's
John Salt points out in the Independent, when he began studying migration in the 1960s, before the invention of the pill, there was an assumption that Britain's population would hit 80m by 2000 (it was in fact under 60m). With the right planning, and given appropriate incentives, we can adjust public services to different population pressures within reason.
Britain's getting older
There are currently four people of working age supporting each pensioner in Britain. According to the Royal Geographical Society, by 2035,
that number will fall to 2.5, and by 2050 to two. Médecins du Monde staff
estimate that most migrants in Calais during the last decade have been young men of 15-30 years old. T
he International Organisation for Migration estimates that 74 per cent of migrants globally are of working age. A supply of young people eager to come to Britain and work has the potential to help alleviate one of our most serious demographic challenges.
