An excellent, sane, necessary article by Aditya Chakrabortty, with sound advice for Labour (Migration has benefited the UK. It’s time to bust the myths, 17 May). What is particularly vile is that it is such a cynical ploy. For Fox, Johnson, Gove and the others, curbing migration is not their main motive (though it might be one of May’s, obsessed with keeping her old Home Office targets). For the neocon corporate-backed Brexiteers, the real purpose of Brexit is, as you recently observed (Cabinet divisions over a customs union area proxy for deeper Tory division, 3 May), the bonfire of European regulations which spoil their desperate ambitions for a “purgative transformation of the UK along ultra-Thatcherite lines”. Can you keep reminding us of that?
John Airs
Liverpool
On immigration, as with austerity, the political centre has narrowed almost to a vanishing point. Indefinite detention without trial, the deportation of former child asylum seekers to countries like Afghanistan and the very existence of Yarl’s Wood are among the many state-sanctioned abuses that will come to seem shocking in time. Yet until the present crisis, the wider aspects of the hostile environment were rarely contested (except by an honourable minority), but enforced in the rightwing press with a Pavlovian system of shocks and alarms. Due credit then to Diane Abbott for breaking this brutal consensus, and starting to make space – at last – for a wiser and kinder approach. This is the Corbyn project at its best.
Emma Jones
Abingdon, Oxfordshire
Aditya Chakrabortty is right. Immigration has brought many benefits to the UK. What he chooses to ignore is the fact that it also brings great costs. And unfortunately the benefits are reaped overwhelmingly by the middle and upper classes, while the costs are borne overwhelmingly by the working class. Our society already has an obscene gap between the working class and those above them, and uncontrolled and unlimited immigration from the EU only widens that gap, which is why I voted to leave.
Paul Miller
London
I’m surprised Aditya Chakrabortty did not mention national identity cards. Several EU countries, including Belgium, have a much more restrictive interpretation of “freedom of movement” than the UK. The reason they are able to do this, and Britain is not, is because they all have ID cards. Some senior Tories, like William Hague, have suggested that the coalition made a mistake in reversing Labour’s plan for ID cards in 2010, as this might have prevented the Windrush scandal. Labour should realise it got this right and re-propose ID cards as a means of having more control over immigration, while keeping the benefits of the single market, eg the Norway option. They could at least argue this met Keir Starmer’s “fair management of migration” test.
Bill Bryant
London
The usually excellent Aditya Chakrabortty’s outrage over the immigration debate conflates the duplicitous use of this issue by leading Brexiteers with a misinterpretation of what really concerns people. Accusing the vast majority who want controls on immigration as being anti-migrant and racist is unacceptable. As is denying that the rapid increase in immigration has made it more difficult to cope with stresses on social infrastructure and that it will continue to do so even when austerity is swept away. Also worrying was the anti-internationalist acceptance of continuing to take Indian doctors and skilled eastern Europeans “educated at someone else’s expense”.
For the left to regain credibility it must rethink migration and make a progressive case for limiting “new, large-scale, permanent migration”. New makes it clear that curbing future levels of migration involves no changes for those already legally resident in the country, such as the Windrush generation and those from the EU. Permanent has the caveat that foreign students are welcome to study here and workers fill vacancies here, but only for a specified period. Crucially, the UK must train its own population to prevent the shameful long-term theft of doctors and nurses from the poorer counties which originally paid for their education. There will also be the need for some exceptions, such as genuine marriage partners, civil partners or reunited family members.
Colin Hines
East Twickenham, Middlesex
Aditya Chakrabortty is right to argue it is time to puncture the historic cross-party negative ideology on immigration that lay behind the Brexit vote and lingers on in the opposition to free movement that bedevils Labour’s approach to the single market. The widespread public post-Windrush revulsion provides a key moment to roll back the “hostile environment”.
Labour should promote a “welcoming” environment on immigration and free movement, dismantling the whole inhumane Home Office apparatus that wrecks immigrant lives and careers with deportations, family separations, visa refusals, resistance to child refugees, and absurd financial barriers preventing needed doctors and nurses entering the count.
This will be a fierce battle, especially with the rightwing press, but, as Chakrabortty says, Labour has broken the consensus on austerity; now it must do the same on immigration. If not now, when?
Gideon Ben-Tovim
University of Liverpool
The claims made by the UN’s special rapporteur on racism and xenophobia that anti-migrant rhetoric has become normalised in Britain as a result of Brexit were alarming (Report, 12 May). But while it is important to acknowledge such concerns we should view them in the context of nationally representative data.
Earlier this month we launched the third Aurora Humanitarian Index, a study that examines public perceptions of major humanitarian issues. It revealed that more than half (52%) of Britons feel that refugees deserve more support, and 38% of people are regretful that the country is not doing enough to help, up 11 points from last year.
Furthermore, 47% of Britons think that legally established immigrants should be able to become citizens of the UK, up 10 points from 2017. While the numbers are still low, it is an encouraging indication that the more nationalistic sentiments around the refugee crisis are abating.
Noubar Afeyan
Co-founder, Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, Yerevan, Armenia
I would go further than Aditya Chakrabortty. I believe anyone who comes to the UK, wishes to settle here and likes living here should be allowed to do so, and in due course can receive citizenship without undue expense and formality. It was good enough for my grandparents: why should it be denied to others?
Lionel Burman
West Kirby, Wirral
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