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These ‘Immigrant Bashing’ Articles By Labour MPs Need To Stop

8th January 2017

By Seema Chandwani

It appears there is a section of the Labour party who are obsessed with anti-immigrant post-truth sentiment. One cannot help wonder if it is merely an attempt to sell-off the ‘control immigration’ mugs collecting dust somewhere in the stockrooms at Labour HQ.

Today we see the latest contribution from Stephen Kinnock alongside Emma Reynolds in The Guardian.

I will admit the title got me excited; “People are worried about immigration – Labour must devise a fair system to unite the country”. ‘Great!’ I thought, we are finally going to address the concerns many Immigrants are worried about like raids, deaths and rapes in detention centres and deportations. But sadly, I was soon disappointed.

It starts by stating “The EU referendum was a vote for change on immigration…” well, no it was not. People voted to leave for a myriad of complex reasons including a belief in regaining sovereignty, a hint of nationalism, a concern that so much money was given to the EU (which apparently could go to the NHS), a non-understanding of how the EU works, perception of EU policy on the decline in industry and a concern about the oppressive nature of the EU toward countries like Greece.

Whilst immigration was a concern and motivation for some, to boldly claim the whole referendum was solely a vote on immigration is simply not true.

Moving on, the second paragraph states “Some in the Labour party claim the proponents of managed migration are “Ukip-lite”. We reject this argument, which leaves a vacuum for the right to fill”. This part confused me, whilst it rejected the ‘UKIP-lite’ label, it did not say why but went onto, in the same sentence, imply that if we did not go along with their thinking, the right [assume UKIP] will fill the vacuum.

What does this even mean? If Labour does not bash Immigrants, someone else will?

It then went on to say: “Labour has tended to attribute concerns about immigration to overstretched public services and unscrupulous employers, and tried to counter those anxieties with facts about the overall benefits of immigration”. What, are the authors criticising Labour for…. using facts!! ... Eh?

Next it said “people are worried about more than pressures on jobs, wages and housing: they are anxious about culture, identity and the rate of change of communities” and then went on in the same paragraph to say; “Many of the areas that voted Leave on 23 June have little or no EU immigration, so it is clear that concerns are not limited to the areas that have experienced large and rapid inward migration flows.”

If people who voted Leave in June were not from areas which experienced EU immigration, surely this has refuted the whole basis of the argument the authors were trying to make. It proves the EU Referendum was not people voting about immigration.

In fact in areas with higher immigration tended to vote Remain (Economist July 2016) which completely proves this hypothesis is nonsense.

The article then proposed a two-tier immigration policy based predominately on the skills immigrants will bring. This was their proposal, all two paragraphs of it. It says nothing on how this will tackle the aforementioned alleged concerns people had about pressure on jobs, wages and housing. Nor did it say how it would prevent any of these people coming with their cultures.

In a nutshell, it made broad-based assumptions about why 52% of those who voted, chose to vote on a complex subject like The EU. It contradicted those assumptions with real evidence that many of those who voted ‘Leave’ were not affected by any of the issues they claimed people had. Then it came up with a solution that did not address any of the problems it claimed people had. 

In a Tweet, the article was nonsense.

The article ended featuring one ironic line: “the conflicting signals that we are sending out on immigration are deeply corrosive to our standing in the country”.

This I agree with – these Immigrant bashing articles by Labour MPs need to stop.