UK: Immigration impact report withheld by Downing Street

Immigration impact report withheld by Downing Street

It suggests "displacement" - the number of UK workers unemployed as a consequence of immigration - is well below the figure used by ministers of 23 for every 100 additional immigrants.

This was considered potentially incendiary, BBC Newsnight has learned.

The government said it did not comment on internal documents.

If ministers wish to get tougher on new arrivals, research finding that immigration is easier to absorb than previously thought is politically unhelpful.

Why let the truth get in front of a 'good' policy, eh?

Anyway, found this on the guardian today and thought many of us would relate:
Kamila Shamsie on applying for British citizenship: 'I never felt safe'

I couldn't get the link to Ms. Shamsie's article to work, but here it is:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/04/author-kamila-shamsie-british-citizen-indefinite-leave-to-remain

It is very good and certainly speaks to my feelings/experience.

I think more stories like this should be told because being an immigrant is such a peculiar situation, one that is so hard to understand for those who have never done it. Above all a person chooses to make themselves vulnerable, and it is a vulnerability of existence, of your ability to just stand on the ground and breathe the air or hold your spouses hand or kiss your kids.

I was struck recently by this while in conversation with my Father-in-law (who has traveled and lived in many countries). While I could connect somewhat regarding his experiences (new foods, different bureaucracies) his experiences are fundamentally different from mine (ours), as his time abroad was either with the military, as an employee of an American company on a two week assignment, or as a tourist. He has never been 'on his own'. It is different.

Now I can't really say that my time abroad has been of higher merit than his, that would be silly, but when the subject of visas and settlement cropped up he had no understanding of this particular kind of vulnerability. It was a bit like me chatting with an asylum seeker - we are both foreigners in a new land, we can find a sort of common ground relating to perhaps the expense of train travel - but our experiences are completely different.

The simple answer is of course that we chose to be here (which is not necessarily always true of those in a familial relationship), but that doesn't remove the strange vulnerability of the immigrant experience.

Interesting. I'd never heard of the Writers, Artists and Composers visa before...