DO WE NEED PEOPLE LIKE MICHAEL HOWARD?

The Home Secretary is planning tough new laws against illegal immigrants. Anne Applebaum argues that, though this might be politically astute, it is economically illiterate

TOR TOO LONG, this country has been seen as an attractive destination for bogus asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants.' So spoke Michael Howard, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph earlier this week. The Home Secretary went on to add that the majority of the 34,000 asylum applica- tions made last year were 'without merit'; tougher measures for the 'organisers of illegal immigrant rackets' were being pre- pared by the Government.

Illegal immigrants and bogus asylum- seekers: Mr Howard has been quietly planning to `crack down' on both groups for some time, by cutting benefits payable to asylum-seekers, forc- ing employers to check employees' National Insurance numbers, requiring visas from more countries, and pos- sibly following the American lead by impos- ing large fines on people who employ illegal work- ers or pay them benefits. (Pete Wilson, the Cali- fornia governor who turned his poll ratings around when he attacked immigration, is much admired in Tory circles at the moment.) Mr Howard may be right: if he does carry out this crackdown, and if he publicises it clever- ly, he'll win some applause. As popular hate figures with a relentlessly negative image, both bogus asy- lum-seekers and illegal immigrants rank up there with Brussels bureaucrats and wel- fare cheats, with whom they are often con- fused. 'We can't pay to save a child's life yet we bankroll this foreign thug' is how the Daily Mail described one alleged immi- grant scam artist; 'Bogus refugees will grab state handouts' is how the Sun once referred to the 'human tide' of refugees which it claimed were heading for these shores, making a beeline for the benefits office; sham marriage-brokers and crooked immigration lawyers are the stuff of which Evening Standard scoops and special inves- tigations are made.

Indeed, like Kenneth Clarke's decision not to raise interest rates, Mr Howard's words should probably be taken as advance warning that an election cannot be far away: when you're down, cut taxes and kick immigrants. Yet while voters have become aware of the ways in which politicians can manipulate budgets and inflation rates to produce feel-good factors of one sort or another, they are less likely to question the bogusness of rhetoric about bogus asylum- seekers and illegal immigrants. Invariably, the arguments against• foreigners in this country are economic: they are stealing from the state, taking jobs from the British, and generally living off the fat of our green and pleasant land. But is the image fair? Does the now nearly universal notion that foreigners 'live high off the hog' here really carry any weight? And does the popular picture of immigrants streaming in, encour- aged by an immigration service which is trying hard to create a multicultural Britain, actually reflect reality?

If you avoid all these fates, you still risk joining the list of 6,000 people deported every year, like the Tamils removed to Sri Lanka from Britain in the 1980s who were tortured upon their return, or the Angolan who spent 216 days in detention in Britain before being deported to Luanda (where Amnesty International is investigating reports that he was immediately arrested and imprisoned). You can even be deport- ed like Joy Gardner, with a belt around your waist and 13 feet of adhesive tape around your head, if you survive to tell the tale.

Despite all these dissuasions, the Home Office is right to say that more people are trying to get here every year, whether because of wars and ethnic conflict, the squeeze created when Germany cut its immigration quotas, or fraud: from about 3,000 in 1984, the number of applicants for political asylum rose to 45,000 in 1991, and amounted to about 34,000 in 1994. Yet the numbers allowed to remain are not rising at the same rate. The charity Asylum Aid calculates that rates of outright refusal have gone up, from 14 per cent in 1992 to 72 per cent after the passage of the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act of 1993. According to the British Refugee Council, only 825 people were recognised as refugees in 1994, while only 3,660 were granted 'exceptional leave to remain' — a status which does not guarantee housing or benefits — and 16,000 were refused out- right.

Does this mean that more applicants are bogus? Mr Howard believes that it does, and he may well be right: queried about the falling percentages, a Home Office civil servant insisted that decisions on who can be accepted as a refugee are still made according to the merits of the appeal itself, and not according to the Home Office's desire to see fewer people settle here: 'We have no contact with Michael Howard on this matter.'

But then again, Mr Howard may well not be right either. Certainly a number of observers, some partial, some less so, believe that the criteria have changed to match the increase. 'The sort of client who would have received some legal status in the past just doesn't get in any more,' one immigration lawyer told me. Whereas Pol- ish clients of his who were threatened with jail, but probably not death or torture, did get political asylum in the 1980s (as I know, since my husband was one of them), appli- cants with even more urgent cases do not get in now. Recently, one of his clients, a Bosnian Serb who felt his life would be in danger if he tried to remain in Bosnia (either from the Bosnian government, or from the Bosnian Serb army which he did not want to join) was refused, almost incredibly, on the grounds that ethnic dis- crimination is illegal in Bosnia: 'The Secre- tary of State is aware that the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, formed in March 1994 by an agreement between the Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims, has adopted a constitution which guarantees human rights and protection to all citizens regard- less of their ethnic background.'

Even more amusing — or perhaps sad- der — was one letter received by a Zairian and handed over to Asylum Aid: 'The Sec- retary of State considered your account of crossing the Zaire River by canoe at night to be totally implausible. The Secretary of State is aware of the size, strength and con- siderable dangers posed by the river such as shifting sandbanks and crocodiles.' Chal- lenged to produce an estimate of the crocodile population in Zaire (and asked to explain how it was that the Secretary of State ignored the presence of large num- bers of canoes on the Zaire River), the Home Office withdrew the letter, but then produced a completely different reason for refusing the asylum application. Other applications have lately been refused on the grounds that 'the threats made against you were not carried out' (this to a Croat living in Sarajevo); that 'the scarring on your back shows evidence of injury, but the Secretary of State is of the opinion that this does not show the cause or reason, [this to a man who had marks on his back consis- tent with heavy beating]; that minor dates had been confused or that the asylum application had been made at the wrong time or that 'the soldiers [who came to your house] failed to prevent your escape', which proves that 'the authorities had no interest in your alleged [political] activi- ties'.

There are, it must be said, 55,000 politi- cal asylum applicants who are awaiting decisions on their cases, a process which can take years. About 42,000 of these are on the dole — not many compared to the number of British natives on the dole, but nevertheless not insignificant. Yet even these figures partly reflect the fact that it is illegal to work during the first six months of making an asylum claim — as well as the fact that job-hunting can be difficult for someone with uncertain status. Whatever way you look at it, the numbers still do not, in any case, tell us anything about the bogusness of the applicants' claims.

Nor, curiously enough, are there figures to prop up the other great immigration myth: that large numbers of ordinary, non- asylum-seeking illegal immigrants are living off state benefits. By their very nature, no one can count the number of illegal immi- grants, who might number 5,000 or 1 mil- lion; nor, despite the rhetoric — this was the issue which inspired Charles Wardle MP to resign as industry minister a few months ago — is there evidence proving either that enormous numbers of them are stealing from the state, or that they are not. `Once we know they are illegal, they stop receiving benefit,' a DSS spokesman explained to me, quite reasonably.

True, there is anecdotal evidence. The odd Nigerian scam is uncovered, and Turks are sometimes found to have phony docu- ments. But just as much anecdotal evidence suggests that far from abusing the benefit system, most of those who do live here ille- gally prefer to stay well away from it: they come here, after all, to work — and the unfilled jobs in Britain pay far better than state benefits.

Typical of a certain type of foreign work- er, for example, are Teresa and Danuta, (not their real names) two Polish women who live in a terraced North London street. Teresa came three years ago, Danuta came only eight months ago. Both work as clean- ers; both are paid about £5 an hour; both have overstayed their visas. Both are roughly middle-class; both admire the peo- ple, mostly middle-class Londoners, whom they work for. 'My family gave me a four- week holiday last summer,' Teresa told me. `My family' — it is as if Teresa were one of the legendary, loyal domestic servants of yore. Which she is, in one sense: as an illegal immigrant, Teresa, like her daughter Danuta, does not live within the bound- aries of the modern welfare state. Neither woman has ever collected unemployment benefit; neither has been on a training pro- gramme. Neither has health insurance either, because to present themselves to the NHS, they believe, would be to court deportation: when ill, they go to a Polish doctor who accepts patients like themselves at low fees. Neither complains much either. They come from a provincial Polish city, where Danuta's husband still lives: they intend to return there in any case.

Asked why they chose Britain, Teresa is succinct. 'Most Poles used to go to Ger- many. But the kinds of jobs we can do are no longer available in Germany, they have other people to do them. Poles come to London because we know there are jobs.' By jobs, Teresa means jobs which natives won't take. 'I have worked in dozens of places — cleaning in hotels, restaurants and houses — and I have never once seen an Englishwoman doing what we do.' Both agree that they earn enough, albeit without paying taxes, both to live and to save enough money to make it worthwhile: Teresa has already saved enough to buy a flat in Poland.

No one doubts that there are more peo- ple like them. Sergei and Oleg, Ukrainian brothers who have saved £25,000 in the past year working in the building industry, told one newspaper reporter that 'London is the best place in Europe to earn money'. Polish newsagents and Polish clubs are filled with notices of people seeking jobs and people offering them. Similar networks exist within the Turkish, Russian and Alge- rian communities too, linking newcomers to sweatshops, to agencies which hire peo- ple to work in hotels (and pay different rates to people from different national groups, according to how likely they are to be detected, if Teresa is to be believed) as well as to the cash economy. A short survey of acquaintances produced the following list of jobs which they have hired illegal workers to do: nannies, cleaners, builders, electricians, housepainters, plumbers, wait- ers and waitresses. Official estimates put the size of the black economy at 7.5 per' cent of British GDP, but economists have also given estimates showing that it might account for up to 20 per cent of GDP: obviously, immigrants are a large part of that.

There are also immigrants who have moved out of the black economy and into the mainstream, without abusing the bene- fits system along the way. Denis Blais, a French Canadian who first arrived in Britain 'with a bag full of clothes and a hundred bucks', worked in restaurant kitchens in Cardiff, `the sort of job that for- eigners do'. He is now the co-owner of Belgo, a Belgian restaurant in London's Chalk Farm, as well as Belgo Central, a sis- ter restaurant in Covent Garden. Both dis- pense beer and mussels at an enormous rate: the former had a turnover last year of £2.5 million, at the latter he expects twice that. It is the sort of immigrant success story which is more common in America. In total, Blais estimates that he employs 150 people: 'When Ford or Toyota opens a factory and provides 150 jobs, it's in the Financial Times. When we do it, no one sees it, no one notices.'

Blais did, at one point, have some trou- ble with the immigration service — all behind him now — but describes Britain as a country of 'great opportunities', particu- larly for those who are interested in work- ing in service industries. Although he hires only legal residents, 'most restaurants have a hard time not employing foreigners. Peo- ple here don't want to do this type of work. They find it downgrading.' His thesis that Britain is a land of opportunities is clearly echoed by Magda, another Polish woman, who came here to work as a waitress, put herself through secretarial school, and now works for someone whom she wants identi- fied only as 'an important businessman'. Wearing a suit and pearls, Magda — now applying for residency which she may well not get — told me that she would never go near a benefit office: 'To do so would jeop- ardise my chances.' She is even more scathing about the English work ethic. 'If you want to find jobs here,' she says, 'you can. Everybody can.' Out of dozens of immigrant acquaintances — not all Polish — not a single friend of hers, she says, has ever had trouble finding work. .

There is no evidence that illegal immi- grants are 'stealing' jobs from natives; there is no evidence that they are 'stealing' from the state. There is no evidence even that they are a demographic burden: when emi- grants and immigrants are compared, Britain actually suffered a loss in 1992, the last year for which statistics are available, of 11 million people.

I admit that there is a hole in my argu- ment which is this: although there is no way to encourage them, the best sort of immi- grants are precisely those who are illegal, at least those who an' illegal to begin with. To get here, and to live here, they have to be clever enough and entrepreneurial enough to evade the police. When they work, they do jobs which the British won't do, with unemployment benefit at current levels. They don't pay taxes — but neither do they use any services. By working as nannies and cleaners, they enable thousands of British women to go to work. By working in restaurants, they help recycle money from the rich into the rest of the economy. By working in the building trades, they con- tribute to the value of the housing stock. And by buying things — hi-fi equipment, television sets, video recorders — which they send back to their relatives in Ukraine, they boost highstreet spending figures. Best of all, after a few years they invariably go home — which is precisely what ought to endear them to those who are loudest in their objections to immi- grants.

For however squarely political critics of immigration aim their fire at bogus asylum- seekers or welfare cheats, however earnest- ly the Home Office investigates benefit fraud or false allegations of torture, the economic arguments which are usually deployed against immigrants don't hold up: there aren't enough immigrants — this is not America, or even Germany after all -- and there isn't enough evidence that they damage the economy.

No, the real emotions behind anti-immi- grant sentiments almost always lie some- where else, mixed up in memories of the Commonwealth immigrants of the 1950s, and the legacy of Enoch Powell. Once, at the height of an argument about immigra- tion, I pointed out to an acquaintance of high Tory principles that I myself am an immigrant in this country — or at least a temporary permanent resident — here by virtue of marriage to a British citizen who was also originally an immigrant. 'But we're not opposed to people like you being here,' he exclaimed. By this, he meant people who are white and culturally European people like, just for example, Michael Howard, a descendant of Eastern Euro- pean Jews, or people like Michael Fortino, who have a touch of Spanish blood.

There is in fact a set of legitimate politi- cal arguments both for favouring some kinds of people over others and for holding down the numbers of immigrants: when too many people of a very different culture appear at the same time in the same place, it usually upsets the natives. Cities with large immigrant populations — Miami and Los Angeles — tend to be violent; coun- tries with large immigrant populations gen- erally experience a racist backlash. And every country has the absolute right to decide who may live there, based on any principle it likes.

But that needn't mean that people who do come here should be constantly under popular or political attack. Some of them really have suffered terrible things, even if the Home Office doesn't believe it; others are happily employed by the British, even if the Home Office doesn't approve. If the Government really must manipulate tales about benefit s fraud and invent stories about crocodiles to get rid of immigrants, it might at least do them the favour of doing so quietly.