Righting immigration
From Mr Gordon Haines Sir: Andrew Gimson (`Backbone of England', 1 June) repeats the story we have been told since the war: we need immigrants for economic reasons. This is even further from the truth now than it was then.
The argument runs that with an aging population we need able-bodied workers. When Lloyd George introduced the oldage pension, it was for men over the age of 70. The NHS and better living conditions, not to mention the dramatic reduction in hard manual labour by the use of machines, mean that we could add millions of productive workers by simply raising the retiring age. This is not done because those thrown on to the labour market above the age of 50 have problems getting work — extending retirement would simply shift bodies from the retired to the unemployment columns in the statistics.
So, what we are short of is not workers: it is of cut-price labour willing to exist six to a room — the only way the lowly paid can afford to live near our city-centres. Immigrants are quite happy to do this in order to get a foothold but, once this is achieved, they bring in families, leave their badly paid, mainly public-sector jobs. and enter the housing market, thereby making things worse for the next wave who come to take their place.
Looking at the areas I know best, 50 years ago the London commuting belt ran mainly to Maidenhead and Slough to the west, and Brentwood and Chelmsford to the east. Housing costs meant that postmen. hospital porters, cleaners and others were in short supply, the main source being immigrants. Half a century on, following wave after immigrant wave, we still have an inner-city labour shortage. but now even highly skilled doctors, teachers and computer experts cannot afford to live in the area, and the commuter belt extends past Bristol and Norwich.
One cannot, of course, blame this on those who have entered the country legally — they were morally, as well as legally, entitled to accept the invitations of successive governments — but enough is enough. When you're in a hole, stop digging: pay inner-city workers a proper rate. It's cheaper than a never-ending succession of shortterm fixes which, in the long term, will add to the problem.
Gordon Haines
Woodbridge, Suffolk
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