| |
| Join Our Newsletter |
 Please Select sub-criteria |  |
|
|
|
|
| |
| A New Approach to Immigration |
02 |
|
|
| |
| |
| |
Immigration - an exaggerated fear?
Many if not most of the accusations made against immigrants and asylum seekers are grossly exaggerated and not substantiated with real evidence. In essence there is a real gap between people's perception of immigration and the underlying reality. To illustrate this, we consider some of the actual available evidence underlying two anti-immigration stories that have achieved notoriety amongst the general public. It is commonly believed that immigrants are abusing the British National Health Service and accessing services that they are not entitled to. However Dr Vivienne Nathanson, the BMA's Head of Science and Ethics, said there is no evidence "to support claims about fraudulent use of the health service. Despite the fact that there have been strong government claims about the scale of NHS abuse, the BMA is unaware of any evidence to back up these assertions. We would like to see the Government undertake reliable research regarding the misuse of the NHS."
The other notorious case which is cited with respect to immigration and the links to terrorism is that of Kamel Bourgass, the failed asylum seeker, who was convicted for attempting to manufacturer poisons. Some tabloid newspapers claimed that the Bourgass case represented the tip of an iceberg and that there were a lot of other covert immigrants and asylum seekers in the UK who were terrorists causing a security threat. However there is little or no evidence to indicate that there are many others who have slipped through the system like Kamel Bourgass. Since 9/11 no other immigrants or asylum seekers, apart from Bourgass, have been convicted for terrorist offences in the UK. Moreover in court it came to light that Kamel Bourgass was a failed and incompetent terrorist wannabe. He never managed to make any ricin poison but was found in possession of a recipe to make it and its main ingredients - castor oil beans. Prior to the Bourgass story, a major story that made the headlines in 2004 involving asylum seekers was that of a group of Iraqi Kurds who were accused of plotting a major terrorist attack on the Old Trafford football stadium, the home of Manchester United football club. In the investigation that followed it turned out that police mistook some football memorabilia found in the home of one of the asylum seekers as evidence of their intent to carry out a terrorist attack. Later it turned out that one of the asylum seekers was a fan of the Manchester United team. This incident would be laughable if it wasn't so serious yet it is these perceptions that are driving the public debate on immigration and asylum.
Many academics that specialise in the study of immigration issues recognise that when it comes to the subject of immigration there is now a huge lag between people's perception and the actual reality. For example, a conclusion of a recent academic report titled "Immigration, Jobs and Wages: Theory, Evidence and Opinion" was that immigration is important for the health of the nation as well as tackling severe job shortages. However it found that knowledge about immigration was low, leading to a possible distortion of policy-making since politicians are often swayed by people's misperceptions rather than hard evidence. The report also stated that people in various countries "vastly over-estimate the true size of the number of immigrants and the foreign-born population" and that "Residents' perception of immigration is more important for policy than evidence that has been established by social scientists. As a consequence, policy-makers may react to beliefs based on ill-informed evidence and may, therefore, create inappropriate regulations and legislation."
In a recent interview, a UK academic specialising in immigration, Dr Anne Kershen, the director of the Centre for the Study of Migration at Queen Mary College, University of London, stated that the perception that EU countries are besieged by deadbeat countries is wrong. She said "So many people who are uninformed say, Britain has too many immigrants...If you took all the illegal immigrants out of London, the economy would probably collapse."
| |
| |
| |
| |
< 1 2 3 4 > Last »
Page 2 of 5 pages
| |
|
|
