MigrationWatch UK
Encyclopedia
MigrationWatch UK describes itself as an independent, non-political immigration and asylum think-tank, although it has been characterised as a right-wing lobby
or pressure group by some commentators and academics.
It is chaired by Sir Andrew Green, a former Ambassador
to Saudi Arabia
. David Coleman, Professor of Demography
at Oxford University, is an Honorary Consultant.
claims, in an article in The Independent
, that "after reading some of his anti-immigration letters in The Times
", Sir Andrew approached David Coleman, Professor of Demography at Oxford University, and they subsequently set up MigrationWatch. Coleman is now a consultant to MigrationWatch "but does not speak on its behalf".
Andrew Green is chairman of the organisation's advisory council, alongside Coleman, Baroness Caroline Cox, James Duguid, George Kronfli, Harry Mitchell, Alp Mehmet
, Patricia Skitmore, Hazhir Teimourian, Dirk Van Heck and Roger Williams
.
, and on topics such as the European Union
, housing
, health
and social cohesion
, as they relate to immigration. MigrationWatch also conducts research and provides secretarial and administrative support for the Cross-Party Group on Balanced Migration and created, financed and updates the group's website.
Sir Andrew is a regular commentator on immigration and asylum matters in the British media
. He is frequently quoted or interviewed and writes numerous articles for the major daily newspapers including right-of-centre newspapers such as the Daily Mail
, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express
and Daily Star. He has also written for The Times and for guardian.co.uk
, the website of the liberal-left
newspaper The Guardian
. A 2005 Demos
publication states that Andrew Green was quoted on the topic of asylum at least once a week in the Daily Express and Daily Star, starting from early 2003. Green also featured prominently in the BBC
's "asylum day" coverage of the topic in 2003.
Bernhard Gross, Kerry Moore and Terry Threadgold of the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University
have criticised the broadcast media
's use of MigrationWatch to 'balance' reports on immigration. In a study of broadcast coverage of the issue of asylum, they state:
A website launched in February 2011 with the aim of allowing users to identify so-called churnalism
revealed the extent to which newspapers such as the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Daily Express and The Times copy and paste from MigrationWatch press releases in articles on migration.
but argue that many asylum seekers do not have a genuine case for qualifying for refugee status and are instead using the asylum system to gain entry to the UK for economic reasons. The group has also been strongly critical of what it sees as the government's failure to remove many of those whose claims are rejected. In a briefing paper published in January 2009, the group's Honorary Legal Adviser Harry Mitchell stated:
-based Migration Policy Institute
state in an Equality and Human Rights Commission report that: "Few serious international or UK economists would agree with this conclusion". The report did, however, note that "the recent migration may have reduced wages slightly at the bottom end of the labour market, especially for certain groups of vulnerable workers".
In January 2007, MigrationWatch published a briefing paper that claimed that immigration to the UK benefitted the British population by only 4 pence per person per week, and comparing this benefit to the cost of Mars bar
s. The calculation was based on a statement by a Home Office minister that "migration has increased output by at least 4 billion", which subsequently turned out to have only applied to migration from the eight Central and Eastern European states that joined the EU in May 2004. The calculation therefore underestimated the financial benefit of migration. MigrationWatch published an amended version of the paper in March 2007, although this stated that the amendments "do not affect the thrust of the conclusions" and that "the benefit of large scale immigration in terms of GDP per head is minimal".
(ECHR) and write its own Human Rights Act. Its opposition to the existing ECHR is because it is not possible for some convicted terrorists to be deported at the end of their sentences to a country in which there is a real risk where they might be tortured. (Article 3 of the ECHR
prohibiting torture cannot be subject to derogation
, and case law
has extended its application so as to prevent deportation of anyone who might be at risk of torture in their own country). Opponents of this view argue that even terrorists should not be subject to torture and should therefore be protected by human rights provisions. MigrationWatch argue that, "To those who regard it as unthinkable that anyone be placed at risk of torture, the answer would be that terrorists had been given fair warning. Furthermore, there must be an acceptable balance between the risk to foreign terrorists on their return and the risk of their continued presence to our society to which the British state owes a first duty of protection".
ing for potential immigrants in the light of a Health Protection Agency
report that found two in three heterosexuals being diagnosed with HIV
had contracted it in Africa
. HIV testing of immigrants had previously been criticised by the All-Party Parliamentary Group
on AIDS
, who argued that it would simply serve to stigmatise HIV-positive people. The plan was also criticised by the Terrence Higgins Trust
and a report by Richard Coker of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine suggested that a testing policy would result in driving people with diseases including HIV and tuberculosis
underground. The plans were dropped in July 2004 for this reason.
MigrationWatch had supported plans to introduce testing, arguing in June 2004 that "implementation of such screening would be beneficial to public health and to public funds in the UK and to actual and potential immigrants themselves" and in December 2004 publishing a further briefing paper supporting testing, pointing out that 47 other states, including Australia
, Canada
, New Zealand
and the United States
had policies requiring HIV testing of immigrants (though the US government has since lifted its ban on HIV-positive immigrants).
carried the title "A nasty little group playing an old, and unwelcome, trick" and stated that "Migration Watch is, of course, no think tank, but a pressure group with a distinctly unpleasant agenda". It has been argued that MigrationWatch's messages "can be taken advantage of by people with Islamophobia
and prejudice". The accuracy of the group's research has also been questioned. Academic Richard De Zoysa, for instance, argues that MigrationWatch's predictions of future immigration are exaggerated, while David Robinson, Professor of Housing and Public Policy at Sheffield Hallam University
, argues that the group's assertion that immigrants are placing strain on social housing lacks evidence. Economist Philippe Legrain
has argued that "MigrationWatch's xenophobic prejudice is causing it to twist the truth" about the impact of immigration on the employment prospects of British people.
Professor Tony Kushner has argued that "it has been possible to couch the campaign against asylum-seekers in a discourse of morality: the need to protect 'our' people and culture against the diseased and dangerous alien, as well as the distinction drawn between helping the genuine refugee and exposing the bogus asylum-seeker", and cites MigrationWatch as contributing to this discourse. He argues that the anti-asylum campaign, through groups including MigrationWatch, "has constructed for itself a spurious statistical rationale".
Andrew Green has rejected claims that his group have exaggerated immigration forecasts. Giving evidence to the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee
in January 2006 he quoted an internal e-mail by a member of staff at the Home Office, which stated "I have made this point many times before, but can we please stop saying that Migration Watch migration forecasts are wrong. I have pointed out before that Migration Watch assumptions are often below the Government Actuary Department's high-migration scenario". Green argues that "To speak out about [immigration] is not to be anti-immigrant". Green has said of MigrationWatch's agenda: "It's not racism. It's realism. It's right in a democracy that the public has the facts". Journalist Deborah Orr has argued that "the great trouble with this constant flood of highly contentious figures, is that it does not do what Sir Andrew says he wants to do — promote debate. Instead, Migration Watch UK, despite its lofty claims, is working to further polarise it".
Conservative
politician Jonathan Aitken
has credited MigrationWatch with improving the quality of the British debate on immigration. He argues that "Migrationwatch has changed the administrative practices of the civil service and the policies of the major political parties on asylum seekers, work permit criteria and numerical totals. It has introduced integrity and accuracy into the previously misleading government statistics on immigration. The level of understanding of the subject in all serious newspapers and broadcasting organizations has been improved. Britain may or may not have the right answers to immigration questions, but we certainly now have a far more informed debate on them".
Similarly, an article by Dean Godson
of the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange
published in The Times in June 2006 states: "The dramatic change in the terms of the immigration debate over recent months is largely down to the determination and courage of a single individual – Sir Andrew Green, the founder and chairman of MigrationWatch UK. Almost single-handedly, he has rescued the national discourse from the twin inanities of saloon-bar bigotry on the Right and politically correct McCarthyism on the Left".
Jay Rayner, writing in The Observer quotes one senior BBC News executive, who stated that "We probably were reluctant and slow to take him seriously to begin with. We probably didn't like what he had to say. But then we were also slow to pick up on immigration as a story, not least because we are a very middle-class organisation and the impact of mass immigration was being felt more in working-class communities. If he's proved himself, it's because he hasn't put a foot wrong on the information he's published".
Academics Nissa Finney and Ludi Simpson, however, state that "we believe that the evidence used by MigrationWatchUK is questionable, yet the organisation and its arguments have received prominence in migration debates and have assumed an authority – not least because of the profiles of its highly connected chair and advisory council – which we consider dangerous if there is no similar authority presenting counterarguments".
In August 2010, Sally Bercow
, a political commentator and wife of Conservative politician John Bercow
, argued on a Sky News
newspaper review that a Daily Express article based on MigrationWatch research was "oversimplifying" and constituted "dangerous propaganda". As a result, MigrationWatch and Andrew Green threatened to take libel action against Bercow. After she instructed the lawyer David Allen Green
to defend the threatened action, MigrationWatch dropped its threat. According to a MigrationWatch press release, in the light of an assurance by her lawyer that Mrs Bercow "did not intend to (and did not) allege that Migrationwatch is a fascist or racist organisation", Migrationwatch decided not to take the matter further.
Lobbying
Lobbying is the act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials in the government, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying is done by various people or groups, from private-sector individuals or corporations, fellow legislators or government officials, or...
or pressure group by some commentators and academics.
It is chaired by Sir Andrew Green, a former Ambassador
Ambassador
An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....
to Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
. David Coleman, Professor of Demography
Demography
Demography is the statistical study of human population. It can be a very general science that can be applied to any kind of dynamic human population, that is, one that changes over time or space...
at Oxford University, is an Honorary Consultant.
History and structure
The organisation was founded in December 2001 by Andrew Green, a retired Diplomat who served as British Ambassador in Syria and Saudi Arabia. Deborah OrrDeborah Orr
Deborah Jane Orr is a British journalist and broadcaster who works for The Guardian newspaper. She was born and raised in Motherwell, Scotland.-Career:...
claims, in an article in The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, that "after reading some of his anti-immigration letters in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
", Sir Andrew approached David Coleman, Professor of Demography at Oxford University, and they subsequently set up MigrationWatch. Coleman is now a consultant to MigrationWatch "but does not speak on its behalf".
Andrew Green is chairman of the organisation's advisory council, alongside Coleman, Baroness Caroline Cox, James Duguid, George Kronfli, Harry Mitchell, Alp Mehmet
Alp Mehmet
Alp Mehmet is a former British diplomat and one of the United Kingdom's first two ethnic minority ambassadors, along with Anwar Choudhury....
, Patricia Skitmore, Hazhir Teimourian, Dirk Van Heck and Roger Williams
Roger Williams (hepatologist)
Professor Roger Stanley Williams, CBE is a British medical doctor, specialising in hepatology . He is currently Director of the Institute of Hepatology, once part of University College London, and now private research Institute supported by the Foundation for Liver Research .Williams was part of...
.
Outputs
MigrationWatch's website, which is archived in the UK Web Archive, contains a range of briefing papers to support the organisation's perspective on the statistical, legal economic and historical aspects of migrationHuman migration
Human migration is physical movement by humans from one area to another, sometimes over long distances or in large groups. Historically this movement was nomadic, often causing significant conflict with the indigenous population and their displacement or cultural assimilation. Only a few nomadic...
, and on topics such as the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
, housing
House
A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...
, health
Health care
Health care is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans. Health care is delivered by practitioners in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and other care providers...
and social cohesion
Social cohesion
Social cohesion is a term used in social policy, sociology and political science to describe the bonds or "glue" that bring people together in society, particularly in the context of cultural diversity. Social cohesion is a multi-faceted notion covering many different kinds of social phenomena...
, as they relate to immigration. MigrationWatch also conducts research and provides secretarial and administrative support for the Cross-Party Group on Balanced Migration and created, financed and updates the group's website.
Sir Andrew is a regular commentator on immigration and asylum matters in the British media
Media of the United Kingdom
Media of the United Kingdom consist of several different types of communications media: television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and Internet-based Web sites. The UK also has a strong music industry. The UK has a diverse range of providers, the most prominent being principle public service...
. He is frequently quoted or interviewed and writes numerous articles for the major daily newspapers including right-of-centre newspapers such as the Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
and Daily Star. He has also written for The Times and for guardian.co.uk
Guardian.co.uk
guardian.co.uk, formerly known as Guardian Unlimited, is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. Georgina Henry is the editor...
, the website of the liberal-left
Social liberalism
Social liberalism is the belief that liberalism should include social justice. It differs from classical liberalism in that it believes the legitimate role of the state includes addressing economic and social issues such as unemployment, health care, and education while simultaneously expanding...
newspaper The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
. A 2005 Demos
Demos (UK think tank)
- History :Demos was founded in 1993 by former Marxism Today editor Martin Jacques, and Geoff Mulgan, who became its first director. It was formed in response to what Mulgan, Jacques and others saw as a crisis in politics in Britain, with voter engagement in decline and political institutions...
publication states that Andrew Green was quoted on the topic of asylum at least once a week in the Daily Express and Daily Star, starting from early 2003. Green also featured prominently in the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's "asylum day" coverage of the topic in 2003.
Bernhard Gross, Kerry Moore and Terry Threadgold of the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University
Cardiff University
Cardiff University is a leading research university located in the Cathays Park area of Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. It received its Royal charter in 1883 and is a member of the Russell Group of Universities. The university is consistently recognised as providing high quality research-based...
have criticised the broadcast media
Broadcasting
Broadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio visual medium. Receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively large subset of thereof...
's use of MigrationWatch to 'balance' reports on immigration. In a study of broadcast coverage of the issue of asylum, they state:
It is clear from our interviews with broadcast journalists that taking 'too soft a left, liberal' approach to asylum is seen as contradicting everything they believe about the values of objectivity and impartiality. This explains why one television editor told us that "perhaps the Mail and the Express had got it right". This anxiety about taking a position seen to be supportive of asylum seems to produce an over-compensation in terms of using easily accessible right-wing sources such as MigrationWatch UK as a 'balance'. The whole idea of 'balance' in these contexts needs to be re-thought and re-imagined. There are never just two sides to any story and two negative sides do not add up to ‘balance’. Journalists do not seem at present to know where else to go with this issue.
A website launched in February 2011 with the aim of allowing users to identify so-called churnalism
Churnalism
Churnalism is a form of journalism in which press releases, wire stories and other forms of pre-packaged material are used to create articles in newspapers and other news media in order to meet increasing pressures of time and cost without undertaking further research or checking.-Prevalence:In his...
revealed the extent to which newspapers such as the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Daily Express and The Times copy and paste from MigrationWatch press releases in articles on migration.
Immigration flows
MigrationWatch first came to public attention in August, 2002 when it claimed that immigration, including an estimate of illegal immigrants, was running at two million per decade "and probably more". The government's latest population projections, published in October 2009, have annual net immigration of 180,000 in their principal projection scenario. Provisional figures show that in 2009, net inward migration was 196,000.Asylum seekers
MigrationWatch claims to support the principle of political asylumRight of asylum
Right of asylum is an ancient juridical notion, under which a person persecuted for political opinions or religious beliefs in his or her own country may be protected by another sovereign authority, a foreign country, or church sanctuaries...
but argue that many asylum seekers do not have a genuine case for qualifying for refugee status and are instead using the asylum system to gain entry to the UK for economic reasons. The group has also been strongly critical of what it sees as the government's failure to remove many of those whose claims are rejected. In a briefing paper published in January 2009, the group's Honorary Legal Adviser Harry Mitchell stated:
We have always made it clear publicly that we support asylum for genuine claimants who are able to show that they have a well-founded fear of persecution, but we stress the word genuine. However, the overwhelming majority of asylum seekers are found not to have a genuine claim and are using the asylum process simply as a means of gaining entry to Britain which is otherwise not available to them by any lawful channel. For the most part these claimants are properly described as economic migrants. The publicised sympathy which they evoke from many well-meaning bodies is based on the implicit or sometimes explicit and in any event wrong assumption that anyone who seeks asylum must be deserving of it. Publicity given to the pronouncements of such bodies seriously misleads many members of the public.
Economic impact of immigration
MigrationWatch have argued that, while limited skilled migration (in both directions) is a natural and beneficial feature of an open economy, very large scale immigration is of little benefit to the indigenous population. MigrationWatch has claimed that migration into the UK has and will tend to hold down the real wages of British citizens. It has expressed much concern that immigration from Eastern Europe is depressing wages. In December 2008, a MigrationWatch report stated that while some immigration results in an increase in the number of people in employment, "it seems an inescapable conclusion that the sudden arrival of a very large number of very capable workers willing to work for low pay has had a negative impact on the employment of British-born workers at the bottom of the pay scale". Will Somerville and Madeleine Sumption of the Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
-based Migration Policy Institute
Migration Policy Institute
The Migration Policy Institute is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank established in 2001 by Kathleen Newland and Demetrios G. Papademetriou. It is "an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think-tank dedicated to the study of the movement of people worldwide." The Migration policy Institute works...
state in an Equality and Human Rights Commission report that: "Few serious international or UK economists would agree with this conclusion". The report did, however, note that "the recent migration may have reduced wages slightly at the bottom end of the labour market, especially for certain groups of vulnerable workers".
In January 2007, MigrationWatch published a briefing paper that claimed that immigration to the UK benefitted the British population by only 4 pence per person per week, and comparing this benefit to the cost of Mars bar
Mars Bar
Mars is a chocolate bar manufactured by Mars, Incorporated. It was first manufactured in Slough, Berkshire in the United Kingdom in 1932 as a sweeter version of the US Milky Way bar which Mars, Inc. produced...
s. The calculation was based on a statement by a Home Office minister that "migration has increased output by at least 4 billion", which subsequently turned out to have only applied to migration from the eight Central and Eastern European states that joined the EU in May 2004. The calculation therefore underestimated the financial benefit of migration. MigrationWatch published an amended version of the paper in March 2007, although this stated that the amendments "do not affect the thrust of the conclusions" and that "the benefit of large scale immigration in terms of GDP per head is minimal".
Human rights legislation
MigrationWatch advocated that the Government should "cut loose from the straitjacket" imposed by its obligations under various conventions that made it impossible to operate the system in what it saw as the country's best interests. It has called for the British Government to withdraw from the European Convention on Human RightsEuropean Convention on Human Rights
The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms is an international treaty to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms in Europe. Drafted in 1950 by the then newly formed Council of Europe, the convention entered into force on 3 September 1953...
(ECHR) and write its own Human Rights Act. Its opposition to the existing ECHR is because it is not possible for some convicted terrorists to be deported at the end of their sentences to a country in which there is a real risk where they might be tortured. (Article 3 of the ECHR
Article 3 ECHR
Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits torture, and "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". There are no exceptions or limitations on this right....
prohibiting torture cannot be subject to derogation
Derogation
Derogation is the partial revocation of a law, as opposed to abrogation or the total abolition of a law. The term is used in both civil law and common law. It is sometimes used, loosely, to mean abrogation, as in the legal maxim: Lex posterior derogat priori, i.e...
, and case law
Case law
In law, case law is the set of reported judicial decisions of selected appellate courts and other courts of first instance which make new interpretations of the law and, therefore, can be cited as precedents in a process known as stare decisis...
has extended its application so as to prevent deportation of anyone who might be at risk of torture in their own country). Opponents of this view argue that even terrorists should not be subject to torture and should therefore be protected by human rights provisions. MigrationWatch argue that, "To those who regard it as unthinkable that anyone be placed at risk of torture, the answer would be that terrorists had been given fair warning. Furthermore, there must be an acceptable balance between the risk to foreign terrorists on their return and the risk of their continued presence to our society to which the British state owes a first duty of protection".
HIV testing
In January 2004, it was revealed that the British government was considering introducing HIV testHIV test
HIV tests are used to detect the presence of the human immunodeficiency virus , the virus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , in serum, saliva, or urine. Such tests may detect antibodies, antigens, or RNA.- Terminology :...
ing for potential immigrants in the light of a Health Protection Agency
Health Protection Agency
The Health Protection Agency, or, in Welsh, Yr Asiantaeth Diogelu Iechyd is a statutory corporation. It is an independent UK organisation that was set up by the government in 2003 to protect the public from threats to their health from infectious diseases and environmental hazards...
report that found two in three heterosexuals being diagnosed with HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
had contracted it in Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
. HIV testing of immigrants had previously been criticised by the All-Party Parliamentary Group
All-Party Parliamentary Group
An all-party parliamentary group is a grouping in the UK parliament that is composed of politicians from all political parties.-All-party parliamentary groups:...
on AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
, who argued that it would simply serve to stigmatise HIV-positive people. The plan was also criticised by the Terrence Higgins Trust
Terrence Higgins Trust
Terrence Higgins Trust is a British charity that campaigns on various issues related to AIDS and HIV. In particular, the charity aims to reduce the spread of HIV and promote good sexual health ; to provide services on a national and local level to people with, affected by, or at risk of...
and a report by Richard Coker of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine suggested that a testing policy would result in driving people with diseases including HIV and tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
underground. The plans were dropped in July 2004 for this reason.
MigrationWatch had supported plans to introduce testing, arguing in June 2004 that "implementation of such screening would be beneficial to public health and to public funds in the UK and to actual and potential immigrants themselves" and in December 2004 publishing a further briefing paper supporting testing, pointing out that 47 other states, including Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
had policies requiring HIV testing of immigrants (though the US government has since lifted its ban on HIV-positive immigrants).
Reaction to the group
MigrationWatch has received criticism in some sections of the media and from academics, as well as praise from other commentators. An August 2002 editorial about MigrationWatch in The IndependentThe Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
carried the title "A nasty little group playing an old, and unwelcome, trick" and stated that "Migration Watch is, of course, no think tank, but a pressure group with a distinctly unpleasant agenda". It has been argued that MigrationWatch's messages "can be taken advantage of by people with Islamophobia
Islamophobia
Islamophobia describes prejudice against, hatred or irrational fear of Islam or MuslimsThe term dates back to the late 1980s or early 1990s, but came into common usage after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States....
and prejudice". The accuracy of the group's research has also been questioned. Academic Richard De Zoysa, for instance, argues that MigrationWatch's predictions of future immigration are exaggerated, while David Robinson, Professor of Housing and Public Policy at Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield Hallam University is a higher education institution in South Yorkshire, England, based on two sites in Sheffield. City Campus is located in the city centre, close to Sheffield railway station, and Collegiate Crescent Campus is about two miles away, adjacent to Ecclesall Road in...
, argues that the group's assertion that immigrants are placing strain on social housing lacks evidence. Economist Philippe Legrain
Philippe Legrain
Philippe Legrain is a British economist and writer. He specialises in global and European economic issues, notably globalisation, migration and the post-crisis world.- Early life and background :...
has argued that "MigrationWatch's xenophobic prejudice is causing it to twist the truth" about the impact of immigration on the employment prospects of British people.
Professor Tony Kushner has argued that "it has been possible to couch the campaign against asylum-seekers in a discourse of morality: the need to protect 'our' people and culture against the diseased and dangerous alien, as well as the distinction drawn between helping the genuine refugee and exposing the bogus asylum-seeker", and cites MigrationWatch as contributing to this discourse. He argues that the anti-asylum campaign, through groups including MigrationWatch, "has constructed for itself a spurious statistical rationale".
Andrew Green has rejected claims that his group have exaggerated immigration forecasts. Giving evidence to the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee
Home Affairs Select Committee
The Home Affairs Select Committee is a Committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.-Remit:The Home Affairs Committee is one of the House of Commons Select Committees related to government departments: its terms of reference are to examine "the expenditure,...
in January 2006 he quoted an internal e-mail by a member of staff at the Home Office, which stated "I have made this point many times before, but can we please stop saying that Migration Watch migration forecasts are wrong. I have pointed out before that Migration Watch assumptions are often below the Government Actuary Department's high-migration scenario". Green argues that "To speak out about [immigration] is not to be anti-immigrant". Green has said of MigrationWatch's agenda: "It's not racism. It's realism. It's right in a democracy that the public has the facts". Journalist Deborah Orr has argued that "the great trouble with this constant flood of highly contentious figures, is that it does not do what Sir Andrew says he wants to do — promote debate. Instead, Migration Watch UK, despite its lofty claims, is working to further polarise it".
Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
politician Jonathan Aitken
Jonathan Aitken
Jonathan William Patrick Aitken is a former Conservative Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom, and British government minister. He was convicted of perjury in 1999 and received an 18-month prison sentence, of which he served seven months...
has credited MigrationWatch with improving the quality of the British debate on immigration. He argues that "Migrationwatch has changed the administrative practices of the civil service and the policies of the major political parties on asylum seekers, work permit criteria and numerical totals. It has introduced integrity and accuracy into the previously misleading government statistics on immigration. The level of understanding of the subject in all serious newspapers and broadcasting organizations has been improved. Britain may or may not have the right answers to immigration questions, but we certainly now have a far more informed debate on them".
Similarly, an article by Dean Godson
Dean Godson
Dean Godson is a Research Director on security issues at Policy Exchange, Contributing Editor of Prospect Magazine, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Ulster....
of the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange
Policy Exchange
Policy Exchange is a British conservative think tank based in London. The Daily Telegraph has described it as "the largest, but also the most influential think tank on the right"...
published in The Times in June 2006 states: "The dramatic change in the terms of the immigration debate over recent months is largely down to the determination and courage of a single individual – Sir Andrew Green, the founder and chairman of MigrationWatch UK. Almost single-handedly, he has rescued the national discourse from the twin inanities of saloon-bar bigotry on the Right and politically correct McCarthyism on the Left".
Jay Rayner, writing in The Observer quotes one senior BBC News executive, who stated that "We probably were reluctant and slow to take him seriously to begin with. We probably didn't like what he had to say. But then we were also slow to pick up on immigration as a story, not least because we are a very middle-class organisation and the impact of mass immigration was being felt more in working-class communities. If he's proved himself, it's because he hasn't put a foot wrong on the information he's published".
Academics Nissa Finney and Ludi Simpson, however, state that "we believe that the evidence used by MigrationWatchUK is questionable, yet the organisation and its arguments have received prominence in migration debates and have assumed an authority – not least because of the profiles of its highly connected chair and advisory council – which we consider dangerous if there is no similar authority presenting counterarguments".
In August 2010, Sally Bercow
Sally Bercow
Sally Bercow is the wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow. She was a housemate on Celebrity Big Brother and was evicted from the house on 26 August 2011.-Early life:...
, a political commentator and wife of Conservative politician John Bercow
John Bercow
John Simon Bercow is a British politician who has been the Speaker of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom since June 2009. Prior to his election to Speaker he was a member of the Conservative party....
, argued on a Sky News
Sky News
Sky News is a 24-hour British and international satellite television news broadcaster with an emphasis on UK and international news stories.The service places emphasis on rolling news, including the latest breaking news. Sky News also hosts localised versions of the channel in Australia and in New...
newspaper review that a Daily Express article based on MigrationWatch research was "oversimplifying" and constituted "dangerous propaganda". As a result, MigrationWatch and Andrew Green threatened to take libel action against Bercow. After she instructed the lawyer David Allen Green
David Allen Green
David Allen Green is an English lawyer and writer. He is also legal correspondent for the New Statesman; and blogs as "Jack of Kent"....
to defend the threatened action, MigrationWatch dropped its threat. According to a MigrationWatch press release, in the light of an assurance by her lawyer that Mrs Bercow "did not intend to (and did not) allege that Migrationwatch is a fascist or racist organisation", Migrationwatch decided not to take the matter further.
See also
- Foreign-born population of the United KingdomForeign-born population of the United KingdomThe foreign-born population of the United Kingdom includes immigrants from a wide range of countries who are resident in the United Kingdom. In the period January 2010 to December 2010, there were 19 foreign-born groups that consisted of at least 100,000 individuals residing in the UK The...
- Immigration to the United Kingdom since 1922Immigration to the United Kingdom since 1922Immigration to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland since 1922 has been substantial, in particular from Ireland and the former colonies and other territories of the British Empire - such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Caribbean, South Africa, Kenya and Hong Kong - under...
- Information Centre about Asylum and RefugeesInformation Centre about Asylum and RefugeesThe Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees is an organisation involved in academic research and information provision on asylum seekers and refugees in the United Kingdom. Launched in 2000, ICAR was initially based at King's College London...