The Independent Special

The Independent: Business leaders
seek 'unlimited immigration' from new EU states

By Philip Thornton, Economics Correspondent
Published: 30 August 2006

The leaders of Britain's biggest businesses employing millions of people have called on the Government to allow unlimited immigration from Bulgaria and Romania when the two former Eastern Bloc states join the European Union next year.

They said any break in the "open door" policy that has seen hundreds of thousands of migrants from Poland and other eastern European countries come to Britain would be a major mistake. The business leaders have put their names to a statement issued by the Business for New Europe Group (BNEG), a pressure group calling for further integration.

Their support for a continued influx of workers will create a fresh headache for the Government, which is struggling to contain a political rebellion, and threatens to split the business community.

Five of the group's advisory council, including the UK heads of Sainsbury, the supermarket giant, Centrica, which owns British Gas, and Merrill Lynch, the Wall Street investment bank, have put their names to the letter.

But it is understood to have the support of other members of the council that numbers the heads of Carphone Warehouse, Alliance Boots, the high street chemists, the oil giant BP and the power company National Grid as members.

The BNEG's statement said: "If Bulgaria and Romania join the EU at the beginning of next year, the UK should continue with its open door policy.

"A so-called pause in migration from these countries would be tantamount to a reversal of policy and could work against Britain's interests."

The leaders criticised Government ministers for "equivocating" in the face of "scare stories" in the right-wing media about a flood of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants. "The simple fact is that workers from other European countries come to the UK because there are jobs," the business leaders said. "It is a cause for support, not retrenchment.

"We believe that in reaching its decision the UK Government should be guided both by economic reason and by recent historical experience."

The intervention comes at an awkward time for the Cabinet, which is moving towards controls on immigration in the face of pressure from the Conservatives.

Last week, Damian Green, the shadow Immigration minister, said the Government had to learn the lesson of the "unprecedented numbers" who arrived in the UK after the last EU expansion in 2004. The Government had forecast tens of thousands of migrants rather than the 600,000 who have come in since 2004.

Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, has said immigration from Romania and Bulgaria would be "properly controlled" when the two countries join the EU next year.

Ed Balls, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, said yesterday that the Government wanted "managed" immigration rather than an "open-door" policy when more countries were admitted to the EU. "We've seen some real contributions to our labour market from, for example, young Polish workers coming to meet skills shortages in Britain," he told the BBC. "At the same time we're going to have to look very carefully at these issues in the next few months because we need to make sure we continue with a disciplined and managed approach."

A spokeswoman for the Home Office said the Government would make a decision on the "level of access" workers from Romania and Bulgaria would have to the labour market after the European Council meets in October. "That will be based on an objective assessment of factors such as the British economy, including the labour market, the impact of previous enlargements and the position of other member states."

But Roger Carr, the chairman of Centrica, said ministers could not pick and choose which elements of an open-market system they liked. "It is essential to harvest the upside and manage the downside on the side of market freedom not protectionism," he said.

However, their support for the BNEG statement puts them in opposition to most of the mainstream business organisations. The CBI, the largest employers' group, said immigrants from Poland had benefited the economy by filling skills gaps in areas such as building and catering. But it said it was essential the Government reflected on the experience since the 2004 enlargement that added 10 new members before deciding on its approach to Romanians and Bulgarians.

Susan Anderson, the CBI's director of human resources policy, told The Independent: "Let's be clear, it's not a question of if the UK should open to Bulgaria and Romania [but] it is right that the UK takes the time to reflect on the earlier experiences and debates how and when to welcome the next phase of EU accession countries."

David Frost, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said that the recent rise in unemployment to a six-year high was flashing a warning signal about the impact of migration of the indigenous workforce. "We have seen unemployment rise in the UK and clearly we don't want to be in a position where we are seeing migrant labour coming in and getting the jobs and supporting the great number of local people have not got jobs," he said.

"That's not a recipe for success. It will not be a cohesive society." He blamed the Government for failing to provide an education system that enabled Britons to find work in the modern labour market.

A raft of economic reports has shown that immigration has boosted the UK economy by about £2.5bn a year. Last week Grant Thornton, the business advisers, said immigration had added between 0.5 and 1 percentage points to growth last year, without which Gordon Brown would have failed to hit his targets. Mr Balls said the influx of workers to meet skill gaps had helped keep a lid on wage growth that in turn had helped keep interest rates low.

Martin Sorrell, the chief executive of WPP, the world's largest advertising business, said the 2004 enlargement had been a "great success". "The Polish plumber has become a much-loved feature of British life," he said. "The migration has plugged gaps in the labour market and boosted economic growth."

Anthony Ullmann, the chairman of BNEG's entrepreneurs' council, said free movement of labour within the UK had been a "huge boon". "It has allowed people from the UK to seek opportunities in Europe, whilst at the same time giving our labour markets a timely boost," he said.

Immigration: The facts

600,000 people from eastern Europe have successfully applied for the right to work in the United Kingdom over the past two years. This means that they now account for 2 per cent of the country's 30 million strong workforce

62 per cent of the new workers have come from Poland

£2.54bn is contributed to the economy annually by eastern European immigrants in the UK

0.5-1 per cent of economic growth in the United Kingdom in 2005 and 2006 has been contributed by migrants

70,000 migrant workers help with harvesting farms, according to the National Farmers Union

10 per cent of employees on Britain's building sites are from overseas - making a total labour force of up to 100,000 workers

80 per cent of new migrants are working people between the ages of 18 and 35. This offsets the tendency for the country's population to age, addressing the difficulties in providing for an ageing population. There is evidence that National Insurance contributions would have to be higher under lower migration scenarios

250,000 jobs a year are created by the UK economy. The economy continues to grow only because there is the population to carry such continued growth

31 per cent of doctors working in hospitals and general practices throughout the UK are migrants

13 per cent of nurses who are working in the UK were born abroad

12.5 cent of teaching staff working in schools across the UK are non-British

70 per cent of catering jobs in London are filled by migrant workers

13 per cent higher average wages earned by migrant workers (compared to workers who are not migrants) suggests that migrant workers are more highly skilled and more productive

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article1222597.ece

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Roland Rudd:
Why business should stand up for immigration

These workers are young, motivated and economically active. Few of them claim welfare benefits

Published: 30 August 2006

The recent announcement by the Government of a Commission on Integration and Cohesion was timely. While its primary purpose is to address tensions between ethnic groups, it underlines how much more needs to be done to convince people that migration to the UK should be welcome.

This comes at a time when the Government is considering whether to allow workers from Bulgaria and Romania into the UK. Migration from Eastern Europe has been an issue since 2004, when the "Polish plumber" became part of the fabric of UK life; in the past few days it has become even more so.

If any group should stand up for migration, it is the business community. There is a strong connection between economic success and the contribution of immigrants. Many sectors of the UK economy have been enriched by the input of minority groups. One can point to the French Huguenots and their contribution to textile industry, or the role of the Jewish community in building the City as a financial centre from the 18th century.

Today the UK benefits from the dynamic Asian business community and the global nature of our workplaces. Of the 350,000 people who work in the city of London, there are 189 different nationalities represented. Many of the recognisable faces of British business, such as Stelios at easyJet or Lakshmi Mittal of Mittal steel, are immigrants or the children of immigrants.

The European Union has extended opportunities to work and travel beyond one's own country. One of the founding principles of the European Economic Community set out in the Treaty of Rome 1957 was the free movement of people. Today, UK businesses benefit from a pool of labour from the rest of the EU. On the other side of the equation, many UK entrepreneurs have found fertile European markets.

Those who have called for an honest debate on immigration are hitting the nail on the head. Some coverage of the issue portrays immigrants purely in terms of costs, as if they were the sole source of crime, disease and corruption, as well as a drain on the public services.

It is true that one cannot wholly concentrate on the benefits of migration without recognising that there are costs. Yet economic pragmatism and the example of history should be our guide in this debate. Advocates of immigration should take confidence in the overwhelming majority of the research, which illustrates net benefits. One study suggests that a 1 per cent population increase through migration triggers a 1.5 per cent increase in GDP.

Beyond the generic benefits of immigration, there are specific arguments for the UK opening its labour market to Bulgaria and Romania. The previous migration from Eastern Europe in 2004 has been an undoubted economic success. As well as Polish plumbers, the UK economy now benefits from Hungarians in hospitality, Estonian engineers, Czech caterers and Slovakian scientists.

Stereotypically, these workers are young, motivated and economically active, with more than 80 per cent between 18 and 34. In contrast to the ugly caricature depicted in some quarters, few claim welfare benefits, with only 1.3 per cent applying for income support and jobseekers' allowance.

Despite the under-estimate of the numbers in 2004, the impact has been positive, plugging gaps in the labour market, enhancing productivity and boosting economic growth. The UK was one of only three EU member states to take the plunge and open our labour markets immediately. Others have followed the UK's lead and opened their labour markets. Italy recently became the eighth member of the original 15 to lift all restrictions on workers from Eastern European states who joined the EU in 2004.

Beyond history and economic rationale, there are clear strategic reasons for the UK giving the green light. It will enable us to cement ties and build alliances with the nations of Eastern Europe. In the realpolitik of the EU, this is no small thing. In addition, if western Europe embraces workers from the east in a whole-hearted way, it will mark another step on the road of the reconciliation between eastern and western Europe, the shift from communism to capitalism. Whereas once Romanians and Bulgarians were shaped by the decisions of Stalin, now they are more likely to be draw their inspiration from Starbucks.

There are big issues at stake. Some of the objections, such as those based on the impact on public services, are legitimate; others are scaremongering or worse. Such shrill, visceral arguments were heard in 2004, for example in the claim that the UK would not be able to cope with an influx of Slovakian gypsies. At times of tension, minority groups are at their most vulnerable, which makes it all the more important that the Government stand up for what is right.

In the debate so far, some business voices, notably the CBI, have called for a pause. Business for New Europe urges the Government to move head and continue its open door policy when Bulgaria and Romania enter the EU in 2007. The UK has the opportunity to take the lead on this issue and uphold the importance of the European single market. The prospect of further migration that triggers economic growth is a cause for celebration, not cowardice.

The writer is the chairman of Business for New Europe - www.bnegroup.org

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1222573.ece

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Why Should Europeans Protect Israel?

The enlarged Nato/Unifil force is not going to preserve 'peace'

The Independent/ICH ~ Robert Fisk

First, it was to be a 15,000-strong foreign army to reinforce the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, Unifil. Now it is to be about 7,500. And it will not disarm Hizbollah. And anyway, Hizbollah refuses to be disarmed.

The French would send 200 men; then they sent 400. Then the Italians would send 3,000. Then the French would send another 2,000, making their total contribution 2,600, including the company that has remained in Unifil since the French were hurled out of the peacekeeping organisation back in 1986 after fighting Shia militias in the Lebanese village of Marrake (of which no mention will be made, any more than it is on the BBC). And now the Belgians might send 700. And the Turks? Well, the Lebanese Armenians are objecting to their contribution on the grounds - perfectly accurate, though the BBC will not tell you this - that the Turkish army perpetrated the genocide of one and a half Christian million Armenians in 1915. Oh, what a wondrous plot we weave when first we practise to deceive.

This, of course, applies to everyone in the Lebanese swamp. Self-deception - or self-delusion - has become a cancer throughout both the Middle East and the west; and amid the EU countries that are now bidding to send their young men to sacrifice their lives in Lebanon. They are going to preserve peace, we are told; they are going to maintain a ceasefire; they are going to save lives.

So a big Ho-Ho-Ho from the world of reality. The enlarged Nato/Unifil force is not going to preserve "peace". It is going to maintain a " buffer" zone to protect Israel after the latter's dismal failure to destroy, disarm and liquidate the Iranian-armed Hizbollah guerrilla army over the past seven weeks. The UN may deny that it is a buffer zone for the Israelis - but if it was a buffer zone to protect Lebanese (the numerically higher victims of this latest war), it would be based, surely, inside the Israeli frontier. But no, it is there to protect Israel.

Note how the Arabs have accepted this. Note how we have accepted this - how we have sublimely gone along with the idea that Israel's security and happiness are more important than the security and happiness of the millions of Muslims also living in this region. Our soldiers are to be deployed to protect Israel. Do we really think that the Arabs don't realise this? And do we think that our western governments don't realise this when they huff and puff over whether to send soldiers to the Middle East?

Needless to say, the Americans and the British want no part of this mess. After Iraq and Afghanistan, they have no stomach to defend Israel, let alone Lebanon. Their job is to push the European masses into the bog they have created by their injustice and cowardice in the Middle East. President Bush promises "intelligence" assistance to the Unifil force - which means Israeli "intelligence", and we all know how good that is - while Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara offers not a single hero to give his life, which is as well after his outrageous sacrifice of British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But while Europe's other political masters dithered this week, BBC World Service laid down a familiar narrative for its listeners. "It seems," said their man on The World Today, that the Europeans - how I hate these cheap clichés - "are prepared to talk the talk but not walk the walk." In other words, those bloody Wops and Frogs and Boche, not to mention the Dagos and the ungrateful Finns and Norwegians, were gutless little chicken shit when it came to standing by their European principles.

Those principles, it is now clear, are supposed to be the sacrifice of their soldiers' lives for the latest UN Security Council Resolution cooked up by America and France (and, a bit, by Lord Blair) in New York. But the BBC got it completely wrong. The Europeans are not nervous about military losses or unclear mandates. They had plenty of both in Bosnia.

What is happening in Europe is that a growing number of states that had nothing to do with the Balfour Declaration or the Sykes-Picot agreement or the 1948 Middle East war or the 1967 Middle East war or the 1973 Middle East war or the 1982 Middle East war in Lebanon or the 1993 Israeli bombardment of Lebanon or the 1996 Israeli bombardment of Lebanon or the latest 2006 bombardment and "petit" invasion of Lebanon (after Hizbollah's outrageous provocation by crossing the international frontier) are simply sick and tired of clearing up the dirt after these filthy Arab-Israeli wars.

Most of Europe had no part in the Balfour Declaration. Much of Europe had an unforgivable role in the Jewish Holocaust. But the decades pass by, and the generations now being asked to sail to the Middle East do not even have parental guilt to absolve for the genocide of the Jews of Europe, any more than modern Turks can be proclaimed guilty for their grandparents' rape and murder of one and a half million Armenians. The Europeans, to put it mildly, are tired of being asked to atone for the sins of their grandparents. Maybe it is time, they are asking, for the Israelis and Arabs to pay for their own sick wars.

There is nothing immoral in this. President Bush claims that the Israelis won their war against the Hizbollah and humbled the organisation's supporters in Iran and Syria. Yet not even the Israelis claim this.

Now the Europeans - and perhaps the Turks, and certainly the poor old Lebanese army - are supposed to achieve all Israel's failed objectives. And when they fail - as they assuredly will, because Nato is not going to go to war with Islam - Israel will accuse them of abandoning poor little Israel.

The French will be reminded - as they were under the first Unifil mandate - that Vichy France handed its Jews to the Nazis, and the Belgians will be reminded (no doubt) that half their country was pro-Nazi and the Italians will be reminded that they elected fascism into power, and the Spaniards will be reminded that Franco was a fascist.

And the Arabs will sit silently by and watch the Europeans betray them all over again. And the winners? Syria. Iran. And all those enraged by the injustice and hypocrisy of our "democracies".

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

http://www.robert-fisk.com/

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New Orleans bears loss
with dignity as Bush vows renewal

By Rupert Cornwell in New Orleans
Published: 30 August 2006

In ceremonies outside City Hall, in the great Catholic cathedral of St Louis in the presence of a president, and by the 17th Street canal where the calamity began - New Orleans came to a halt at precisely 9.38am yesterday to remember the moment when the first levee broke and the city was changed forever.

Out by the canal, they read the names of 32 people who died the day Katrina struck, casting a pink rose into the water for each one. Briefly, the teams of engineers who had been labouring night and day for months to repair the city's defences stopped work.

New Orleans has had nothing but difficult days since that terrible morning of 29 August, 2005, and this first anniversary was another of them. "We're going to get through today," Ray Nagin, the Mayor, told New Orleans' assembled elders, before ringing a silver bell outside City Hall to mark the precise moment of disaster. "And then I hope that everyone will turn their attention to rebuilding one of the greatest cities in America. If we work together, we can do it."

Thus the National Day of Remembrance unfolded, with speeches and prayer meetings, vigils and assemblies, with memories private and public, even a traditional jazz funeral procession, weaving its way between the Convention Center and the Superdome, buildings that now symbolise the chaos and misery of the days after the storm.

New Orleans was not the only victim of Katrina. Across devastated swaths of coastal Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, ravaged communities, great and small, held their own ceremonies - starting at the fishing village of Buras, 65 miles to the south-east, where the hurricane made landfall at 6.10am a year ago.

But New Orleans is the name with which Katrina will forever be linked. Other towns were levelled or washed away. None however bears such psychological scars, and none will be so hard to rebuild, both physically and spiritually.

Even for this most fatalistic and enduring of cities, the storm of a year ago was too much. A study published yesterday found that four out of five of its inhabitants suffered great personal or financial hardship, and that half of them still have nightmares about Katrina. The fatigue, the sense of living on the edge and of nerves rubbed to the raw, are palpable.

Nor was it an easy day for George Bush, on his 13th trip to New Orleans, where he and First Lady Laura bowed their heads in homage during a mass at St Louis Cathedral, reflecting on a disaster that changed not only the face of a city but the course of his presidency.

Naturally, the oratorical promises of renewal abounded. Speaking at a local high school, the President admitted the mistakes of a year ago. But he said, "We're better prepared now," pointing to the nonstop work on the levees, and the storm-proofing of the pumping stations that were overwhelmed a year ago. Once again, he pledged unstinting government support for the rebuilding.

"New Orleans is going to rise again," Mr Bush declared. A year from now, the city would be living "a golden age of entrepreneurialism".

Alas, today's reality is different. There are shortages of skilled workers, and wrangling over insurance and over the allocation of reconstruction funds, even over whether certain areas should be rebuilt. In other words, should New Orleans be permanently downsized, making it a whiter - probably more Republican - city? Such issues of race and politics are largely unspoken, but no less tangible for that.

Sometimes yesterday, you could see the frustration and anger. "Where was Fema [the federal government disaster agency]?," read placards carried by marchers in the Lower Ninth Ward, the poor area east of downtown where, a year on, electricity and other basic services have not been restored, even in areas which are habitable.

But this was not a day about a visiting President, or even about how to spend the $110bn allocated by Congress to deal with the disaster. The mood was sombre, of remembrance of hurt, pain and loss, rather than hope of renewal and a better future.

The levee breaks flooded 80 per cent of the city. In some neighbourhoods, it looks as though the storm hit not a year, but just a week ago. There is the same silence and abandon, the same debris. In some houses, the same furniture rots where it stood 12 months ago. Where else but in New Orleans would you find a company called Homewreckers Incorporated advertising its services on television, offering "to make this difficult task a little easier"?

Half the city's 500,000 population has moved elsewhere, an internal American diaspora unmatched since 1930s. Some returned for the anniversary, such as Morris Alexander, who before the storm was a postman with a delivery route in St Bernard Parish. "It's like a dream, but it was real," says Mr Alexander, who now lives hundreds of miles away in Ohio, of that terrible day. But he has no immediate plans to return permanently. "What it's going to take is help from the city government, otherwise I'm not coming back."

However it was the mayor, Mr Nagin, freewheeling and outspoken, for better or worse the emblem of New Orleans in its darkest hour, who best captured the challenge facing his city. This first anniversary had been a huge psychological hurdle, he said. "We must not keep wallowing in our despair. If we get through today, and most important if we can get through this hurricane season without getting hit, things will get better." Those are two very big "ifs".

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1222598.ece