Written evidence submitted by David Goodhart,

Head of the Demography Unit at Policy Exchange think tank

THE FUTURE OF IMMIGRATION: TEMPORARY

A serious piece of research from an independent think tank is required to explore one of the most important stories about immigration into rich countries in the next generation—the growing importance of temporary migration. 

This is particularly important for the UK as it enters the Brexit period with public opinion still strongly in favour of reducing recent levels of immigration and yet an economy that has become unusually dependent on migrant labour in certain sectors.

A greater use of temporary immigration, with a clearer distinction between temporary and permanent citizens, is the most plausible way of squaring the circle between the need to reduce numbers (lowering public anxiety about integration and sharing public goods) while still maintaining quite high inflows of relevant workers.

The research will take the pulse of a large number of players in the immigration story on this issue, especially in the technology sector, and consider both the practicalities of moving towards a substantially non-permanent immigration system and some of the obstacles to it.

Where are we now?

First of all it is important to understand the nature of current inflows and consider how significant temporary migration already is. In recent years the gross annual immigration inflow to the UK has been around 600,000 a year—meaning people coming to live in the UK for one year or more—with the net figure a little over 300,000. The largest flows are work related, followed by students, family reunion and refugees. All of these flows, with the exception of family reunion, have a substantial temporary element. Taking immigration as a whole at least two-thirds is probably now temporary, meaning people stay for less than five years.

Indeed the number of immigrants who are granted permanent residence in the UK has fallen quite sharply in recent years. The permanent residence number has been hovering around 100,000 and fell (partly for technical reasons) to a low of 67,000 in 2015. (It will be rising again sharply in the next few years but largely as a result of EU citizens who have lived here for more than five years claiming permanent residence to mitigate the uncertainties of Brexit.)

Short term routes

Most non-EU visa routes for work and study are time limited though, in many cases, can be extended. One of the most important current time limited routes is the intra-company transfer route (ICT). This is the most important of the so-called Tier 2 route for skilled workers from outside the EU. There is a general Tier 2 skilled worker route that is not time-limited but is capped at 20,700 a year. The ICT is not capped but most workers have to leave after two or four years. The number coming through this route for more than one year has increased substantially and, including dependents, amounted to around 60,000 people in 2014. The standard form of ICT is, say, a Japanese employee of Nissan being sent for a two year period to the UK to help with the launch of a new production line. But in recent years there has been a big increase in so-called third party contracting in which, for example, an Indian IT consultancy, will send an employee to work for a client of the local branch of the consultancy such as British Airways. About 80 per cent of all people coming in under the ICT system are in the IT sector. The ICT system is popular with employers though questions have been raised by the Migration Advisory Committee about whether it can mean reduced training and job opportunities for British workers.

Another model for short term, time limited, migration is the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS) which operated relatively successfully for 60 years until it was phased out in 2014 in part because of the large availability of such labour from eastern Europe. The National Farmers Union (NFU) called it a “robust and effective” scheme controlled by the UK Border Agency which provided a pool of temporary overseas workers to do outdoor and sometimes physically demanding work in remote locations that is not usually popular with UK workers. The NFU also says that the old SAWS scheme had “exceptionally high rates of return” at around 98 per cent. (Following Brexit the NFU is lobbying to bring back the old SAWS scheme.)

Objections: different rights for different stripes

Different kinds of visa status often involve different levels of rights—for example different kinds of access to the welfare state or the right to bring in dependents. This contrasts with the full rights of a British citizen or someone who has been granted permanent residence. If the government were to move towards a system in which the lion’s share of immigration is temporary there would need to be a clearer differentiation, in the minds of the state, the migrant and the general public, between the rights of the temporary or guest citizen and the full rights of citizenship. There might also have to be some rationalisation and simplification of the rights of the temporary citizen (though with variations possible on, say, bringing in dependents).

What is being proposed is a kind of humane “guest worker” scheme for the 21st century. There will be objections. The German guest worker experience of the 1950s and 1960s with workers from Turkey is often cited in this context and widely regarded as a failure, partly because so many of the guest workers ended up staying but without becoming German citizens. This was considered unfair and bad for integration. But many of the problems with the German story are specific to that time and place. 

More important the evolution of human rights legislation, including the UK human rights act of 1998, generally sets its face against differential rights and wants so far as possible to raise the level of rights for all people living within a given jurisdiction whether they are full citizens or not. Experience with asylum cases shows that it can be difficult for governments to deport people once they have lived in a country for a certain number of years, even if they have over-stayed a visa, as they may have acquired ties and connections which, if broken, would amount to an infringement of the right to family life. 

It will never be possible to uniformly enforce visa return rules , especially with people from poorer countries, and allowance must be made for people wanting to marry and so on. But if responsibility for ensuring that visa periods are adhered to is shared with employers and perhaps countries of origin there is no reason why many temporaries should end up as permanents. Temporary citizenship tied to a three or four year work contract would still be very popular for workers at all levels of skill and for people from a range of countries. It obviously has to be attractive to both sides and it has to be properly policed.

Integration and the psychology of temporary citizenship

How would the public in rich countries like Britain respond to a big increase in temporary immigration? Part of the point of devising such a system is premised on the belief that it would reduce anxiety about immigration and allow for larger, albeit temporary, inflows than would be the case with conventional, full citizenship immigration. Critics point out that one of the main sources of anxiety about the current levels of immigration is the difficulty of integrating large numbers of people into British norms and the British way of life, and with more temporary immigration that would just make the problem worse. 

It is true that temporary immigrants would have a reduced incentive to learn English and develop lasting friendships if they are only allowed to stay for a couple of years. On the other hand the public is likely to have lower expectations of integration of someone who is a guest or temporary visitor. If one of the main causes of immigration-related fear and anxiety is the over-rapid change to the overall demographic order and a sense of social fragmentation then the lack of permanence of migration flows could be a reassuring factor. People do not on the whole worry about the lack of integration of Chinese students who they know, in most cases, are here to study for a few years and are then returning home. But low levels of integration and an economic-instrumental attitude to Britain from say Bulgarian or Romanian workers who have to be treated like full citizens (under EU non-discrimination rules, at least prior to Brexit) is a cause of greater discomfort. 

If most immigration becomes temporary it allows, in theory, for the welfare state and indeed the very idea of citizenship to be “ring-fenced” and preserved for insiders, while guest citizens are welcome but unthreatening contributors to the country’s economic vitality. This system would also allow for a clearer concentration of integration efforts, and resources (English language lessons for example) on newcomers who are staying permanently. 

This research will need to include some detailed opinion polling, and maybe focus groups, to test the attitudes of the British public and see whether the assumptions above are justified. 

The new mainstream?

Is temporary migration with reduced rights for guest workers the wave of the future? It has the potential to deal with the democratic rejection of large scale immigration in rich countries while, at the same time, allowing for continuing mutually beneficial flows of workers. It also solves the “brain drain” problem in which poor countries permanently lose too many of their best educated and most dynamic citizens.

It is widely assumed that future trade deals between blocs or individual countries, especially between developed and developing countries like India, will include labour mobility clauses and that most of these will be temporary.

This idea has certainly become intellectually respectable. Academics such as Martin Ruhs and Branko Milanovic have written about the trade off between citizen rights and economic immigration. And Dani Rodrik has proposed a global temporary work scheme which would expand the workforce in rich countries by about 3 per cent at any given time (in the UK that would mean about 1 million workers). Under his scheme a mix of skilled and unskilled workers from poor countries would be allowed to fill jobs in rich countries for a maximum of five years. To ensure that workers return home the programmes would be supported by a range of carrots and sticks applied by both home and host countries. Rodrik estimates that if all rich countries were to implement such as scheme it would boost the global economy by $360 billion a year. 

Would this work? As Bob Rowthorn has commented (in a recent Civitas pamphlet) it depends on the scale of the “leakage” which is hard to predict in advance. “It depends on the willingness of future governments and the courts to formulate and enforce the rules for the temporary worker scheme to operate effectively. The danger is that such a scheme might unravel as governments create ever more exceptions and the courts pick holes in the rules,” writes Rowthorn.

If temporary migration is to become the norm for immigration into rich countries it might require changes to some international agreements and to human rights legislation, both of which might be hard to achieve. 

The research

The research would be undertaken by two experienced Policy Exchange researchers over a four to six month period, starting in March 2017. It will include analysis based on research and interviews with a wide-range of British employers, policy makers and legal experts as to the practicality of the ideas. As indicated it should include opinion polling and focus group work in Britain and some informal canvassing of political opinion in potential sending countries. In the course of the research we will also host two or three roundtables of interested parties, including one roundtable focusing solely on the IT industry and its particular needs and interests. Out of this will come a high-profile, publicly available report of 20-25k words, including a special chapter on the IT industry. On publication there will be widespread media interest and an event, or more than one, to publicise the report. Sponsorship funding required, from one or more sources, would be in the order of £60,000 (that consists of £40k for the underlying research work, £15k for polling and focus groups and £5k for at least one event and the roundtables). Sponsors will get various forms of acknowledgement both in the report itself and at events and sponsor involvement with contacts and event speakers is encouraged.

David Goodhart

Head of the Demography Unit at Policy Exchange think tank