FAILING a radical breakthrough in automating work or a seismic uptick in the number of babies being born here, Scotland’s falling birth rate coupled with an ageing population means the country needs more immigration to keep things ticking over.
Immigration may be a dirty word politically south of the Border, but what's the view here? The Scottish Government certainly supports it, and there remains a mainstream consensus that immigration is good for the country.
New figures published this week laid bare the impact that tough Tory rules – and Labour’s maintenance of them – are having on immigration levels.
Visa applications for the health and social care sector and for students are plummeting.
Experts have blamed the fall on rules brought in by the Conservatives, which Labour are keeping, restricting health and social care workers from bringing over their spouses.
While net migration to the UK has risen to record levels in recent years, relatively few migrants come to Scotland.
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Scotland gets around 6% of migrants to the UK, lower than its share of the overall population at 8.7% of the UK total.
Last week’s figures sparked calls from the SNP to give Scotland the power to set its own immigration policies.
But data shows that Scots are becoming less generally supportive of increased migration than they have been in the past.
Research by the think tank Migration Policy Scotland published in June found that 48%, the largest group, wanted immigration to come down. That is a reversal of the position last year, where the largest group wanted immigration up.
But according to Rebecca Kay, a senior researcher with the organisation, those attitudes change when one drills further into the details.
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She told The National: “There’s not a strong appetite in Scotland for a reduction in people on health and social care visas.”
Kay pointed to Migration Policy Scotland’s findings that 48% wanted the number of people moving to the country on health and social care visas to increase “either a little or a lot”, with 25% wanting it to remain the same. Just 18% said it should come down.
Kay added: “In terms of people coming to study; again only 19% wanted a reduction, 37% wanted an increase and 36% wanted it to stay the same.”
But she noted that if the question as asked “more broadly” more people were now saying they wanted immigration overall to come down.
Tracking people’s attitudes to migration can be tricky, with people holding contradictory views. They also see both potential positives and potential downsides to people moving to the country.
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Kay added: “People are strongly in agreement that migration has a positive impact in terms of filling jobs in which it’ s hard to find workers, they also tend towards a positive view of migration as bringing new people to areas which need them.
“They tend towards a positive view that migration has a positive impact on the economy, but more so on a national than local level. There’s more concern about things like migration as a potential burden on welfare, as potentially leading to social conflict.
“It’s not as straightforward, that’s why we think that there’s need for a bit of caution in assumptions that Scotland is always going to be more positive about migration.”
Part of the difficulty in divining the general attitude of Scots towards migration was the special context of a country with a severe population crisis going on in many rural areas.
Some see immigration as a means to fix the depopulation of the Highlands, for instance and on the whole, politicians in Scotland are more supportive of immigration than their English counterparts.
Kay said: “There is a link to broader population issues, there has been over the years a general political consensus that Scotland needs migration and that migration’s positive for Scotland and that’s come out through the public statements of political leaders quite consistently now for quite some time.”
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But she said this attitude, which sees immigration as a means to repopulate rural Scotland, brings its own challenges – and clashes with official UK Government policy.
Scots tend to see immigration as being about “not just about filling jobs but also bringing people to places that need people”, according to Kay.
“When you have policies that say people can’t come with family, it runs very much counter to a view of migration that is strong in Scotland and strong in local authority areas that have population issues, which is that you want people to come and you want them to settle and you want them to stay longer-term.
“Obviously being able to bring your loved ones with you is a pre-requisite to most people, you’re not going to stay long-term somewhere that you can’t bring your family to.”
While it might seem almost too easy a solution that people from across the world would buck the trend of thousands of years and bypass the urban centres of a country to live in its rural areas, it has happened in Scotland’s recent past, said Kay.
“Under the period of free movement from Europe, where we saw the biggest increase in migration to Scotland that there has been for a very long time, what you did see there was changing patterns of migration and people moving into all sorts of areas of Scotland, including rural areas and moving to where there were opportunities for work,” she said.
Scotland’s problems may not be solved by immigration alone but the evidence seems to suggest it could go a long way.
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