Tommy Sheppard: There's an easy alternative to the UK's migration mess

Sir Keir Starmer called an impromptu press conference to blame the Tories and to promise effective action by the new Labour government to drive the figures down.

The Tories did a mini mea culpa and then claimed their polices had led to the drop since 2022. Farage (below) went radge as per. Everybody agreed that immigration is bad, and too much of it is very bad.

(Image: PA)

They are so wrong.

The first thing to say is the Office for National Statistics's figures are a poor measure of whether the population is growing or declining. They use a UN definition of migrant as someone who has moved from one country to another for more than 12 months, irrespective of whether that person has the faintest intention of staying there.

Of all the people who come here, 90% do so to study or to work. Their plans – and their visas – are time limited. These people are either paying massive university fees or paying taxes while doing a job which their employer cannot find anyone else to do. The figures even include 58,000 Brits who’ve been abroad but are now returning home.

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To suggest such people are a drain on the economy is an abuse of the English language. The truth is that people coming here to work is not just a sign of a buoyant economy, but in itself contributes to economic growth. That’s why in every instance migration has been to the net benefit of the country to which people move.

Casual xenophobia aside, it’s probably not the foreign students and skilled workers that rile the racists. It’s the one in 10 who come here seeking sanctuary, most now forced into dangerous and illegal passage.

They give up everything. Make arduous journeys in perilous craft. Get exploited and abused by organised crime. And finally, they make it here. Desperate. Vulnerable. Alone.

They are what most people mean when they talk about immigration. The people who seek sanctuary from us are met with hostility and indifference. They are put into a system which is so mismanaged that it creates new problems all by itself.

The political debate on immigration rarely asks who these people are and why they come here. But that’s where policy needs to start.

The world is a shit place for many, many people. The global economic system has overseen the looting of the southern hemisphere and the impoverishment of its peoples. The inequality is staggering. Combine that with civil war, religious and sexual persecution, starvation and increasing natural disasters as the climate changes, and it’s little wonder that those who can afford to will try to move to give their loved ones a better life.

The countries of the Earth seem incapable of action to deal with the drivers of mass migration, as seen recently in the half-hearted commitment of Cop29 to compensate the poorest countries for the tribulations visited upon them by the consumption of the richest. So, people do what they can themselves.

We know that vast majority of asylum claims are justified. Three quarters are granted on first application, and currently half of those rejected are granted at appeal.

Yet the Home Office regards asylum claimants as fraudulent until proven otherwise. So, people are kept in specialist accommodation, prevented from joining relatives and forbidden to work. The Government long ago ran out of designated accommodation and over the past few years has looked at disused hotels, old army camps and floating dormitories in which to house asylum seekers.

Three things have happened as a result. One, already vulnerable people, often with young children, have been detained in unsuitable accommodation for long periods, isolation and idleness forced upon them. Two, crass and insensitive decisions about inappropriate placements have incited local populations and provided ammunition for racist campaigns. And three, it has cost a fortune – almost five and a half billion pounds at the latest count. A price which ironically is being paid by the world’s poorest people as most of the money is diverted from the overseas aid budget.

When people do get through this wretched system, the four out of five who are granted asylum are pretty much evicted from wherever they have been billeted for years and dumped without preparation or support into the hands of local authorities unable to cope.

It is crap and depressing. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There is a simple alternative. Once you have made a claim for asylum and after an initial period in a reception centre, you should be given a temporary resident permit and a temporary national insurance number.

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That way most people could choose to join the families and communities they already know in this country, get work, pay tax, contribute.

This is exactly what happens in other countries. In Spain, asylum seekers get a “red card” after six months of their application which allows them to work across the country. To help facilitate their social and labour insertion, reception centres organise vocational and language training.

We hope to see backlogs decrease, applications speed up, detention centres closed in the months ahead. We hope, but given the Labour PM’s macho stance on this, that hope might be in vain. In the meantime, as part of plans for independence, we need to think through how we can play our part in alleviating humanity’s suffering in a way which allows a new Scotland to prosper.