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By Bhagirath Yogi
With general elections round the corner, it was but natural for the issue of immigration to return to the centre of political debate in the UK. Sensing the public mood, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced in early November that he will tighten the UK immigration rules by reducing the number of professions that can recruit from outside Europe. Engineers, chefs and care workers could be among those affected.If the proposal is implemented, one of the sectors that is likely to be adversely affected is South Asian restaurant businesses in the UK, popularly known as curry restaurants. The first curry restaurant was launched in UK in 1809. After 200 years, it is estimated that there are around 10,000 South Asian (mainly Bangladeshi and Indian) restaurants and Take Aways all over the UK employing around 100,000 people. The turnover of these restaurants is estimated to be around 4.5 billion pounds every year.
While the number of Nepali restaurants in the UK is much smaller-- only a couple of hundreds-- they are seen as an important venue to promote Nepal and Nepali culture. “British people love Nepali restaurants and we are doing our best to promote Nepal through food, music and other promotional events,” said Dhruba KC, honorary Public Relations Officer of the Nepal Tourism Board. “It is not clear as yet how the new immigration rules will affect the restaurant sector, but we are worried,” added KC, who also runs a restaurant at Wembley.
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| British Prime Minister Gordon Brown |
The British Prime Minister’s announcement came amid reports that the number of students coming to the United Kingdom from India and Bangladesh has risen sharply since the start of the point-based immigration system introduced last year. Information obtained by the BBC under the freedom of information act revealed that three times more visas were issued in Mumbai, New Delhi and Dakar this summer than during the same period last year. Visas issued between June and August this year rose from just under 7,000 to around 20,000.
Woes of the students
Thousands of Nepali students and their dependants have arrived in the UK to pursue higher studies from September/October session. But unlike what they were promised back home, they have come to realise that prospects of finding a part-time job in London was almost nil. “All of you know how many Nepali parents can afford to send money to their children who are studying in a country like UK or USA every month?” asked Dharma Raj Adhikari, a Nepali student at an interaction program organised by the Non-resident Nepali Association (NRNA) UK chapter at Woolwich London, on November 22. “Study alone is not our priority. We must find a job to maintain ourselves,” he declared.
But overseas students including Nepalese students have now realised that finding a job in London and surrounding areas has become next to impossible. As the British economy is still reeling under economic recession, some two million Britons are estimated to have lost their jobs over the last year. The unemployment rate is hovering at around 7.8 percent-- the highest since 1997 when the Labour government was elected to the office.
The downturn in the British economy has made the debate over immigration more sensitive. “Immigration is the most contentious of all the challenges confronting today’s high-income countries,” wrote Martin Wolf, a columnist, in the Financial Times-- a leading British daily. “The topic is too important to be ignored.”
According to an Ipsos Mori poll conducted in June this year, British people interviewed for the survey regarded immigration and race relations as the second most important issue facing the country today, after crime. This despite the fact that ethnic minorities comprise only around 10 percent of the total population in the UK.
Studies, however, suggest that migrants are more skilled and often more reliable and hardworking than British workers. According to a 2007 study conducted jointly by the British Treasury, Home Office and Department of Work and Pensions, migrant workers contribute around 6 billion pounds a year to the British economy. “The migrants on average earn more and so pay more tax than UK workers,” the study concluded.
Right-wing think tanks like Migration Watch UK, however, don’t agree to such findings. In a recent report, the organisation claimed that economic benefit from the immigration inflow was very limited. “Immigration adds to the economic growth, but it also adds nearly proportionately to our population so that the benefit to the host community is small. Hence, a major step must be taken to limit the scale and pace of further immigration,” the report concluded.
The main opposition Conservative Party—that is ahead of the ruling Labour party in the opinion polls as a likely winner in the forthcoming general elections due in May 2010—also toes this line. “Our approach will ensure that we admit both the right people for our economy and also the right number of people. A conservative government would also apply transitional controls as a matter of course in the future for all non EU entrants,” the party said.
The third largest party in the House of Commons, Liberal Democrats, says it wants an immigration system that works. “A system that is firm but fair, which plans for the effects of managed legal migration and promotes integration. We believe in the benefits that immigration has brought this country but we do not believe our borders should be a soft touch,” the party said.
Right-wing parties like the British National Party (BNP), however, see immigration as a threat to what they call the “very British identity.”
“On current demographic trends, we, the native British people, will be an ethnic minority in our own country within sixty years,” reads a policy paper of the BNP. “We will abolish the ‘positive discrimination’ schemes that have made white Briton second-class citizens. We will also clamp down on the flood of ‘asylum seekers,’ all of whom are either bogus or can find refuge much nearer their home countries,” the party said.
While parties like the BNP are still on the fringe of the British political spectrum, it seems that the issue they are championing – that there should be total clampdown on immigration—has started to add pressure on the mainstream political parties in the UK. And, the high-pitched debate is all set to continue.
(Bhagirath Yogi is a BBC Nepali Service journalist based in London. He can be reached at:
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Courtesy: New Spotlight magazine
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