Jeff Randall in the Daily Telegraph :

When future historians assess New Labour’s vandalism of the United Kingdom’s cultural, political and commercial fabric, the wilful destruction of border controls will surely be judged as the measure that caused most pain. Yesterday, Home Secretary John Reid admitted as much, promising to end the disastrous easy-come, easy-go approach to immigration, introduced by his government in 1997. By encouraging the greatest wave of unchecked arrivals that these islands have ever experienced, the Blair regime has eroded our traditions of tolerance and understanding, while forcing fundamental social change on millions who never voted for it. New Labour’s last three elections manifestos contained not a word about cranking up immigration. Adding insult to injury, the Prime Minister and his diminishing band of allies still seek to justify their negligence (it cannot be dignified as a policy) with bogus assertions about immigration’s economic benefits, the validity of which not even a D-grade GCSE student would have trouble demolishing…New Labour’s case for an open door to inward migrants appears to have three strands: 1) There are not enough domestic workers to do all the jobs that need doing; 2) There are universal benefits from having large numbers of foreigners, prepared to work for low wages; 3) A decline in domestic birth rates means that millions more immigrants are required to fund our pension pots.None of these bears a moment’s scrutiny. For a start, there is not a shortage of labour in Britain. Unemployment is at a six-year high of 1.6m and another 2.7m are claiming long-term incapacity benefit. There may well, however, be a shortage of skilled labour, especially in the construction industry. Hence the success of the Polish plumber….Three years ago, Britain had 600,000 job vacancies. Since then, there has been a net inflow of 700,000 legal workers and who knows how many illegal. Yet, the number of unfilled posts is still 600,000. The reason for this paradox is that, as well as providing services, immigrants also consume them. They add to demand as well as supply. Simply by going shopping, buying a coffee, catching a bus, they create jobs, thereby sucking in yet more immigrants. But the idea that everybody benefits from mass immigration is a fallacy. Research by Professor George Borjas at Harvard University shows that in the long run it transfers wealth from grubby bedsits to swanky penthouses.By lowering wages, migrants enable the middle classes to hire more home-caterers, dog-walkers, house-cleaners and hedge-trimmers for less cost than before. Very nice, if you’re an investment banker in Kensington. Not so hot, if the last job you had was polishing his Bentley.

Read the whole thing.