Across Europe and the USA, immigration is the hottest of political topics. How many immigrants is too many? Who should be allowed in and who should be turned away? How far does our obligation to help refugees actually go? But underlying the often heated discussion lies the fact that many Western economies have become dependent on immigration. In many places, immigrants provide crucial human capital, working the jobs that local labour supply is either insufficient or unwilling to fill.
In the UK, the revered National Health Service is often held up as an example of how immigrant staff is essential to the very functioning of the health system. More than 265,000 of the 1.5 million NHS employees are of non-British nationality and overall, more than 200 different nationalities work in the health service. Half of second-care doctors hold an overseas degree. In Britain, health and care has become utterly dependent on immigration. In 2023 alone, over 100,000 Skilled Workers visas were issued to the sector.
The influx is needed to address a decades old demographic feature: an ageing native population. The fertility rate in England and Wales is around 1.5, the lowest on record and far below the reproduction rate of 2.1 considered necessary to keep a stable population. Fewer working age people and more elderly is an expensive mix. An economy needs working age people, not only to look after the elderly, but to generate the taxes to pay for spiralling care costs. The solution to the demographic imbalance has been immigration.
In other words, immigration has been an economic necessity, not a political choice. Therefore, this development has rarely been subject to much debate, and the accompanying issues of multiculturalism, ghettoisation and wage suppression (often, immigrants are willing to work for lower wages than domestic workers) have simply been unintended consequences that, though controversial, has not been up for discussion either. If there exists an alternative to the immigration solution, it has never been discussed.
In truth, the alternative is clear for all to see: increase domestic fertility rates. But to do that, we must understand why birth rates have declined. It is not a new problem. In the UK, fertility has been below the reproduction rate for half a century. This can be attributed to social and cultural changes, women’s labour market participation rates, availability of contraception and better education levels, which is normally associated with lower fertility rates. These developments can be both impossible and undesirable to roll back. Other factors such as availability and cost of childcare, parental leave, child benefits and tax incentives can be changed to nudge people to have more kids, but decades of different policies have failed to make much difference.
To achieve a wholesale change in the attitude to having children, what is needed is a wholesale change in the environment for both parents and children. That means the economy. What is needed is a dynamic and prosperous economy with high productivity and high wages, with affordable childcare, low living costs and first and foremost affordable housing. Luckily, we know how to achieve that: deregulation, tax cuts, planning reforms – policies that prioritises economic growth and construction above such concerns as economic security, environment and public services. That’s a controversial change from decades of big government solutions. But voters would not just be voting for lower taxes and accompanying spending cuts, they would also be voting for a structural change in course away from the immigration solution – they would attempt to address our demographic problems from within. That might sell them on policies which would otherwise are unpalatable. What would be on the ballot would not just be tax and spending policies, but whether we want continued immigration to change the appearance, social fabric and cohesion of communities. Multiculturalism comes with costs as well as benefits, and framing economic policies as a way to address cultural developments would change the conversation. It would allow voters a say in the long term civic as well as economic course of the country. For the first time, it would genuinely put immigration and multiculturalism on the ballot.