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The traditional response from the centre and centre-left to immigration since Roy Jenkins was Home Minister through to New Labour is (1) to accept that migration can be a good thing but that (2) we need to limit it so that, race relations or more contemporaneously social cohesion, can be maintained. Both Sunder Katwala and Paul Kingsnorth agree with this despite their differences on language use.
Today, this politics is prominent with Phil Woolas, Minister for Immigration, recently warning that 'It's been too easy to get into this country in the past and its going to get harder', whilst Trevor Phillips adds that immigration has fuelled 'resentments that are real and should not be dismissed - resentments felt by white, black and Asian'. However, the truth is that, if you're not an EU citizen, it's extremely hard to get into this country and that Phillips's 'real' resentments are caused more by a politics that turns human against human than by the realities of net immigration to the UK.
Immigration control is tightening. Since Labour came to power in 1997, and in a time of economic growth and the property boom, the government has instituted seven legislative acts on immigration and nationality. It has even turned doctors and nurses into immigration officials policing the legality of migrants, some of them children, in Accident and Emergency departments and GP surgeries - and not infrequently, denying them treatment. Stricter than even under the Thatcher regime, this immigration framework developed despite no tangible economic crisis existing.
Click to read Shamer Sina's full article.