If restoring trust is one of the major challenges of the age, nowhere does that task seem more daunting than in the case of immigration.
David Cameron came to office planning to get a grip on an immigration system that voters feared had got out of control. And he would get numbers down, so that net migration was in the “tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands”. Cameron was clear, too, about keeping a significant inward flow to maintain what he calls “good immigration”, which Britain needs.

That has proved easier said than done. The UK Border Agency is back in the headlines, as ministers and civil servants fall out over the relaxation of passport checks. Meanwhile, net migration has shot up – though immigration itself remains pretty steady, emigration has fallen sharply.

Around 78 per cent of people don’t believe the government will meet its net migration pledge. Increasing numbers say they don’t trust any party on immigration. Where does the depth of this disconnection come from? And can politicians do anything constructive about it in practice?

One popular answer is simple: the politicians consistently refuse to do what the people demand. The idea that the immigration debate has been kept off-limits by political elites is the one conspiracy theory in British politics regularly given mainstream media attention.

This makes the solution simple, too: give people what they want by cutting immigration sharply, bringing net migration as close to zero as possible. That demand is voiced in a successful e-petition campaign, which gained the 100,000 signatures to secure a parliamentary debate in the new year.

But that familiar analysis is unconvincing. Firstly, Cameron will be wary of advice that the answer to missing his target should be to make it a tougher one. If he can’t get net migration down to 100,000, how will promising to eliminate it help? Impossible promises only deepen mistrust and disconnection.

Secondly, while it’s true that the British public is anxious about immigration, attitudes are more nuanced than most political and media discussion admits. While two-thirds of people would like immigration reduced, they disagree sharply about how to do it.

A recent poll for Oxford University’s Migration Observatory found 67 per cent support reduced immigration – but most people also wanted to keep the current numbers of skilled migrants, business people, students, immediate family members and care workers. (People did want fewer illegal and unskilled immigrants.) But a vocal minority wants much deeper cuts. Just under half of the population wants large reductions, and a quarter would choose to stop all immigration.

The government is caught in a dilemma. Reducing the numbers involves a paradox: trying to address public anxiety by cutting forms of immigration about which people are not anxious. People might want to reduce immigration, but they also reject the means to achieve the end.
Those who want to reduce immigration are sharply divided between some who will never be satisfied until we leave the EU and close the borders, and other ‘reducers’ who agree with the arguments of business and universities that the government’s current cuts already risk damaging the fragile economic recovery,  even while they fall short of the promised target.

In defence of politicians, the problem is public disagreement about what to do, not a systematic betrayal by the political class. So the only way to address public disconnection will be to involve the public more directly in making these choices.

Britain has, in comparative context, the most anxious attitudes to immigration of any western democracy. By contrast, Canada is, by some distance, the country most confident about immigration. Immigration has risen very sharply in Canada, as in Britain over the last 20 years, and reaches around 0.8 per cent of the total population per year. Yet well under a fifth of Canadians think immigration is too high, compared to two-thirds of Britons, and attitudes have not changed as the numbers have risen.

Britain and Canada are different in history, geography and much else, but the biggest thing that other countries could learn from Canada on immigration is the depth of its commitment to engaging the public.

In Canada, ministers have a statutory obligation to consult the public over immigration policy. This leads to a wide range of proactive consultations involving employers, civic groups, local communities and migrants themselves. Ministers and Parliament still have to make the decisions, but the stark difference between Canada and Britain is that the Canadian public does say that it thinks its voice counts.

The only way to address concerns that people can’t talk about immigration, or have a voice that counts, is greater involvement. So the British government should, by law, commit to proper public engagement. What matters is what follows in practical terms. But the symbolism matters too, given how much the British immigration debate has heard about fears that people can’t talk about immigration.

When we look beyond immigration, Britain is among the countries that are succeeding at creating an inclusive sense of patriotism and pride. The major events of 2012, from the Olympics to the Queen’s jubilee, will increase our confidence that we can be proud of the society we’ve become.
The only effective way to address disconnection will be to ask the public to do more than shout from the sidelines, to offer a real voice in the decisions that we need to make about what reflects Britain’s interests and values.

Sunder Katwala is director of British Future, a new organisation launching in January 2012

Tags: British Future, Canada, David Cameron, Immigration, Issue 43, Sunder Katwala