Immigration in the United Kingdom

In the recent past number of years, migration has become a progressively more significant singularity throughout the developed nations, including the United Kingdom. According to Wadsworth (2014), there is presently more than 6 million foreign born adults working in the UK. This amount increased two-fold between 1995 and 2012 from 8 percent to 16 percent. The effects of migration on the United Kingdom are intricate and comprehensive, influencing all aspects of life including socially, economically, as well as culturally. The increase in the number of immigrants in the nation do not just have an impact on the labour market aspects such as wage and employment but also fiscally impacts the economy in general. Nonetheless, it has proven to be difficult to fully conclude whether the increase in the number of immigrants is adversarial or constructive. The most ideal preceding evidence recommends that the general impacts of migration on employment and wages are either trivially different from zero, or considerably positive. The base of proof on the impacts of migration on employment in the nation, though comparatively thing, gives the suggestion that the impacts are not considerably dissimilar from zero (Reed, 2009).

Interest in the impact of immigration on the UK job market as well as the economy in general has intensified in recent years. This is impelled principally by an increasing proportion of foreign born people amongst the working age population in the past two decades. In accordance to Duffy and Frere-Smith (2013), the significant rise in the number of immigrants within the labour force has been all the more histrionic than general population changes in the past number of years. In approximately the past two decades, the number of foreign-born individuals of working age in the UK rose from 2.9 million to closely 6 million. Moreover, the proportion of foreign-born populace in total employment rose twofold from 7.2 percent to 14.4 percent in the same period and the portion of foreign citizens in the total employment rose from 3.5 percent to 9.2 percent in the similar timespan.

Conventionally, from a theoretical perspective, the influence of migration on the labour market is probably reliant on different factors including the mixture of skills of the immigrant inflows in comparison to that of the native populace. Secondly, there is the features of the host nation, comprising of how flexible capital and labour is and the capability of the labour market to easily made adjustments both in the short-run and in the long-run. The literature on the subject of the effect of migration on the labour market has been contentious and disputed (Home Report, 2014). The purpose of this paper is to consider the prevailing evidence on the displacement in the job market owing to net migration on the citizens in the UK to provide a more comprehensible understanding on the verdicts in this topic.

In spite of the aforementioned negative aspects of immigration on the UK job market, there are positive aspects. To begin with, research has shown that immigration has a positive impact on wages and employed. In accordance to Dustmann, Frattini, and Preston (2008) conclude that immigration decreases wages at the bottom end of the wage distribution. However, the upside to it is that it gives rise to slight wage rises in the upper spectrum of the wage distribution. The study indicated that on average, throughout the dispersal of UK natives, immigration positively influences employment owing to the increase in average wages. In fact, statistics indicate that a rise in the number of immigrants at a rate of 1 percent of the working age population of UK natives gives rise to a rise in average wages of 0.2 to 0.3 percent. In the same manner, Manacorda, Manning, and Wadsworth (2012), conclude that the effect of immigration on employment and the wages remunerated is very trivial. In particular, the study shows that there is very minimal proof of general negative impacts of immigration on employment and wages for UK natives.

A great of the prevailing literature lays emphasis on the prospective impact of immigration on the wages and employment of natives. Nonetheless, a possibly even greater apprehension is whether immigrants have an impact on the economy, especially with regard to payment of taxation and improvement of the welfare systems. According to Dustmann and Frattini (2014), the immigrants who entered the UK for almost the past decade have had a constructive fiscal contribution to the economy, even in the course of periods when the nation was experiencing budget deficits. This is largely for the reason that the foreign-born population made significantly more contributions in taxes as compared to what they received in benefits. Moreover, by sharing the cost of predetermined public expenses, the immigrants decreased the financial encumbrance of the public duties for natives. In fact, the contributions made by the foreign-born populace have placed the UK is a considerably better position compared to other developed nations in Europe (Sriskandarajah, Cooley, & Reed, 2005).

There can be fiscal benefits linked with migration, especially to increase the supply of labour and filling in gaps within the labour market where there are scarcities of workers. Averagely, immigrants are more educated and knowledgeable compared to their UK-born workers. In accordance to economic theory, a surplus in the level of immigration, emanating from the inflow of labour in the market, is delineated as an advantage and gain in national income accumulating to natives. When immigration related to work tales place, transforming the skills composition of the labour market, it is projected that national income is bound to increase (Home Report, 2014). In the course of strong economic growth in the UK, migration played a fundamental role in filling gaps within the labour market. This facilitates an increase in the gross domestic product of the nation (Wadsworth, 2014).

In general, there is very minimal proof that migration has given rise to major dislodgment of UK natives from the labour market especially in times when the nation’s economy has been strong. Nonetheless, according to Home Report (2014), in recent years when the nation has faced economic recession, there is proof of labour market displacement of UK natives. In accordance to Reed (2009), immigrants negatively impact UK born individuals as they undercut them in the labour market from the standpoint that they are willing to undertake certain kinds of job for a lower hourly wage as compared to the existing UK rate. This is linked to the fact that immigrants are contented with lower standards of living compared to UK residents for the reason that they are used to facing poorer wellbeing and are in the nation temporarily. Secondly, several of the migrants working in the UK end up sending majority of their warnings to their home nations as remittances (Reed, 2009).

Regardless of the fact that immigrants are usually willing to take up low paying jobs compared to UK-born workers, there is the major issue of forced labour within the job market. In recent years, there have been increasing reports of forced labour and exploitation on the migrants. This includes physical and sexual violence, intimidations of violence, debt captivity, terrorizations and intimidation founded on immigration status, extorting, and seizure of identity documents or withholding of wage payments (Anderson and Rogaly, 2005).

In the past two decades or so, immigration has been a significantly controversial and debated issue in the United Kingdom. This is owing to the substantial increase in the number of foreign born individuals in the labour market. This paper examines whether such increase in immigrants has a positive or negative impact on the labour market and the economy at large. In my own opinion, immigration has positive employment and fiscal impacts on the UK. Notably, regardless of minimal wage or employment declines for less skilled groups, there is still very minimal or no proof of a general adverse impact on employment or wages. In my opinion, migration positively benefits the market through increased labour supply and therefore facilitating any shortages in workers, leads to an increase in average wage rates, and constructive fiscal contribution through tax payment and welfares.