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The poisoned debate on immigration

Migrants are valuable to Britain's economy and culture, but are too often denigrated by our political class, writes JEREMY CORBYN MP

Migration is a global phenomenon, and not a new one - it has been going on for several hundred years.

British and Irish migrants went in their hundreds and thousands to Canada, the US, Australia, South Africa, Argentina and many other places to escape the poverty of Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century.

And yet this indisputable fact is all but forgotten by parliamentarians.

In Tuesday's debate on the government's new Immigration Bill it was obvious that few could bring themselves to recognise that many British people have migrated to live in other countries, and many of them also send money back home.

Home Secretary Theresa May (pictured) introduced the Bill with the glib statement that ?"we have introduced a limit on economic migration from outside the EU, cut out abuse of student visas and reformed family visas. As a result net migration is down by a third."

The Labour front-bench response was feeble to say the least, and for the most part debate descended into an unseemly discussion about who was cutting immigration the fastest and who had the toughest stance.

A number of Tory MPs who spoke seemed to be parroting every editorial that the Daily Mail, Express and Evening Standard have ever printed about immigration.

Tory MP for Henley John Howell quoted at length from Oxford University's Migration Observatory, claiming that the foreign-born population had lower incomes and home ownership rates than the rest of the population and the majority were likely to be living in private rented accommodation - as if that's their fault.

He continued in some detail about how the United Kingdom Border Agency and Ealing Council had visited six properties and found some of them were home to foreign nationals without leave to remain in Britain.

From this examination of six properties, Howell managed to draw some astonishing conclusions, which suggested that immigration is one of the biggest problems of our times.

At no stage did he or most other supporters of the Bill concede the enormous work and contributions that migrants have made to Britain.

A handful of MPs delivered extremely powerful speeches in defence of migrants, including Brent Central Lib Dem MP Sarah Teather and Labour MPs Heidi Alexander, Fiona MacTaggart, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott.

These latter few were able to demonstrate that limiting non-status overseas nationals' access to health care is actually a danger to the public health of the entire community and that requiring landlords to check the immigration status of any potential tenant could encourage illegal discrimination.

It is obvious that May is seeking to hammer the Bill through as swiftly as possible.

It had no pre-legislative scrutiny, no published green or white paper on its many proposals, it was rushed through to second reading debate and, under a timetable motion, it has to conclude its committee stage by November 19 - an unusually short time to consider major legislation, which means that most of it will never be examined at all in the house.

The sadness is that debate on immigration all too often descends into universal criticism with loose language being bandied about over "illegal immigrants."

The reality is a human story of people fleeing from torture, oppression, poverty and discrimination to try to seek a place of safety and to make a contribution to the society they've moved to.

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