By Robert Henderson

Mass migration of labour inevitably goes from lower wage economies to higher wage economies because there is no incentive for those in higher paid economies to take a run-of-the-mill-job in a lower paid economy. In addition, developed economies offer not only higher wages but also many non-monetary benefits such as those provided by a fully-fledged welfare state which are absent in developing economies.

Mass migration allows employers to radically cut wages in the higher wage economies and greatly increases competition for most jobs, especially those which require little training or skill. The difference in cost of living between the immigrant’s country of origin (low) and the developed country they go to (high) is important. Immigrants, whether unskilled or skilled, are willing to work in such jobs for mediocre pay and live in poor, cramped accommodation because they know that they will be able to save a few thousand pounds in a year or two. They can do this even by living honestly and paying tax. But often they will be paid cash- in-hand (no deductions for tax), and live in a squat (the taking over of someone’s house or flat without permission and living there rent free). Many will work while they are claiming unemployment benefits. If they have saved four or five thousand after a year or two, this will be enough to buy a house or flat in their own country where prices are a fraction of what they are in a developed country. (Give Britons the chance to save the price of a house or flat in Britain by working for a couple of years in those conditions in a foreign country and you are likely to be trampled in the rush.)

As more and more immigrants come to developed economies, the position of the native worker worsens. This is because not only are there are more people chasing jobs, but also because native employers increasing rely on gang masters and other recruiters who are foreign and only want to  employ foreigners (frequently foreigners from their own country: in the following case it was a Bulgarian employing Bulgarians http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/277363/Workers-are-fired-for-being-British). Sometimes employers deliberately exclude native workers by insisting that those employed speak a foreign language in the workplace, for example, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1257784/Biggest-Asda-meat-supplier-excludes-English-speakers-instructions-given-Polish.html.

In Britain many employers excuse their recruitment of foreign workers on the grounds that they either cannot get native workers to apply or that those who do apply are unqualified for the job. As the vast majority of the British jobs being taken are low or non-skilled and there are now millions of native Britons desperately seeking work of any kind, this must be an excuse in most instances (http://www.metro.co.uk/news/878903-500-queue-for-just-20-sales-assistant-jobs-at-new-poundland-store#ixzz1b85oCrLr).

Even in the case of skilled workers there is discordance between the claim of lack of skilled applicants and the numbers of skilled British workers unable to find jobs. For example, there are large numbers of doctors and nurses trained in Britain who cannot find posts in Britain, while at the same time the NHS is recruiting heavily from abroad (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/no-need-to-speaka-da-english-in-the-nhs/). More generally, new British graduates are finding great difficulty in getting both appropriate jobs and, increasingly, any job at all (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8283862/Graduate-unemployment-hits-15-year-high.html).

All of that suggests that British employers are favouring foreigners for reasons other than they give. The most plausible causes are lower pay and inferior conditions being accepted by immigrants, the greater ease with which immigrants can be sacked, especially those who are here illegally, and the possibility of bribes being paid, especially by foreign agencies, gangmasters using foreign labour and people traffickers, to those recruiting for British employers to persuade them to choose immigrants over native workers. An example would be where a public service employer uses a foreign agency to recruit abroad. The agency will receive a hefty fee from the public service employer for each foreigner recruited and that fee will be split between the agency and a corrupt recruiter in the UK. There is also a natural disincentive for native workers to seek work where they would be in the ethnic minority in their own land, for example, if you are English imagine working a factory where the common language is Polish or Hindi even if it is not a requirement of the job that the language is spoken.

These various practices mean large swathes of employment become effectively closed to the native population. The extent of the problem in Britain can be seen from one stark statistic: out of two million new jobs created under 13 years of the last Labour Government 1.8 million went to immigrants (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1325013/Migrants-took-9-10-jobs-created-Labour.html).

The removal of protection for the domestic market, off-shoring and mass immigration has meant that material inequality has grown considerably in the developed economies over the past quarter of a century as the wages of those competing with immigrants has fallen and unemployment has risen, including an army of long term unemployed. The countries showing the greatest growth between the haves and the have nots have been the USA and Britain, arguably the two countries most committed to globalism (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/18/bronx-manhattan-us-wealth-divide).

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From It isn’t a crisis of capitalism but a crisis of globalism at England Calling.