Sir, - Your edition of November 23rd reports that the Taoiseach "found it an extraordinary situation that November had again seen an enormous increase in employer demand for permits for workers from non-EU states, at a time when there were major job losses".
While one can understand Mr Ahern's concern, appeals of this nature can easily be adopted by those in organisations such as the Immigration Control Platform as support for their stance against immigration. This would be very unfortunate.
Very often those who oppose immigration base their arguments on prejudice and scaremongering, suggesting that immigrants pose a major threat to domestic workers and place a great burden on the Exchequer.
Against this background it might be useful to consider some of the findings of a major UK study on this issue by the Centre for Policy Studies.
A reasonable assumption from elementary economic analysis would be that wages of native workers would be depressed by migrants who compete with them for jobs. The study found this was not so.
Immigrants to the UK have tended to perform three types of jobs. They have worked in public services, especially health, where pay is determined by the Government. Their major impact here is to reduce shortages rather than depress wages. In relatively low-paid and insecure sectors such as catering and domestic services, unskilled natives are simply unwilling or unable to take the large numbers of jobs available. Here, immigrants serve the public interest by shortening queues and providing services that would otherwise not occur. The study also showed that immigrants have played a major role in allowing the IT sector to grow faster than it might if these skilled workers had not been available.
It is also interesting to note that earnings behaviour follows what is known in the US as the "assimilation hypothesis". Wages in a particular cohort start off lower for migrants but, as skills are developed, eventually overtake those of comparable native workers. Importantly - and contrary to the popular view that immigrants are a burden on the public purse - they contribute 10 per cent more to government revenues than they receive in government expenditures.
While we can only speculate on what a similar study in Ireland might find, a casual review of our health service and of the tourism and IT sectors suggests that there are many obvious similarities to the UK. In such a situation we should reject the calls of those who wish to restrict immigration. If anything our policy is too conservative. - Yours, etc.,
Jim Deegan, Department of Economics, University of Limerick.