MOLDOVAN DECISION ILLUMINATES COST OF FREE MOVEMENT
As a result of the recent disputed general election in Moldova, the President of Rumania, Traian Basescu, has promised to give Rumanian citizenship and, therefore, EU citizenship, to what the Financial Times estimates is one-quarter of the population of Moldova, that is, those Moldovans who have at least one grandparent who, at some time, had Rumanian citizenship (about a million people). Moldovans have already displayed a high propensity to emigrate from the poorest country in Europe.
This event illustrates again how the right to move to the UK, and to work as self-employed and, no doubt, when restrictions are removed on Rumanians, to take up employment as well as finally to take up British citizenship, has moved beyond the control of the British electorate and British politicians. The right of entry to the UK is no longer just open to EU citizens but also to those whom any EU country’s politicians may decide to hand out rights of residence, via legal amnesty to illegal immigrants in Italy and Spain or by conferring citizenship on residents of an adjoining state as the Rumanian president has decided. Long-term residence rights in one EU country, Holland, have been the basis for an influx of Somalis to the UK. They had been resident in Holland but have now been permitted by EU rules to move to the UK, which is more attractive to them.
Of course, europhiles will say that British workers have the valuable reciprocal right of being able to work in Rumania, although even this grand principle falls down as British workers cannot work in Moldova and enjoy wage levels of about £7 a week.
Sir Andrew Green of Migration Watch comments that, “This is another gaping hole in the EU’s border controls and therefore our own.” Indeed, and especially with unemployment in the UK heading for over 3 million.
Freedom of movement in the EU has always been lauded by europhiles and even some eurosceptics, such as William Hague, regard it as an attractive feature of the EU, when he rejected ‘British jobs for British workers’.
It is worth stating again that economic theory teaches that freedom of movement of labour generally harms the receiving country. Thinkers as diverse as Freidrich Engels and Ludwig Von Mises have pointed out that it increases the supply of labour and it, therefore, reduces wages in the receiving country eventually, to a worldwide level.
Further, the current ‘balance sheet’ recession world-wide has underlined again the truth that the country which receives immigrant labour without accompanying wealth always loses, unless that immigrant labour can provide its own share of wealth within a working lifetime (which is approximately the top ten per cent of income earners).
The reason for this is migrant labour without capital either has to have capital and wealth provided for them from the efforts of the native population of the receiving country or the receiving country’s capital and wealth per capita has to be reduced as it is spread over more people. These requirements for capital are truly enormous sums – the estimated capital required by an migrant into the UK in 2006 is £280,000 for a family of two adults. (Average annual savings per worker in the UK in 2006 were about £2,500.) One way or another, natives of the receiving country lose.
The 2008 recession has highlighted that policy makers have to consider not only income effects but also capital effects in all policy making. The capital or balance sheet effects are usually massively larger and, in the case of migrant labour, massively negative (except the top ten per cent).
FUTURUS/29 April 2009
This event illustrates again how the right to move to the UK, and to work as self-employed and, no doubt, when restrictions are removed on Rumanians, to take up employment as well as finally to take up British citizenship, has moved beyond the control of the British electorate and British politicians. The right of entry to the UK is no longer just open to EU citizens but also to those whom any EU country’s politicians may decide to hand out rights of residence, via legal amnesty to illegal immigrants in Italy and Spain or by conferring citizenship on residents of an adjoining state as the Rumanian president has decided. Long-term residence rights in one EU country, Holland, have been the basis for an influx of Somalis to the UK. They had been resident in Holland but have now been permitted by EU rules to move to the UK, which is more attractive to them.
Of course, europhiles will say that British workers have the valuable reciprocal right of being able to work in Rumania, although even this grand principle falls down as British workers cannot work in Moldova and enjoy wage levels of about £7 a week.
Sir Andrew Green of Migration Watch comments that, “This is another gaping hole in the EU’s border controls and therefore our own.” Indeed, and especially with unemployment in the UK heading for over 3 million.
Freedom of movement in the EU has always been lauded by europhiles and even some eurosceptics, such as William Hague, regard it as an attractive feature of the EU, when he rejected ‘British jobs for British workers’.
It is worth stating again that economic theory teaches that freedom of movement of labour generally harms the receiving country. Thinkers as diverse as Freidrich Engels and Ludwig Von Mises have pointed out that it increases the supply of labour and it, therefore, reduces wages in the receiving country eventually, to a worldwide level.
Further, the current ‘balance sheet’ recession world-wide has underlined again the truth that the country which receives immigrant labour without accompanying wealth always loses, unless that immigrant labour can provide its own share of wealth within a working lifetime (which is approximately the top ten per cent of income earners).
The reason for this is migrant labour without capital either has to have capital and wealth provided for them from the efforts of the native population of the receiving country or the receiving country’s capital and wealth per capita has to be reduced as it is spread over more people. These requirements for capital are truly enormous sums – the estimated capital required by an migrant into the UK in 2006 is £280,000 for a family of two adults. (Average annual savings per worker in the UK in 2006 were about £2,500.) One way or another, natives of the receiving country lose.
The 2008 recession has highlighted that policy makers have to consider not only income effects but also capital effects in all policy making. The capital or balance sheet effects are usually massively larger and, in the case of migrant labour, massively negative (except the top ten per cent).
FUTURUS/29 April 2009