Migrants will not go anywhere

A leading expert warned on Tuesday that predictions that immigrant workers will go back home to be with their people due to the current recession is nothing but myth and said that nothing of that sort is going to happen.

A leading expert warned on Tuesday that predictions that immigrant workers will go back home to be with their people due to the current recession is nothing but myth and said that nothing of that sort is going to happen.

University College London’s Professor John Salt said that there is no way the foreign population of Britain is going to get lesser due to the recession. He said that similar conditions were faced by the country in the 1960s and 1970s, when there was a slight break in high levels of immigration due to the economic slowdown.

He said that if there is anything to be learned from the past then it can be said that immigration to the country might decline comparatively lesser than what is expected by many people.

The report which was co-authored by the professor for the Policy Network, a centre-left think tank, said that evidences and results of the past recessions in the country and western Europe in general, clearly suggest that though immigration to the UK might fall in the recession due to rise in unemployment, the trend will be seen for a limited time.

The Home Office commissioned Professor Salt in 2004 to determine the number of immigrants living illegally in Britain, which he estimated to be somewhere in between 450,000 to 500,000.

His recent warning came as the immigration minister Phil Woolas said that he is thinking over adding an ethical aspect to the points based system so as to minimize the impact of recession which may see the UK loosing top workers from foreign countries.