Foreign goods

A German supermarket made a valid point when it emptied its shelves of 'foreign goods', replacing them with signs saying things such as "We are poorer without diversity". Some people didn't get it, taking it literally and saying "hey, we want the foreign stuff, it's the foreigners we don't want" - even so it would be great to see a supermarket doing the same here. The hard-of-thinking may not understand, but many will grasp the intended parallel - that a country without immigrants is as limited as a supermarket without overseas products.

Clearly immigration should be restricted, in the same way that supermarkets choose which products to stock. There are even advantages to highly restrictive rules, as the wages of the lowest paid may well go up (though the evidence shows that immigration has almost no effect on wages in general). Of course the people taking those jobs will no longer be immigrants, so either they will have been downsized from better jobs (the fewer people there are in a country the fewer jobs there are) or they will be forced to take the jobs due to benefit cuts (if GDP is lower, the tax take is smaller). Furthermore, the cost of living will be higher, so the higher wages will buy less.

The real question is how much to restrict immigration. Surely the test should be how much we benefit from it (though humanitarian grounds should also be considered, such as spouses and children). Given that EU immigrants contribute more than they take, the demands to throw them out appear to be due to xenophobia rather than economics.

The irony is that we have always had control of immigration - EU members are allowed to deport citizens of other EU countries if they become a burden on the welfare system. In the UK our rules are that EU job seekers cannot claim benefits for the first three months and can be deported after six months if they haven't found a job. So they pay their taxes but we don't pay them benefits.

Free movement of labour means exactly that - it doesn't mean benefit tourism, it means workers getting on their bikes to find jobs. With more workers living and spending in the UK it also means more jobs created, lower taxes, and cheaper services.