Gareth,

I fully agree that the pros and cons of global mobility cannot solely be calculated on an economic balance sheet. But this short piece was a response to articles which made the counter economic argument hence the narrow terms.

Alasdair

I agree with your analysis rather than the Telegraph's.

But.

There seems to be a tendency to judge what is best for Britain in purely economic terms. The fact that migration has resulted in a nett increase in graduates living on these shores is not to say that migration is good for Britain.

It may well be, but it's hardly an empirical conclusion.

Getting rid of old people and replacing them with young foreigners: Good for the UK?

Economically, maybe.

It's a shame that so many people run the country as YooKay Plc instead of a homeland. Having imported a young graduate wife I should get a headhunters' fee for increasing productivity. And she's an ethical import too - from Canada - so we're not raping third world countries of their graduates (although this too is good for Britain) whilst divesting ourselves of home-trained talent to Australia and the US.

Look at the skills entering or leaving. A Chartered Engineer or scientist with ten years of experience with a degree from Imperial or Cambridge or a highly skilled craftsman( ex Rolls Royce) both with plenty of drive and initiative leaving the country is a major loss. If one looks at the very few engineers and scientists who created the Industrial Revolution then numbers are not important but quality is vital . Darby,Arkwright, Brindley,Smeaton,Boulton, Watt, Rennie, Priestley, Wedgwood, Telford,George and Robert Stephenson, Marc and Isambard Brunel are some of the most important names who created the Industrial Revolution. Probaly not more 100 people between 1680 and 1900 were responsible the great majority of the innovation required to create the Industrial Revolution. If one looks at agriculture, then perhaps, 6-10 people were responsible for increasing output such that the expanding industrial population could be fed. If there was no Newton, Clarke Maxwell, Faraday , Darwin, Huxley, Rutherford, Kelvin, Fleming, Wilkinson, Franklin, Crick then the UK and the World science would be far less advanced.

When discussing global mobility most people undertaking the technical discussion are technically illiterate and therefore cannot assess the quality of the people entering and leaving the country. It is not just qualifications ; what is essential to determine is the vision, technical skills and drive of the people. If one looks at the computer business: Microsoft, Google,Yahoo, Oracle, Dell, Apple, the World Wide Webb, have been created by less than a dozen people. Perhaps the whole of modern day electronic computing can be said to be derrived from the work of Alan Turing. If we look at the contribution of Newton then without him where would the World be now?

If we are to look at the impact of global mobility on the UK then we need to look at how successful have been the people who have left the UK in there new countries. N. Ferguson, Schama and Kennedy are all professors at either Yale or Harvard!

For the UK the only capital we have is now mainly our intellectual combined with our visions and drive. If James Dyson had emigrated then the loss to the UK with regard to intellectual capital, drive and income derrived from his inventions would not be replaced by an unskilled nearly illiterate immigrant undertaking casual labour; unless that persone developed a business of similar magnitude.

Charlie

I think your version of what caused the Industrial Revolution, and by implication what is important to all UK/world growth since, is a little too people-centred. When academics attempt to explain why the IR happened in the UK, they do not explain it by "they 12 geniuses necessary for it happened to have been born or moved there". The answers lie in a huge complex of institutional economic geographical and social factors, and the fact that the textbooks have a particular set of portraits and names do not mean that, but for a few lives, the thing would never have happened. It is rather like saying that the Second World War would never have been won had it not been for Patton, Montgomery and Eisenhower. The US industrial might ought to be there somewhere.

Innovation happens because the conditions that bring it forth are right. It is not a coincidence that so much of it has happened in the US in the last few years. It is not down to a happy fluke of a dozen people being there - the whole institutional context, the rewards to inventing, the deep capital markets, the education system suit it. As it happens, a lot of what has driven US growth has come from companies started by immigrants.

Without "Darby,Arkwright, Brindley,Smeaton,Boulton, Watt, Rennie, Priestley, Wedgwood, Telford,George and Robert Stephenson", the Industrial Revolution would still have happened, with different names attached. Those were just the ones you had heard of. If we keep the UK friendly to innovation and investment, growth will continue here and in the present day too.