The mayors and the migrants - was anyone listening?

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Alasdair Murray and Pia Gadkari (London, CentreForum): Most of the recent media focus on immigration has centred on the House of Lord's assault on some of the government's more contentious assertions about the benefits of immigration. But in London last week, a development of much greater significance to the migration debate took place. As Anthony Barnett reports below, all four of the main candidates in London's mayoral race have come out in favour of regularising the status of illegal immigrants in Britain. The positions adopted by the different candidates vary a little - but the underlying endorsement of an amnesty of any kind is quite remarkable.

British political debate has been peculiarly myopic on the issue of what to do with large numbers of illegal immigrants living in the UK (the Home Office's best estimate from 2006 suggests that there are 430,000 currently in the country). There has been almost no discussion, far less any policies proposed or implemented, which address the issue and move the debate beyond the implausible policy of large-scale repatriation. Only the Liberal Democrats, with their recent plan to offer an 'earned' amnesty to illegal immigrants, have dared to take on such a minority cause. And even they shied away from giving their new policy much publicity.

So it was no real surprise that both the government and David Cameron quickly distanced themselves from their mayoral candidates. Their grounds for disagreement were well rehearsed: an amnesty now would only encourage a further wave of illegal immigrants into the country in the hope of future regularisation. It's a 'moral hazard' argument for migrants similar to the one the government seems happy to ignore when propping up banks.

Few other countries find it so difficult to grapple with the challenge posed by substantial numbers of illegal immigration. Regularisation programmes have been undertaken across Europe in France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, as well as in the US, often with success. Indeed, Britain has discreetly undertaken 'backlog clearing exercises' that are tantamount to amnesties. Between 1999-2000, rights of settlement were granted to those who claimed asylum in Britain prior to July 1993, and in October 2003 another scheme was launched to give status to the families of asylum seekers.

While there are certainly risks associated with regularisation programmes, the UK government stands to gain from one that is well crafted. The ippr has estimated that newly legalised immigrants could generate tax revenues of around £1 billion per year. Regularising immigrants would also provide extremely useful information for the government, expanding our knowledge of current illegal routes into the country and regions with high concentration of illegal immigrants. This would enable for the first time accurate profiling of, and provision for, this elusive group. It also has the potential to contribute to national security: illegal immigrants currently rarely reveal themselves to the police, even if they have witnessed or been the victim of crimes, for fear of deportation. Precious resources could be more effectively distributed over a smaller group of unknown immigrants, and gross violations of employment laws could be better policed.

The battle to win popular support for a regularisation programme - a necessary pre-condition for any programme's success - has barely begun. But the mayoral candidates this week ended the fiction that deportation is the only way to deal with illegal immigrants. Perhaps now we can enjoy a grown-up debate.

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