It is amazing that even seasoned Commentators fall for this fallacy. Economic growth has been relatively 'robust' in the UK in the past year (if you want to call growth in the low single digits that way). But to claim that this is partially due to an 'open door' immigration policy is disingenuous to say the least. Fact is that any economy will grow faster if the number of active workers increases. So the all-important measure of growth PER CAPITA is not growing by a similar amount. Sad thing is that the influential lobbies representing employers get too much of a hearing when they complain of labour 'shortages'. It is disgraceful that the overpaid bosses in large listed companies and these owned by 'Private' Equity - who dominate the discussion with easy access to gullible politicians and media - do so little to raise skill levels in order to achieve more output with a given pool of labour, i.e. by improving productivity. They prefer the easy route of importing cheap labour from countries that are at a completely different stage of economic development. But they care little about wage dumping as long as they live securely in their gated mansions or offshore tax havens.
