Business Should Speak Up for Immigration

Financial Times: Immigration does strange things to politicians. One-time US presidential candidate John McCain abandoned his previous moderate position on immigration in a successful attempt to retain the Republican Senate nomination in Arizona last month. Meg Whitman, former chief executive of Ebay, also adopted a hard line on immigration as she set out to become governor of California. Having won the Republican primary, she has changed tack, appealing to immigrants and Hispanic voters in her drive to win the election itself. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy has not changed but he too grasps the electoral sensitivity to the issue. He linked riots in Grenoble to insufficiently controlled immigration. He followed up by clearing illegal Roma encampments and threatening to strip some criminals of foreign origin of their citizenship. Politicians usually win public support for their attacks on newcomers. In her book, Talking to a Brick Wall, Deborah Mattinson, a pollster to Gordon Brown when he was UK prime minister, wrote that nothing got her focus groups more agitated than immigration. The governing Conservatives promised to cap it, a policy they are now carrying out in their coalition with the Liberal Democrats.