Why does society no longer blame immigrants for spreading disease? It
used to. The Jews were blamed for the Black Death, and Irish
immigrant workers were blamed for Cholera in the 1830s. (See this
nice science museum website.) Syphilis has been blamed on all manner
of foreigners: the French blamed the Italians and the Italians blamed
the French! The obvious answer is that society now knows better as a
result of medical science.
Nowadays immigrants are instead blamed for unemployment, lower wages
and increasing crime. They are blamed
for reducing natives access to the NHS. Yet just as in the case of
immigrants and disease, most experts know that popular concerns are
wide of the mark. Nor are some of the sources of popular
misperception difficult to understand. For example immigrants use the
NHS, but they also pay taxes that allow us to fund more NHS
resources, but government funding may be slow in responding to
changes in local demand. In current circumstances the UK government
is holding back
those resources nationally, but says it is ‘protecting’ the NHS
and the media dutifully repeats that they are.
Some politicians and large sections of the print media deliberately
fuel popular misconceptions because they can use it to their
advantage. Others feel they have to go with those misperceptions
because otherwise they will lose votes. Much of the broadcast media
see it as their duty to ‘reflect popular concern’ but feel less
compelled to reflect expert opinion. But if you think this is
inevitable and natural, imagine what would happen if a senior
politician started blaming immigrants for bringing in diseases. Well
you don’t have to imagine.
Watching certain
Labour politicians trying to get on to the anti-immigration bandwagon
is painful to see. Some are the same politicians who also argued that
Labour had to accept austerity after the 2015 General Election. Now
immigration is much more complex than austerity, as I discuss here,
but that is all the more reason to respect the evidence. (Those who
still wonder why Jeremy Corbyn is so popular among party members
should note he is sticking with his principles on both austerity and
immigration.) But I think it is wrong to just blame politicians.
Responsibility must also rest with most of the media, who (as we saw
in the Brexit campaign) treat economic evidence very differently from
medical evidence.
