Old immigration myths exposed

This week would have seen the UK Government’s post-Brexit immigration bill return to the Commons, but the timetable has been discarded. The new regime is based on a points system designed to select ‘‘skilled’’ workers over ‘‘unskilled’’ labour. The distinction is meant to favour what ministers call ‘‘the best and brightest’’ while deterring those whom decades of political rhetoric have cast as undesirable.

Farmers are already warning that fruit will rot in the fields without seasonal labour normally provided by EU citizens. Attempts to entice UK workers to fill the gap are failing. Immigrants have kept public transport running, delivered goods and, most poignantly, kept the NHS and social care services operational. They have put their lives at risk for a country that has been, at best, ambivalent about their entitlement to live here at all.

It would be shameful if the heroic contribution and sacrifices made by immigrants in these difficult times were met with callous ingratitude by the government. Fallacies and prejudices that have informed UK policy for a generation are being exposed by the current crisis.

The debate has been oriented in entirely the wrong direction, with all the emphasis on a burden that should more rightly be understood as a blessing. It will not be easy to reverse that trend, but the opportunity is there if our politicians have the honesty and the courage to take it.