Poles help bring prosperity to Britain.

• Author: Harding, James
• Position: CASE STUDY: Polish Migrants to Britain: Pros and Cons - Viewpoint essay

My friend Jez recently bought a home in Somerset and, when it came to redecorating the dilapidated farmhouse, he followed the new British tradition: he hired a couple of Polish immigrants to do the work. Since he had a little trouble with their names, he called them Hatcheck and Coat-check. They didn't seem to mind the gentle teasing (or the long hours), perhaps because they were paid with weekly envelopes of cash with sterling soaring sky-high in currency markets.

So far, so stereotypical. But the contribution of immigrants to the British economy has run far deeper than making home improvement punctual and affordable. Immigration has kept down inflation, raised house prices and boosted growth, according to the Bank of England. These statistics point up how badly the immigration debate in this country, such as it is, typically misunderstands the indirect benefits deriving from this influx of willing workers: beyond the refitting of their kitchens, the overall impact for Britons has to be measured largely in terms of the advantages of an expanding labor market and job force brought by immigration. (Incidentally, the Hat-check and Coat-check stereotype underestimates the level of education among some in the immigrant workforce who have not only expanded mainstream consumption but also started job-generating businesses. But that is another story, explained a little further in this article.) British business estimates that the pool of available labor in Britain has increased by about 770,000 people in the past couple of years, about two-thirds of them from Central and Eastern Europe. Nearly all of them (97 percent) are reported to be in full-time, tax-paying jobs. Importantly, they are mostly single, under 34 and on relatively low rates of pay: about three-quarters of them earn less than six pounds sterling per hour. (The hourly minimum wage in Britain is just over five pounds, i.e. roughly eight euro or nine U.S. dollars.)

The meaning of all this is that these immigrants have helped Britain enjoy a huge increase in its labor market, certainly in its flexibility, without making inflation boil up.

To be clear, the figures are all fuzzy. The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, has grumbled that it is hard to make productivity forecasts and monetary-policy decisions when the UK census data are so wildly inaccurate about the numbers of immigrants in the country. But what is certain is that immigrants have fuelled economic growth in this...