Strangers into Citizens on the Fourth Plinth!

At 6pm last night, Strangers into Citizens was featured on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. Supporter Giuseppe Spadone, from Yorkshire, had an hour on the plinth as part of the ongoing One and Other project, and chose to use it to publicise our call for the regularisation of long-term undocumented migrants.

With music, flags and banners - and the curious questions of lots of passers-by - it was certainly a memorable hour. Thanks to Giuseppe for using his spot to support Strangers into Citizens.

The Londonist

The web-based newspaper summarises the report.

There are an estimated 618,000 illegal immigrants in the UK, 442,000 of whom live in London. Under the proposed scheme, immigrants who've been in Britain for five years and have no serious criminal record would become legal citizens as part of a one-off amnesty. The people who do the figures on these things reckon about two-thirds of the total would be eligible.

And just to really stick the boot of common sense and decency into those who declare the UK is "full", the legal immigrants would be paying around £846m a year in taxes, as opposed to the short-term costs of £410m a year to the public purse. Longer term, economists think costs would be around £1bn a year but annual GDP would be boosted by £3bn. Surely that's good financial planning in anyone's books?

LSE report out! SiC proposal would bring in £3bn!

Austen writes:

We've won the humanitarian and moral argument. Now we can safely say there's an economic case, too, for regularisation.

So says the London School of Economics, which this morning released their final report following months of research commissioned by the mayor of London, Boris Johnson -- see Guardian report here -- which says, in effect, that regularisation on the model proposed by SiC and backed by the mayor would bring £3bn into the economy and benefit about two-thirds of the 725,000 irregular migrants in the country. It also scotches the notion that the move would have a "green light" effect on illegal immigration.

The LSE's long-awaited research is one of the ways in which the mayor has made good his pledge his support for Strangers into Citizens at the London Citizens mayoral assembly of April 2009 -- something which Dave Hill, the Guardian blogger, who was sitting in front of me at City Hall this morning, recalls in his post here. "You're very good at getting what you want," Hill turned and told me -- meaning London Citizens, of course.

As well as the Guardian here there's the BBC report here, Telegraph here, Financial Times here, and Ekklesia here.

Briefing Papers

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