Better than billed

The foreign-born are more successful in Britain than in most places

BritainDec 22nd 2012 edition

POLLS repeatedly show that Britons are unhappier about immigration than most people, especially after a decade of record inflows. Yet Britain’s immigrants are something of a star turn, according to a new analysis by the OECD, a rich-country club, of how newcomers are faring in its 34 member states.

Start with who is migrating where. Britain’s foreign-born population includes a higher proportion of people with tertiary education (broadly, university graduates and above) than in almost any other OECD country (see chart 1 for a selected list and here for the full data). Incomers are much more likely to be highly educated than native Brits, and that gap is growing.

This is thanks in part to the small number of Americans and others who flocked to the City before the financial crisis. It also reflects a flood of well-qualified east Europeans from 2004, many working below their ability, and a growing number of clever Asians and so forth who come to study and stay to work.

Predictably, they have found jobs—many of them good ones. The proportion of employed foreign-born men in Britain was above the OECD average in 2009-10; immigrants were hardly different from their native counterparts. Though around a fifth of people in migrant households figure in the poorest tenth of the population (around the OECD average), 8.5% are in the richest tenth, well above the norm (see chart 2).

The picture is more mixed for their children. Most do well in school, often beating the offspring of native English-speakers. More children of foreign-born parents complete tertiary education. But educational attainment does not transfer entirely smoothly to the workplace. The less-educated children of migrants are much less likely than children of native parents with similar education to be employed, perhaps because of stiff competition from newer migrants.

Overall, though, Britain’s immigrants are a success story, especially compared with other European countries. One reason is that many have come to work or study, fewer to join family or escape persecution. They are motivated to stand on their own feet and usually have, or quickly gain, the skills to do so. A shame, then, that the government is now squeezing these two migration routes so hard.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Better than billed"

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