“After all, they can’t claim much state support, and the money that

Comment on General Election 2010 Poll Results by David.

“After all, they can’t claim much state support, and the money that they get cash-in-hand is still being circulated. ”

It’s a good point, people working even illegally do contribute to the economy.

However, if we have 1,000,000 illegal immigrants (what’s the current official estimate?) and the majority are working below minimum wage (no idea if that’s true) in the black economy, they probably aren’t paying income tax etc… and more importantly are harming businesses that don’t hire illegal immigrants.

Businesses employ illegal workers for the obvious reason, they are cheaper than hiring legal workers. The employer doesn’t have to pay NI contributions etc… so it saves the business a lot of money and allows them to undercut competing businesses.

Having hundreds of thousands of workers in the black economy is harming legitimate business and if the Lib Dems immigration amnesty policy can remove a lot of illegal workers from the market place AND pull them into paying tax that sounds like a good idea.

Unfortunately as has been touched on already, if these illegal workers are working in the black economy and are given an amnesty, take their slap on the wrist, where is their legitimate job coming from?

And what’s going to happen to the illegal ‘cash in hand’ job that, that worker has given up, will it be filled by another illegal worker who hasn’t managed to dodge the UK’s immigration police for 10 years??

Or do we assume when an illegal worker is given anesty the business employing them is going to keep them on and start paying minimum wage, NI contributions etc…?

I have a feeling even if the Lib Dems managed to put this into legislation it’s not going to make a positive difference.

I like the concept of pulling more people into the tax system, but I have a feeling (and it’s not backed up by research) that for every illegal immigrant that is given an amnesty another illegal immigrant will take their place and that would mean they are taking jobs from legal workers!

IMO the problem is with businesses hiring illegal workers, if no employer hired illegal workers, there wouldn’t be a problem.

I like the draconian Labour measures on businesses hiring illegal immigrants. If a business is caught hiring illegal workers, they are given a punitive fine up to £10,000 per workers (average appears to be £5k per worker). I would increase the fine up to £20,000 per worker (with an average fine of £10K) to make hiring illegal workers such a massive risk it will bankrupt small businesses that consistently break the rules.

David