Britain & Europe: The Immigration Question

It's the decision of a lifetime,

whether to stay in or to leave the European Union,

the vast economic and political bloc

that's opened the doors of the UK to people from across the continent.

Immigration is one of the most emotive

and controversial issues in British politics.

Listen here, my daughter couldn't get into a school place.

Farage's family was a refugee once.

And now it's centre stage in the referendum campaign.

You have absolutely no way of stopping it.

Isis say they will use this migrant crisis

to flood the continent with their jihadi fighters.

I suggest we take them seriously.

You use immigration to frighten people.

It's always been a very potent political weapon.

-Vote Leave.

-Vote Leave.

-Vote Leave.

-Vote Leave.

On one side, people claim that free movement within the EU

is bad for Britain.

For the top 4% or 5%,

they get the gilded life of much cheaper nannies...

If you go outside London,

those wages are being lowered time and time again

by cheap labour coming in from the continent.

I don't know if I'm probably going to get in trouble

for saying this or not, I don't care.

I only employee English drivers.

This is not an anti-migration.

This is an anti-uncontrolled migration.

While those who want to remain

claim the economic benefits of free movement outweigh any problems.

The level of immigration in terms of free movement

is something that I support.

You will fundamentally damage our economy.

That cannot be the right way of controlling immigration.

How we weigh up these arguments

will shape the outcome of the referendum next week

and the future of the country for years to come.

The English seaside.

Evocative of a bygone, perhaps a simpler era,

when Britain had a different sense of its identity.

This is Clacton in Essex, filmed in 1961,

when it was a thriving resort.

Today, Clacton looks like this.

Like many coastal towns, it has suffered.

Its biggest attraction, a Butlins holiday camp, closed years ago.

Swan Taxis, good morning.

Yeah, where from?

Sonia Chowles works in a local taxi office.

'I have lived in Clacton on and off since I was about seven years old.

'So, 23 years.'

I did leave Clacton for about a year, but I came back,

and I haven't left since, and I have no intentions of leaving, either!

You need to have one colour, darling.

But life here is not easy for Sonia and her young family.

Her husband is disabled,

and she's desperate for a council house that better suits their needs.

The housing waiting list is 15 years long,

which is a huge amount of wait for someone that needs a home.

So I don't think it's a case of no more immigrants.

I think it's a case of no more anybodys.

I just don't think the town can take any more,

be them English, Welsh, Scottish,

be them from the EU, be them from America.

We just can't physically take any more people into this town.

There's already too many.

Clacton has a relatively low population of people

born outside the UK.

But immigration is a big issue here,

as it is in many parts of the country.

At the last election,

almost four million people across Britain voted for Ukip,

a party dedicated to getting Britain out of the European Union.

It's Clacton, the largest town.

I think it's the centre of the universe.

How do people feel about the EU around here?

I think people are pretty sceptical about it.

'Despite all those votes, only Clacton elected a Ukip MP -

'former Conservative Douglas Carswell.'

It's the Europe of the political elite

that I think people feel frustrated by and hostile towards.

Clacton's unemployment rate is higher than the national average,

and where work is available, wages tend to be low.

As far as the frustrations of people who live here are concerned,

isn't that much more about their economic situation?

The fact is that this is an area of high deprivation.

If they're going to be angry, they should be angry at Westminster.

If what you said was correct

then you would expect that in very prosperous Frinton,

there would be less Euroscepticism

than in relatively socioeconomically deprived Jaywick.

That's simply not the case.

Many, particularly on the left, like to think

that if people are disaffected and discontent,

it must caused by economics.

I think economics is important,

but I don't think that's really the issue.

There are other issues to do with the feeling of control.

They want to believe that they can elect a government

that can take back control.

And, you know, no-one wants to close the borders.

But people do want to control the borders.

And I think that's a quite legitimate aspiration.

How are you going to vote in the referendum?

I'm going to vote out. I'm voting out.

So is my other half, and pretty much everyone else I've spoken to.

I think immigration's got a big part to play

in the services that are overwhelmed at the moment.

And if we voted to leave, if the UK left the EU,

how do you think that your life would improve?

I don't think my life would, to be completely honest.

I would hope it would by the time my children are grown up

and have their own homes and their own children.

I think that's what we need to do it for - not for the generation now,

but for the next generation that are growing up

and growing into a country that, at the moment,

it's not going to be able to support them when they're older.

Whereas we need a country that will support the next generation,

and I don't think, at the moment, we can do that.

Clacton's journey over the last 20 years,

I think, is a journey that many people in Britain have also been on

and can relate to.

And I think it's a journey that many political representatives,

and also media elites, struggle to relate to.

It's a part of Britain that doesn't celebrate

what people in London celebrate.

It's a part of Britain that doesn't cherish

the progressive cosmopolitan values that people in London cherish.

It's a part of Britain that feels as though

a way of life that it once knew and held tight

is slipping away over the horizon,

and it wants to let people know that's how it feels.

CHEERING

Is it not time we took back control of our immigration policy?

But concern about immigration from the EU goes far beyond Clacton.

We want our borders back, we want our country back.

Polls regularly suggest that it is a big concern for British voters.

We can't control our border with the EU for migration,

and that runs pretty much out of control now.

We won't be drowned out, will we?

-ALL:

-No!

As we approach the referendum,

EU migration is, for some, the biggest issue of all.

And Leave campaigners have been keen to put it at the top of the agenda.

Thank you.

I can't think of any other country in the world

that would think it's somehow extreme

to want to have border control and, therefore,

to be in charge of how many people come in into your country.

That seems to me to be a quite reasonable position to take.

MUSIC: Ode To Joy by Beethoven

-REPORTER:

-Celebrating a new beginning, a new Europe.

In 2004,

many former communist countries joined the European Union.

A moment of unity and history

for a continent that had seen decades of ideological division.

At the time, net migration from the EU stood at 15,000 a year.

But a new era was about to begin.

In 2004, we had the enlargement of the EU.

Unlike some of our EU partners,

we said, yeah, anyone who wants to come

from the eight countries from Eastern Europe

can come straight away.

Well, that was a mistake,

and it's been acknowledged that that was a mistake.

-REPORTER:

-A new queue for the newcomers,

able to have their passports checked

in the EU channel for the first time.

Government commissioned some studies

as to what sort of additional numbers might we expect.

And, lo and behold,

they were told that it would be no more than 13,000 a year.

It's a hell of a lot more than that.

Within three years, the figure was almost ten times that,

as annual net migration from the EU went above 120,000.

The public weren't told.

There was a deliberate decision by the Labour government,

which I voted for, and I'm a member of the party.

It was a deliberate decision to keep the public in the dark

about immigration, which is utterly shameful.

And they did that because they knew

that the public would baulk at the numbers who were coming in.

Do you think that the British public was misled

about how many people from Eastern Europe would come in after 2004?

That is the charge

that's been placed against the Labour government of the time.

Not deliberately misled. They got the facts wrong.

The figures were wrong, and for that, I think various ministers

have apologised over the years.

We had 600,000 vacancies in the economy.

There was a transition period of seven years,

but the three most successful economies in Europe -

ourselves, the Irish Republic and Sweden -

actually needed people, we needed workers.

But if you had had the right numbers at that point,

would you have looked at them and thought,

"This is going to be a lot for the country to handle,

"we should think carefully about how we go about this"?

Perhaps, because the numbers were far higher than we expected,

and we needed people over here.

In a sense, the market was working,

because there were jobs for people to come to.

But I guess that would have coloured our judgment if the statistics...

These statistics are never right, by the way.

No ifs, no buts.

This is a promise we made to the British people,

and it is a promise we are keeping.

Against a long-term rise in migration to Britain,

David Cameron made a bold pledge in his election manifesto of 2010.

Net migration to this country

will be in the order of tens of thousands each year.

That target has never been met.

In fact, net migration -

the number of people arriving minus those leaving the country -

has risen.

Last month, the Office for National Statistics revealed that in 2015,

it was 333,000.

EU net migration was 184,000.

Is the level of immigration at the moment acceptable to you?

The level of immigration in terms of free movement

is something that I support.

-The level...

-184,000 people.

..of immigration that's coming from outside the European Union...

184,000 people.

You know, this is not a great crisis, incidentally.

There is not a crisis out there.

There is a situation where...

we need to ensure we have people working in jobs, paying taxes,

to make sure we can cope with an ageing population.

There are now an estimated three million EU citizens

living in Britain.

The population of the UK is projected to rise

by more than four million in the next ten years.

Half of that directly because of immigration

both from the EU and the rest of the world.

The principle that the European Union's 500 million citizens

have freedom of movement

means that immigration is part of our referendum debate.

For some, it may well be the defining issue

when they decide whether to vote Leave or Remain.

So how can we assess its true impact on the UK?

One step closer to me, please.

Yeah.

Good, perfect.

Ieva Zu is originally from Lithuania

and now runs an online business in London

promoting Eastern European fashion designers.

London is the perfect place to be,

because it's a hub of fashion as well.

At least, I think so.

Ieva's partner, Paulus, enjoys a successful career in finance,

and they've started a family here.

A pin-up couple for those who think migration is good for our economy.

Is Britain going to be your home?

As far as we can see in the near future, that seems to be the case.

Alex was born here one year ago,

and right now, our world really revolves around him.

And do you feel that Britain is benefiting from your presence

in the same way that you've benefited from being here?

Well, I would hope so,

that we are, you know, adding value to the society,

and not just taking it out as a resident.

Yeah, not as a person who just lives here.

Coming from Lithuania, that was occupied by the Soviet Union,

you know, makes you really appreciate

the freedom that you have, you know?

In London, more than a third of the population

was born outside the UK.

It's the most economically successful part of the country,

crucial to the national economy.

Some say the two things are linked.

I do not think it is controversial to suggest

that the substantial success of London,

not just within the UK economy,

but perhaps within the global economy over the past 20 years,

is owed in large part to the relatively high levels of migration

we've had at all skill levels.

On the whole, European Union migrants

pay significantly more in taxes

than they take out in benefits or public services,

so either we, the rest of us, are paying lower taxes,

or we're getting better public services

than we otherwise would have.

Great. One more time, please. Look at me.

I would say free movement has been positive for this country.

This concept that, within those borders,

within that single market, you can move freely,

not just goods, not just capital, but labour as well,

is essential to actually making that operate.

And, yes, it's been good for this country.

Witness the fact, you know, the Leave side often say,

but Britain's the fifth biggest economy in the world.

Well, it wasn't when we went into the EU.

43 years' membership of the European Union

has helped us be the fifth biggest economy in the world.

Good morning, good morning!

Thank you.

Recent figures from the taxman support the assertion

that migration has been good for the economy.

In the year 2013 to 2014, European migrants like Ieva

contributed £2.5 billion more to British coffers

than they took out.

But many would argue that any economic benefits of migration

have not been spread around.

For the top 4% or 5%,

they get a gilded life of much cheaper nannies,

of their basement extensions in Notting Hill

done both more speedily and more cheaply

by Polish immigrant labour.

If you go outside London, you will see that the big, big problem there,

or one of the big problems, is low wages.

And those wages have been lowered time and time again

by cheap labour coming in from the continent.

PHONE RINGS

Hello, Angie speaking.

Angie Cook runs a transport business in Boston, Lincolnshire.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can do that for you.

She used to supply drivers for the haulage industry,

but says her company folded because of competition from a rival agency.

9am in the morning. Yeah, no worries at all.

'They were bringing the drivers over here by the busload.'

Bye.

If I'd have reduced the wages for the drivers, they would have left.

If I reduced the prices to the customer, I wasn't making a profit.

So where do you go?

And this was because someone had been across to the EU

and recruited all these drivers

and put them in cheap, low-cost housing

that our drivers and our workers cannot compete with.

Angie has started a new business, and she'll be voting for Brexit

because she's had enough of the EU and its supply of cheap workers.

Now, I don't know if I'm probably going to get in trouble

for saying this or not, I don't care.

I only employee English drivers.

Across Britain,

hundreds of thousands of European migrants are in low-paid work.

In sectors like agriculture and tourism,

they're a vital resource for many businesses.

It's very difficult to get any of the local people to do the job,

and it's a very high demanding job as well.

I started as a field operative.

Now in the wintertime, I'm a line operative in the factory.

And I have the chance to be promoted.

It's often said that Europe's migrants

will do work that British people won't,

at least not for a low wage.

One industry where they play an important role

is in caring for our ageing population.

You're going downstairs with me for a cup of tea in the garden.

One in five of adult care workers in England

are born outside the UK, rising to three in five in London.

The number recruited from EU countries has increased,

and there are now an estimated 80,000 EU citizens

working in the sector in England alone.

One of the consequences of us

increasing the proportion of young people

who go into higher education, for example,

is that there are less people available,

young people available, to do some of those low-skilled jobs.

People don't want to come out, having a degree,

and then end up working in the care sector, for example.

So those demands in the care sector

become ones that people from within Europe,

who are arguably low-skilled, come to fill.

Our economy needs the low-skilled or the unskilled people as well...

Well, I disagree with you.

-I fundamentally disagree with you.

-Fruit-picking, warehouses...

-No.

This has been an absolute nonsense in the UK economy for some time.

You get a lot of nonsense from businesses suddenly saying to you,

oh, we've tried to hire British workers, they just won't work.

When you investigate it, you find they didn't bother at all.

They were going outside

because they knew they could get a lower wage for these people

and thus, that would improve their profits.

I am fundamentally against that.

A Bank of England report found that, broadly,

migration has had a small negative impact on average British wages.

And, crucially, it concluded

that workers at the low-paid end of the spectrum

have been more affected.

As a Labour politician,

a depression of wages must be something that bothers you.

As a Labour politician and a trade unionist,

I have never, throughout my career,

blamed exploitation on the people who are being exploited.

The trade union movement in this country, I'm proud to say,

have not found scapegoats amongst immigrants.

They've tried to tackle the exploitation.

Now, the Bank of England found a very small - very small -

difference there.

It might not feel small to people who are at the receiving end of it.

Well, that's about where you set the minimum wage.

That's about issues like the Agency Workers Directive.

It's a protection that British workers have.

Most people coming in

who will undercut the wage of those who are working here

come in through agencies.

The Agency Workers Directive was a very important way

of stopping that through the European Union.

But this debate is about more than pay.

What will the other effects be

if our population really does increase by ten million

in the next 25 years, as projected?

The obvious place to start is with the sheer numbers.

Can Britain really support millions of newcomers?

Many are asking, where will they all live?

To meet the needs of the population increase

that is largely the result of that scale of immigration,

we would have to build

something like a quarter of a million houses a year.

We're building nothing like that.

It's a nonsense to suggest that

we're going to suddenly build that number of houses that are required,

be it in London or elsewhere throughout the country.

We're simply not going to do it.

So all that is going to mean is more and more of a shortage of housing,

largely because of the increase in our population

which, as I say, is largely driven by migration.

Most of that population growth will,

as it has done over the last 15 years,

probably occur in London and the rest of south-east England

where, of course, we know that we don't build enough houses.

The reason we don't build enough houses is, of course,

relatively little to do with immigration.

That reflects the dysfunctional nature of UK housing policy

going back for at least the past 20 or 30 years or so,

the failure of successive governments

simply to ensure that we build enough houses.

But there's no doubt this is a major challenge going forward.

So if we may have trouble housing a growing population,

what about the impact of migrants from the European Union

on public services like health and education?

To find out, I headed to the city

with one of the highest proportions of EU migrants

anywhere in the country.

Peterborough in Cambridge.

This part of Peterborough

has seen large numbers of people come in from Europe in recent years.

Portuguese, Poles, Lithuanians, all have made the city their home.

Welcome to what is appropriately named New England.

Many of the migrants come here to work in agriculture.

Many farmers believe they are essential to the local economy.

But what is the impact on local services?

This is Fulbridge Academy,

a primary school ranked outstanding by the schools regulator, Ofsted.

I've been at Fulbridge Academy for a very long time,

over 20 years here as head, so I've seen enormous changes.

-Where have you been?

-I've just been...

The main change, really, has been the numbers game.

It's been a huge increase in the number of children in the area.

It's a densely populated area anyway.

But with all the different nationalities come in,

that put enormous strain on school places.

And if you look at the paragraph that you have in front of you...

A quarter of this school's pupils come from Eastern Europe.

And like other parts of the UK with high number of migrants,

there is real competition for places.

But nationally, a different picture emerges.

We know that most children in Britain do, in fact,

get into the school they want.

84% of families in this country

get their first choice of secondary school, so it doesn't suggest

that there's a massive problem with school places.

No, but the recent report from the Education Department

made it very clear that they are having to build

significantly more numbers of schools

to deal with the plan and the forecast on migration

and the existing migration.

It's just what they've said.

And even beyond that, there is a strong perception and a recognition

that it does play a role for the British public.

So there is one way to deal with it. You can dismiss it.

You can say that 84% means not a problem to settle, not an issue,

they're talking nonsense.

In which case, this will just grow and grow as a concern,

because it's not being dealt with by British politicians.

But apart from potential competition for places,

what is the effect of an influx of migrants on standards?

We've certainly found that children from other nationalities,

particularly Eastern European communities,

are very keen on education,

very positive about their children doing well,

and many of the children become, by Year 6, when they leave us,

if we've had them for four or five years,

they can be some of our highest achieving children.

..I'd like to play A and E.

CHILD PLAYS NOTES

There isn't a huge amount of evidence

on how that's affecting what we care about at the end of the day,

which is the outcomes for pupils in UK schools.

OK...

But the couple of studies that have been done

were not able to identify any negative impact.

They suggested that students are doing just as well

regardless of whether there are new migrants coming into those schools.

Another vital service always close to voters' hearts is the NHS.

We all know the huge pressures the system is under.

What will happen if the population increases as projected?

In Peterborough, doctors are feeling the strain

of treating migrant workers and their families.

We do have a large number

relative to other parts of the country

in houses of multiple occupancy, so several families in one house.

You know, sometimes a family in one room.

And, as I say, the actual quality of the housing

is often, you know, poor.

So there are houses round here that are very damp.

That in itself causes the high risk

of things like respiratory infections.

We do find that whole families and households

present with infections particularly.

-Including the children?

-Absolutely.

So, again, if you look at the A&E figures for our local hospital,

they're high particularly for respiratory infections

and in the younger group.

Do you therefore see migration

as an added pressure on the service you can offer as a local GP?

Yes, absolutely definitely.

And I think the number of challenges for me,

since working in Peterborough, is unbelievable, actually.

So I think language,

the whole difference in health beliefs and behaviour

and, actually, the higher sort of prevalence of illnesses

related to poverty and difficult housing conditions

would be, you know, three of the biggest issues.

With such a high concentration of migrants,

Peterborough is far from typical.

Nationally, the picture is mixed.

Most migrants are young,

so they use health services much less than average.

For the same reason, they have more children,

so maternity units can face extra pressure.

But there is something missing in the argument you often hear

about migration putting pressure on public services as a whole.

Most of the arrivals from the EU are working and paying taxes.

Surely that extra money

should help pay for extra demand on hospitals and schools.

Shouldn't see a big impact on services overall.

There may be some localised pressures for particular areas

if there are unexpected increases in demand.

There is also another factor that's actually very difficult to quantify,

which is the contributions of EU migrants

as workers in the health service.

So, for example, last year,

about 12% of newly recruited nurses working in the UK

were born in EU countries,

so they're making up a significant share of that workforce.

Something is going wrong in the way that we are spending

what we get in income tax, for example, from these EU migrants.

The Revenue & Customs said recently

that EU migrants pay about £3 billion a year in taxes.

Is it getting lost somewhere?

Why is it that we have the effect on services you're talking about?

It's a very narrow way of looking at it.

It's not about saying it's OK because someone pays taxes,

so that's fine, you know, because it's not the sole issue.

The issue I come back to is about human beings.

We tend to put these things into just the money,

but it's human beings,

and the nature and the scale of that immigration

puts pressure on people in the way that they assimilate with people

who, often, they are not speaking English as a first language,

often bringing their kids over...

That makes the British people uncomfortable in many places

because it is on a scale that they would otherwise not have expected.

We expect a lot from people who live in communities

and have to accommodate this, have to live with it,

have to sort out their schooling,

many people competing for jobs with them.

I think, therefore, controlling the scale of that migration

is important so that they have time to be able to get to terms with that

without feeling as though this is a problem for them.

When we talk about migration into Britain,

the debate is rarely just about the numbers

or about the pressures of a growing population.

It's often been linked to something else, something emotive,

something that reverberates across the UK -

who gets what from the benefit system?

Morning, all. Good morning, good morning.

Good morning.

In the build-up to the referendum,

David Cameron spent months touring around Europe

renegotiating our membership of the EU...

Are we on the other side?

..getting, he claimed, a better deal for Britain

that would persuade us to stay.

I'll be battling for Britain.

If we can get a good deal, I'll take that deal.

But I will not take a deal that doesn't meet what we need.

Top of the British list

was putting a stop to so-called benefits tourism.

This deal has delivered on the commitments I made

at the beginning of this renegotiation process.

There will be tough new restrictions

on access to our welfare system for EU migrants.

No more something for nothing.

The Prime Minister's deal

involved partial restrictions to child benefit

as well as a four-year so-called break

on migrants' ability to claim in work benefits.

-MAN:

-Goodnight, Dave. Goodnight.

Many were sceptical about the chances of this

reducing the numbers.

We had this somewhat bizarre argument

during the renegotiation with Brussels that, again,

the country can control net migration

by restricting the amount of welfare for EU migrant workers,

as if Bulgarians, Romanians and Poles

are going through the welfare policies of European states

and are adjusting their plans accordingly.

Now the Vote Leave campaigners,

even those who were part of Cameron's government,

seem to want to distance themselves from the whole issue.

Is there such a thing in your view as benefit tourism from the EU?

I think, if I'm honest about it, I think there may be.

It's very difficult to nail down the figures in this.

I mean, I did see somebody say that most people in Eastern Europe

didn't actually know what the benefits were here.

So I'm a little ambivalent about this one.

Because you sounded pretty convinced about it last year

when you said that, you know, benefit tourism

was a nut that you wanted to crack.

Yes, I think for those that do come over...

I've never said they're a vast number.

If the question is, do I think that it is a huge driver

for people coming over here, the answer's categorically not.

So it turned out to be not such a large nut...?

Well, it's a nut in the sense

of having people over here collecting benefits,

in a certain degree, particularly things like family benefits,

which struck me as absurd.

But as I said at the time, this is AN issue, it's not THE issue.

In fact, EU migrants are less likely than UK nationals

to claim unemployment benefit, housing benefit, tax credits...

I don't...resile from that at all. That's probably true.

Attitudes to immigration vary across the country,

including north of the border.

I've come to one part of the UK where, for some migrants at least,

the welcome mat has been well and truly laid out.

The party in government here is a rarity in British politics.

One that has campaigned for more immigration.

Scotland's free university education

is a huge pull for young people from across the EU.

Like these Edinburgh University students from Poland and Slovakia.

And immigration is perceived less negatively in Scotland

than other parts of the UK.

Whoo!

Do you feel welcome here?

Yeah, I feel great.

Especially here in Edinburgh, I feel really welcome.

I met lots of great friends, both Scottish and international.

So, yeah, I feel really...

really welcome and comfortable here in Scotland.

So, why the warm welcome?

As its population ages, Scotland is simply said to need more people,

particularly more people of working age.

The Scottish government and the Treasury believe

that that may only be fully achievable

through an influx of migrants.

The Scottish National Party

has been enthusiastic about the benefits of immigration

and free movement of people in the European Union.

Scotland's a country that's benefited

from immigration over the years.

I think about Polish communities who've made their home here,

Irish communities,

English people have come up, and people from across Europe.

One thing I think that's lacking from the debate a little bit

is just a general acceptance that immigration is a good thing,

and our country's the richer,

socially and economically, because of immigration.

And let's not forget that

if you were to take every EU migrant out of the workforce,

the Chancellor would be left with an enormous black hole in the Treasury,

given the amount that they make up

in terms of their net contribution to our finances.

And Eastern European immigration,

or immigration from other parts of the EU,

would be a big part of what you want?

Of course, that's freedom of movement, isn't it?

It's something in this European debate I think we lose sometimes.

Freedom of movement works both ways.

People from the UK benefit as much as people from elsewhere in Europe.

Freedom of movement is a two-way process.

The freedom to live and work in any member state

is a fundamental right of EU citizens.

-RATTLING

-What is it?

-What, the rattle?

Not sure yet.

It's something that has changed John and Irene's lives.

Like more than a million other Britons,

they live elsewhere in the European Union.

Can't get this to work.

-You need a woman's touch.

-Go on, then.

The couple run a go-karting business on the Spanish island of Lanzarote.

I'm an Barnsley ex-miner.

My dad was a miner, and my grandad before him.

First holiday I ever came on abroad was to Lanzarote

when I were a coal miner,

and I fell in love with the place then,

and that became my dream, to come and live in Lanzarote.

We've got a great set of boys,

and we don't have a big turnover of staff

because it's a boy's dream, isn't it, this job?

So it's the nearest thing to a nine to five,

but, yeah, great.

And I'm the only girl.

But they all do as they're told!

SHE LAUGHS

John and Irene are worried about the referendum.

Their business relies on free trade imports from the UK.

If Britain leaves the EU,

they're concerned about the possibility of paying tariffs.

We're definitely going to vote. We discussed it at length.

We can vote in general elections, but we never do.

We feel, because we're not living in the UK any more,

that, really, we don't feel we should do that.

But this EU referendum is obviously a lot different,

because it will affect us.

We're immigrants, in effect, in this country,

and, obviously, with regard to the business,

we have a lot of suppliers that come from the UK

and, obviously, any trade agreement that ceases

would affect this business.

So we're looking at it very closely.

The EU is a big, big thing, isn't it, darling, for us at the minute?

-It's a big unknown, a big worry.

-It's a very big unknown.

It's not just those of working age

who've taken advantage of free movement.

It's the best thing we ever did.

Yeah, by coming here, quite honestly,

I think Tony wouldn't have been so healthy.

At the other end of the island,

Tony and Robina are among the 400,000 British pensioners

living elsewhere in the EU.

Do you want some olives in there?

-Yeah.

-Yeah?

-Why not?

As EU pensioners,

they are entitled to the same health care they would get at home.

That needs a little bit of this.

They can use all the local services

and their health care bill is effectively picked up

by the British taxpayer.

Yummy!

-Wonderful. And the health care here is...

-Excellent.

..total. It's very, very good.

If you have something more serious, say a heart condition,

you'd go to Las Palmas...

And Tony went to Las Palmas, he had a small problem,

went to Las Palmas, they paid for us to fly there.

They put me in a hotel.

All free. Everything.

And they looked after Tony extremely well.

You couldn't have faulted it. It was excellent service.

Tony and Robina also have children

living and working across the European Union.

For their family, Europe's free movement of people is a big plus.

But they do understand why some back home would want to vote to leave.

Because I live here,

and I've seen this island benefit totally from the EU,

and it's great.

But if I lived in England...

..it might be a different story.

You know, I think that...

I think I would probably go the other way.

But living here,

I can't fault it,

because they get so much, you know.

We get so much, you know. Not they - we.

We get so much from it!

SHOUTING

It's a long way from Lanzarote

to the chaos that's been seen on some of Europe's borders.

-REPORTER:

-Today, on a European border, children were teargassed.

But Europe has been rocked

by the huge numbers of refugees and migrants

entering from Turkey and North Africa.

Germany alone last year registered over a million new arrivals.

It's been controversial across the continent.

Every time that this fantasy land of integration

that Germany believes it can foster

with migrants from the Middle East and North Africa...

falls down into a chaos of sexual assaults, robberies and violence,

every time that is reported,

every time the security chiefs tell us

that for every 200 migrants coming here,

one will be a supporter of Isis...

every time that happens

then the vote to leave the EU goes up a little bit.

Several EU countries have agreed to take large numbers of refugees.

To be clear, the UK has said that it won't be part of that system

and that...there's no reason why that would change.

So the UK, Denmark and Ireland are not part of that allocation.

What the UK has said that it will do instead

is to offer up 20,000 places

to people who have not yet come to Europe,

so from camps in Jordan and Lebanon in particular,

and that they will come in quite gradually over a five-year period.

So although Britain is part of the European Union currently,

what we can see from that is that, actually,

the UK has been able to exert, rightly or wrongly,

quite a lot of control.

It's places like this, the borders of our island nation,

that have become increasingly linked with the question of EU immigration.

The Leavers say it's simple.

Outside the EU, we would have control,

the ability to exclude people from the country.

The Remainers say we already have control.

Both argue that their vision makes us more secure.

Following the terrible attacks in Paris and Brussels,

many fear that Britain, too, is vulnerable.

Once you're a citizen of the European Union,

it is incredibly difficult for us to exclude somebody in that case

because we have to be able to demonstrate,

peradventure to the court,

that we are seeing something of a direct threat.

So we don't have that control, and that may seem to you to be marginal,

but that marginal may be the difference

in being able to say to somebody we just don't want them here.

No-one waltzes into this country without showing their passport,

so it's not an open-door policy.

We refuse around about 1,000, 2,000 a year of people

because we think they're either a danger...

It's a tiny fraction of the overall numbers of EU citizens...

Yeah, but it's indicative of the fact

that you cannot just come to this country.

We shouldn't have an anything goes policy,

and we don't have an anything goes policy.

ACCORDION MUSIC PLAYS

INAUDIBLE

However we vote in the referendum,

it's clear that migration from Europe

has already brought great change.

This is Days Of Poland,

the biggest Eastern European festival in Britain.

This year, it attracted thousands of visitors.

A festival on this scale would have been hard to imagine

just a decade ago.

But since then, the Polish population has grown tenfold.

There are now around 800,000 Poles living in the UK.

While many are recent arrivals, some have been here for decades

and are completely integrated into British society.

I came to England when I was three months old.

And yet these Polish traditions, Polish culture,

obviously very important to you.

Very important to me.

I'm proud to be British, I love living in England,

and I love so much about England,

I wouldn't dream of living anywhere else,

and I love being Polish.

There's no doubt that free movement of labour

has been great for many Eastern Europeans.

And some would argue

there's been little negative impact on our communities.

SHE SPEAKS IN HER OWN LANGUAGE

If you look at the data,

if you look at the results of the community cohesion survey,

the vast majority of English people still think that

the place where they live is a place where people get on pretty well,

a place where there are high levels of social cohesion,

however you want to define it.

CHOIR SINGS

Back in Peterborough, 11-year-old Agata is a chorister

at a prestigious Church Of England school.

She came to live here as a baby

when her Polish parents decided to settle in Britain.

Yeah, we like, also, international food.

'Today, the whole family are British citizens.'

Chicken korma...

Agata and her parents, Grazyna and Tomas,

feel they are well integrated, not least with the language.

Um...

I'd been living for 30 years in Poland.

For me, it's definitely second language.

For her, it's first language. It's a big difference between us.

She has got schooling, she's been raised here.

And when people ask you where are you from, what do you say?

I just say I'm from Poland.

And... Yeah, I...

For about three years, some people didn't know I was born in Poland.

Sometimes they asked where I was born, and I say, "In Poland."

They just think, "Oh, really?!" But they don't believe me.

-Because you sound just like them.

-I think so, yeah.

What would you say to someone

who is going to vote for the UK to leave the European Union?

Crazy.

I just think... It is... For me, it's...

People don't realise how many benefits we've got

staying in the EU.

So many small countries in unity, there is our strength.

I want to be welcoming to all people from all nationalities,

but there is an issue, if you let people come in,

you know, the growing numbers that there are,

at a scale which is unprecedented,

my argument is that it therefore puts pressure on people.

The public knows a lot better than the BBC does about immigration

and has a far better grip of the subject.

And they can see that Polish people...

There's no cultural problem.

There is not the remotest cultural problem at all.

There is an economic problem, and they wish it would stop,

because it harms their income.

You can even see negative perceptions

in communities established by previous phases of immigration.

This is Brixton in south London.

Don't get me wrong, Mishal. I do support migration to an extent.

But my concern is that there has to be some control

as to how much we can realistically accept

without causing any particular damage to the system.

We welcome them, but we have to have a cap

or else we're going to have such an influx that we can't manage.

I saw some statistics the other day,

and the majority of these people are coming here to work.

It does affect our housing, but then why aren't we building houses?

We didn't have enough houses for our own people.

What are the important issues for you?

It's jobs

and, of course, also the issue about immigration

and a whole lot of people coming here

and basically not working, feeding off the benefit system.

-So that's a big issue.

-Yeah, it is.

-So...

-Is it an issue that would make you vote to leave?

-For me, yes, maybe.

-Yeah, of course it will be.

There are a lot of people here now, so...

If we be by ourselves, I think it will be much better.

Too many migrants.

There's no doubt that immigration is a complicated

and an emotive issue.

Survey after survey has shown that most people in Britain

favour a reduction in the numbers coming in.

Leaving the EU could lower those numbers,

although it's important to remember

that around half of all net migration

has nothing to do with the EU.

Those who want us to stay in

say that we'd be mad to take the economic risk of leaving

just to reduce immigration.

-Vote Leave.

-Vote Leave.

-Vote Leave.

-Vote Leave.

It's an argument playing out among the politicians...

Good. Good.

You will fundamentally damage our economy.

That cannot be the right way of controlling immigration.

You have absolutely no way of stopping it.

..and on the streets.

I think two things will decide the referendum.

Leaving the EU is a one-way ticket to a poorer Britain.

One is if people think they're going to be skint

as a consequence of us leaving the European Union.

Knickers to the pessimists! How about that?

The other is

if there may be a way to address our immigration problem

by leaving the EU.

There are good ways of controlling migration

and there are bad ways.

A good way is doing what I did in my renegotiation.

Isis say they will use this migrant crisis

to flood the continent with their jihadi fighters.

I suggest we take them seriously.

In recent weeks, the rhetoric on immigration has been stepped up.

It is so vital that on June 23rd

we do exactly what it says over there

and we take back control of our immigration system.

I was brought up in the slums of Notting Hill

when Oswald Mosley was on the street corner

saying, "Your jobs are being taken by Jamaicans".

I lived in Slough for many years with a big Asian population

where people said, "These people are taking your jobs".

Now all of those communities have changed. They've all changed.

And there are a very small number of people who want all of that back

to some sepia-tinted world of the early '50s that doesn't exist.

Border control isn't about saying no to migration.

It's about saying no to just open-ended migration

that suits people who pay low wages.

My kind of idea about migration is to say,

what does Britain actually need? Do we need skills?

Do we need software engineers coming from India?

Absolutely, if they're there and they're bright,

we don't have enough here, we want to get more trained.

Do we need more people to teach people software here? Yes.

I want to balance this out.

This is not an anti-migration.

This is an anti-uncontrolled migration.

We are not going to stop...

people moving around the globe by leaving the EU.

This suggestion that I've heard all my life from various people

that, you know, you use immigration to frighten people...

It's always been a very potent political weapon throughout my life.

It's a real concern for voters.

It's a concern for voters.

It's also a potent political weapon for some politicians.

For now, the politicians hold the floor.

But soon it will be your turn to cast your vote.

Immigration is just one issue

in Britain's often complex relationship with Europe.

But how you feel about it may decide whether you think

Britain should stay in or leave the European Union.