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Aiming at twin targets
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To an encouraging degree, therefore, Chief Minister Ian Gorst is in tune with the populace when, as reported this week, he places both of those matters high on his list of priorities for the new year. In expressing the hope that some kind of recovery will be seen across all sectors of the economy and urging his States colleagues on to a final pre-election push in the multiple job creation initiatives already under way, Senator Gorst should find himself preaching to the converted. Few, if any, would argue with the proposition that the fullest possible employment is socially as well as economically desirable and that an accelerating reduction in the current unprecedented level of joblessness must be Jersey’s primary target.
Things are less clear-cut when it comes to the other big issue, however. Under constant pressure from the business community to ease restrictions on immigration, the Council of Ministers have shown themselves to be at best ambivalent about the more popular view that there must eventually be some kind of limit on the numbers of people who can be squeezed into a 45-sq mile island. Simple logic suggests that the inevitable consequence of the current laissez-faire approach will be traffic gridlock, overwhelmed public services and infrastructure, loss of countryside and self-defeating degradation of the quality of life for all of us.
There is, of course, no simple solution to the problem of balancing the needs of the economy with those of the community, but 2014 needs to be the year when politicians finally get to grips with immigration after years of ducking the issue, obscuring it with bureaucratic pseudo-science or simply hoping that market forces will prevail and make it go away.
In the current circumstances, they could begin by insisting on a more rigorous examination of the link between an every-growing population – now something like double its size of 60 years ago – and record unemployment. Training and education are the obvious keys to ensuring that more jobs can be filled by established Island residents, thus reducing the flow of newcomers, but there is also a need for far clearer acknowledgment that unbridled population growth cannot be the answer to anything.
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