I was born here – but I am, not to put too fine a point on it, mostly an immigrant

Because it’s a mighty word, immigration. A high-explosive bunker-busting cruise missile of a word, a heat-seeking and armour-piercing kind of word, a word to strike fear and dread in the hearts and minds of normal people.

And it’s the one common topic that binds every godawful, no-hoper politician in the world to each other – nutcases around the world harbour their hopes of wire fences along the Mexican border, British jobs for British workers, and here? Well…

The first thing that you need to know about immigration in Jersey is that there’s nothing we can do about it, nothing at all. That’s not a comment on the current rules, the Customs department or the way businesses recruit.

It’s just a fact – a feature of our half-in, half-out deals with the UK and the EU is that in return for Islanders getting free movement there, they get free movement here.

And so the policy of successive States Chambers (including this one) has been to tackle the issue not at the supply end, but at the demand end – to put it another way, we restrict access to jobs and to housing, hoping that, by doing so, we make life in Jersey less attractive to immigrants.

It’s up to you to decide whether that’s been a successful system or not. What’s important is the first bit – there’s nothing we can do.

You might come to the conclusion, therefore, that the target set by the States in the Strategic Plan of an additional 150 heads of household (a measure that appears to have been designed purely to cloud the issue) or 325 people was utterly arbitrary. It’s a target set in the virtual absence of any authority to effect its success – a bit like the States committing to reaching a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict by the first Wednesday in October.

Against that backdrop, the revelation that the target has been almost doubled over the last five years to reach an average influx of around 640 people is scarcely surprising. It’s also scarcely a revelation.

The chairman of the Scrutiny panel looking into the new monitoring system that comes to the States this week hit the nail squarely on the head when she said: ‘We have no means of controlling the numbers coming in, so how are we going to meet the targets?’

As if to restore the general view of the efficiency and productivity of the whole Scrutiny process, the panel also managed to achieve some pretty spectacular point-missing when they called for a review of ‘tighter border controls’, as if that could be achieved in the absence of a) any border controls to start with, or b) any way of making them tighter, even if we had any.

And yet, none of that is the real point at play here.

To reach that point I have to first declare an interest, which is to say this – I am harbouring a secret. Flying under false colours.

I am, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty much mostly an immigrant.

I was born here, I have a strangely-spelt authentic Jersey name complete with two (count ’em, two!) accents, and I’m stuck firmly to the bottom rung of the housing ladder…you’d have a bit of an educated guess and say you’ve got a fair idea where I am on immigration, right?

Wrong. I’m 50% English, 25% New Zealand and 25% Jersey – I’d say that I’m as much of an immigrant as the next man, except that I can’t because I’m sitting in the newsroom at the moment, and of the five people on my desk, I’m the only one born here (although two of my neighbours were educated here, and one of them is as Jersey as me).

And that’s the real point in all of this. I’m not that unusual, and nor are the people on my desk.

Of our 53 States Members, at least 14 were not born here and another half-dozen or so would find themselves spouseless if all non-Jersey-born people were transported out of the Island tomorrow.

It’ll be interesting to hear what those Members have to say over the next few days about immigration and about numbers – but what will be more interesting, much more interesting, will be hearing exactly what, and how, those who advocate tighter controls envisage this happening.

Not just glibly mumbling something about ‘it’s completely out of control’ or ‘work permits’ or ‘points system’ – but a serious explanation of how all that will be achieved against a backdrop that allows free movement from the UK and EU.

A closing point. Half a century ago the population of this Island was marginally under 60,000. Whichever unfortunate soul was doing my job back then will, no doubt, have been writing stories about population limits and immigration controls, with all the usual dire warnings about what’s going to happen to our jobs, our homes, our fields and our womenfolk. They all still look pretty good to me.