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Getting to grips with population
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Although the new measures – a population register, registration cards and simplified residential categories – should be in place by April, Chief Minister Ian Gorst has signalled that further action on the immigration front is desirable.
No doubt responding to popular concerns emphatically revealed in the recent Jersey Social Survey, he will oversee a consultation on population in the mould of the ‘Imagine Jersey’ exercise conducted in 2007. The consultation will be followed by a States debate before the end of the year.
These initiatives will be widely welcomed – as they should be. Time and again excessive immigration has emerged as a matter of major concern to Islanders. Although there is acceptance that our industries must have access to the manpower that will permit them to thrive and to generate the wealth that will pay for public services, there is also realisation that if too many people are allowed to move in and settle there will be unacceptable pressures on infrastructure and the environment.
Unaccountably, successive administrations have fought shy of debating this big issue among all big issues on the floor of the House. It is also the case that over the past decade, measures and supposed limits which have been at the core of immigration policy have been lamentably ineffective – to the extent that the actual rate of immigration has been double the target.
Meanwhile, although he has not said as much, it seems that Senator Gorst is re-endorsing the idea of a cap on population. During his 2011 election campaign, he said that the States should set a limit of 100,000.
That limit might no longer feature in the Senator’s thinking – not least because the latest Census indicated that the population was already approaching 98,000 – but Assistant Chief Minister Paul Routier has confirmed that both a cap and an open-door policy are on the table for discussion.
It remains to be seen how effective the new measures scheduled for April will be and what sort of new ideas, if any, emerge from the consultation. That said, Senator Gorst is to be congratulated for responding to public concerns and for being willing to deal with a matter of extreme importance that his predecessors were so eager to keep at arm’s length.
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