Why immigration has the effect of stifling technological development in Britain

Unlimited cheap labour discourages innovation and the search for more efficient ways of undertaking routine manual work

It is often asserted that Britain requires ever greater numbers of immigrants due to its ‘ageing population’; the notion that we need active young people to come here to pick fruit, deliver parcels, work in care homes, and take up employment as baristas in coffee bars—all helping to keep the nation running smoothly and efficiently. This distorted perspective is driving up the population of Britain by somewhere in the region of half a million people every year.

The ready availability of inexpensive labour is exceedingly attractive for some employers, but it is ultimately ruinous for the nation's economic health and future development. At first sight, this statement may appear strange. What possible disadvantage could there be to having a virtually unlimited workforce whose wages do not place too much of a strain upon the finances of your business? Surely, this situation will benefit both individual companies and also stimulate the country’s economy? It is this horribly short-sighted attitude which currently holds sway.

To see the ill effects of abundant and cheap labour, one only has to look to the logical extension of this state of affairs; an economic system where workers are literally free. In the second half of the nineteenth century, two parts of the world in particular experienced the dire consequences of this. In the 1860s, Imperial Russia and the southern states of the United States of America both fell behind the progress of their neighbouring territories, having failed to keep up with the Industrial Revolution. In the South, agriculture was wholly dependent upon the free labour of slaves, and in Russia, serfs fulfilled a similar role, although they were bound to the land and could not be sold separately from it. While other European countries mechanised and industrialised, Russia lagged behind, and in the US slave states, there was no impetus to invent labour-saving devices. If cotton was to be picked, there were plenty of slaves to undertake the task; who needed machinery?

In countries like Britain, where wages had to be paid to farm labourers, there was an incentive to make agricultural work more efficient through the use of steam-powered machinery. By the 1860s, steam ploughing had become a common practice on larger farms, greatly accelerating the process and lowering costs compared to work that relied solely on manpower and horses. Similar principles were adopted for harvesting crops. At one time, it was an incredibly labour-intensive task requiring multiple people using sickles or scythes; however, technology allowed for the invention of the modern combine harvester, which allows a single worker to harvest an entire field with no more effort than driving his car.

Of course, in 1860, the mechanisation or industrialisation of farming was unlikely to take hold in Russia or the American Deep South, as the difficulty of farming could be resolved with the application of more manpower. There was no need to develop steam ploughs and so on, all one needed was to summon more slaves or serfs to the fields. This frame of mind reaches its logical conclusion when the workforce requires no wages at all. By contrast, in places where wages were high and manpower scarce, the need to create new machinery arose. It was this of course which brought about the Industrial Revolution in the first place.

How does this general principle apply in the case of Britain? To illustrate this, one can look at an example of the tension between automation and manpower in action. In the year 2000, there were roughly 9,000 automated car washes in Britain, the kind where a car is washed by sophisticated machinery. Fifteen years later, the number of such car washes had halved. This was because it was cheaper to pay a group of Eastern Europeans with buckets and sponges to wash a car, rather than to patronise one of the more expensive, automatic car-washing machines. This shows with great clarity the role of cheap and readily available labour in suppressing innovation and stifling new developments in technology. Automation was more than capable of cleaning cars and could have been further refined. Instead, because it was cheaper, the manual form flourished instead. Immigration in this case had prevented progress.

It is plain to see that this is a widespread effect. We are assured that without importing many foreign workers, it would be impossible to collect fruit in East Anglia. When we belonged to the European Union, foreign workers flocked to Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire and settled. This, it was said, was vital for agriculture in the area. This brings to mind the cotton picking of the pre-Civil War United States. This work involved many slaves, systematically plucking the cotton from bushes and placing it in sacks over their shoulders. Nowadays, one man can do this with a cotton harvesting machine, yet it is the migrant labour alternative that is preferred.

In Britain today, the solution to picking large amounts of fruit efficiently is to fly in Romanians to help; however, other countries are investing in automated systems using robotics and AI to simplify the process, much like using a combine harvester. Unfortunately, in this country, where reliance on cheap workers is high, very few feel inclined to invest in research of this kind, like is being done in the United States. As such, immigration cannot be viewed as a solution to the problem; it is the problem itself. This isn't exclusive to the agricultural sector, however, as the same can be said about hospital nurses and staff in care homes for the elderly.

The legend is that due to this country’s ageing population, we will need a lot of Filipino nurses to look after all those old folk who are ill or incapable of living independently. This too is causing us to neglect exciting new developments, such as employing remote sensors and AI. The National Health Service is well aware that much of the routine work undertaken by nurses in hospitals, things such as taking pulses, measuring blood pressure, checking oxygen saturation levels and so on, can be done automatically without any human involvement at all. Then too, a recent study in the United States found that the AI system ChatGPT was more empathetic and provided better medical advice than human doctors. While the idea of a ‘virtual ward’ has been floated, there does not seem to be any urgency to press ahead with implementing such medical care. The primary reason for this is the expensive cost of research and development, and it is easier in the short term to continue paying nurses and care workers to do such routine work. Other countries though are keen to embrace such new opportunities.

Importing unlimited numbers of cheap, foreign workers isn't the solution to the problems this country is facing, whether in agriculture or medical care. It is the problem. Just like in the antebellum South of the United States, an addiction to cheap labour causes people to view increased manpower as the solution to any problem. Thus, industrialisation, mechanisation, and automation become irrelevant. In Britain, this outdated mindset is inhibiting progress. In some ways, it is reminiscent of the decline of the car industry in this country. In the 1970s, while Japan was automating the conveyor belts and assembly lines in their factories, Britain had many men employed in a manner that seemed to provide ample employment. However, it was automation and innovation that ultimately won.

The dependence on cheap labour imported through immigration in Britain discourages invention and exploration of new ways to accomplish routine work, whether in hospitals, farms or other settings. The suggestion that this is necessary due to an ageing population is a red herring. Japan, which also has an ageing population, manages very well without large-scale immigration. They do this by falling back on their own resources and devising new and ingenious methods to cope with the problem. If we do not do the same here, we risk falling behind the rest of the world and finding ourselves in the same position as Tsarist Russia or the southern states of America in the mid-19th century—a scenario we should strive to avoid.