POLLY TOYNBEE: "WHY CAN'T OUR P0LITICIANS ADMIT THE PROBLEMS OF IMMIGRATION?"

Our borders are porous. Why can't our politicians admit the problems of immigration?

Migrant numbers matter. They depress wages and determine where state funds go. This can only be addressed with honesty

• POLLY TOYNBEE
  

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What will be the abiding legacies of Labour's era? What will last? Governments list those things that they planned and politicked for, but more enduring may be the shadow of things over which governments seem powerless.

This week the immigration figures were a reminder of that helplessness. How did it happen that the last decade saw the greatest inward migration the country has ever known – whichever estimates you choose? Unplanned, unwilled and only slightly controlled, "it just happened" is all you can get from experts and officials. Labour tried hard to prevent it, setting targets, being tough, angrily denouncing the wretched Home Office as "unfit for purpose". But the truth is more alarming – a lot of things these days seem beyond the power or nerve of government. No wonder trust in politics falls when grandiose promises, targets and "world class" boasting is matched by impotence. How odd that a whole new paranoid fear of the big state springs up during the time it becomes clear that Big Brother is more mouth than trousers.

People want government to do more on most things – controlling immigration, preventing globalisation stealing away jobs to China, banning obscenely high pay. This week a Commons committee warns that the government still can't make absent fathers pay for their children. A Home Office-commissioned report shows no one can stop the damage done to girls, driving them to ­anorexia and depression for not matching airbrushed, breast-implanted perfection, while boys think mobile-phone porn is real life. But the state can't liberate unhappy e-slaves from 24-hour email inboxes, nor stop the bullying blogosphere turning national discourse nastier. Yet governmental incapacity to do many things people care about will not deter electioneering filled with extravagant promises on lesser matters amid bluster on the impossibles.

Controlling the borders is a first duty of government. Sudden and unexpected immigration has abruptly changed the nature of some communities and there is no point pretending it can or will be reversed. With a backlog of 250,000 asylum cases and more building up, the UK Borders Agency can still only process less than half its target applications a month. Even then, sending back failed asylum seekers is often impossible. Applications are slowing – but they ebb and flow with wars, since only extreme conditions eject people from their homelands. Unresolved cases can stay for up to eight years, although how they survive on £42.16 a week while banned from working is a mystery.

They join those other mysteries: how many illegals are there, how many bogus students, or visitors who have overstayed their visas? Travel is cheap, we encourage tourism, and all colleges compete fiercely to attract fee-paying foreign students. So although visas are assiduously denied to many, the uncomfortable truth is that our borders are quite porous and always will be.

There is no sign that politicians are ready to admit that reality, and you can see why not – a case this week aroused public wrath as the European court ordered a Somali mother and her four children to be housed by her local authority. This test case will precipitate many others, says her lawyer, though councils can still tip housing allocations in favour of locals by allowing more points to longest inhabitants in the district. But the case was prime BNP ammunition – a toxic combination of an African family and faceless Brussels bureaucrats. Immigration is what most threatens the popularity of the EU right across Europe.

Did the government will this? Of course not, despite a Tory myth that Labour wanted to encourage multiculturalism or were gerrymandering to import Labour voters. Yet the Treasury and Business department did celebrate it, Brown boasting frequently of "low wage inflation growth" and a "flexible workforce". Foreigners willing to work harder for less do hold down pay, especially in the care and hospitality sectors still not covered by the Gangmasters Act. Not until reaching No 10 did Brown switch to "British jobs for British workers".

Has immigration been good for Britain? That depends on who you are. Brown's Treasury boasted that migrants boosted GDP – without counting whether they boosted GDP per capita. Nor does rising GDP show who wins and who loses in so unequal a country. It's wonderful for employers and the affluent wanting cheap nannies, cleaners and plumbers – bad for the unemployed, many of whom would have been skilled-up for the jobs otherwise. Evan Davis's BBC film reporting on layabouts in Wisbech failing to turn up or work hard when offered the migrants' jobs exposed an unmotivated won't-work residue of the long-term unemployed. However, such documentaries often reveal more about the insouciant willingness of the self-selected stupid to be filmed behaving badly.

Migrant numbers matter, as they determine where state funds flow. Newham council is leading a protest against faulty ONS sums, expecting next year's census to miscount. A recent rehearsal in the borough for what will be an all-postal census had only a 26% response to a very long form: how do you count non-English speakers in multi-occupation flats, some of dubious legality? The ONS claims Newham's population is falling: if so, Newham asks, how come the electoral register is rising and they had to add 15 new classrooms this year, while GP registers are bursting?

Research for the London GLA finds maybe a million illegals nationally: they are inevitably exploited and depress wages for others. Newham wants the power to police employers paying under the minimum wage, collecting the £10,000 fines themselves. "We know where to look," they say, this month leading the Border Agency to close down three fried chicken shops paying illegal workers under a pound an hour.

Chasing after this growing limbo of lost people is forlorn work. The only answer is honesty about government powerlessness. The campaign Strangers into Citizens wants an "earned" amnesty for illegals after five years: if two years after emerging to register they are in work and speak English, they would earn citizenship and pay tax. The truth is that immigration will continue, whatever anyone does. Will we hear that spoken on the campaign trail? No, just more airy promising of the impossible.