来源：《卫报》
原文刊登日期：2023年5月25日
No government statistic showing an increase of 24% in a single year can be ignored. This will certainly not be the fate of the news from the Office for National Statistics on Thursday that net migration to the United Kingdom has risen from 488,000 in 2021 to 606,000 in 2022. The new figure is nearly double the 2018 level, which itself led the Conservative party to pledge, in its 2019 general election manifesto, that net migration would be reduced during the current parliament.
没有哪个一年内增长24%的政府统计数据是可以忽略的。但这当然不会是英国国家统计局周四发布的消息的命运。此消息称，英国的净移民人数已从2021年的48.8万人增加到2022年的60.6万人。这一新数字几乎是2018年水平的两倍，而2018年的移民数据导致保守党在2019年大选宣言中承诺，在本届议会期间将减少净移民数量。
As a broken pledge and a policy failure this takes some beating. But it is par for the course. The 2019 pledge is one of a series of unrealisable and often cruelly deceitful migration promises made by the Conservatives in the past 20 years. Thursday’s repeated pledge to bring the numbers down shows how little has changed.
破碎的承诺和政策的失败需要一些打击。但这是意料之中的事。2019年的承诺是保守党在过去20年里做出的一系列无法实现、往往是残酷欺骗的移民承诺之一。周四一再承诺要降低移民数字，这表明保守党几乎没有改变。
These pledges are aimed at and reflect the Tory party more than the country. They pander to the mistaken view that migration to Britain is uniquely high. All recycle the mischievous simplicity that migration can be purged from an interconnected world. All are fired by the misplaced belief that migration is invariably opposed by the public in the way some newspapers and politicians pretend.
这些承诺反映的是保守党，而不是英国。保守党迎合了一种错误的观点，即移民到英国的人数特别多。所有这些都重复了一种有害的简单，即移民可以从一个相互联系的世界中清除。所有保守派都被一种错误的信念所激励，即移民总是像一些报纸和政客假装的那样遭到公众的反对。
In fact, as the 2022 figures show, none of this is true. For one thing, the new total reflects very specific factors. These include an estimated 114,000 arrivals in the UK under the Ukraine sponsorship and family visa schemes, for which public support is generous and high.
事实上，正如2022年的数据所显示的那样，这些都不是真的。首先，新的总数反映了非常具体的因素。其中包括估计有11.4万人通过乌克兰赞助和家庭签证计划抵达英国，公众对这些计划的支持度很高。
It would be wrong, though, to depict the 2022 figure as an outlier. Migration is a dynamic and enduring reality of the modern world. It is likely to remain high, not to decline significantly. There are multiple push causes for this, including poverty and the climate crisis, that are likely to be recurrent. There are also multiple pull factors, including the ageing populations of many European nations, including Britain, and the consequent demand for labour across a range of economic sectors. These are not going to disappear either.
不过，将2022年的数据描述为一个异常值是错误的。移民是现代世界的一个动态和持久的现实。它可能会保持在高位，而不会大幅下降。造成这种情况的原因有多种，包括贫困和气候危机，这些因素可能会反复出现。还有多种拉动因素，包括英国在内的许多欧洲国家的人口老龄化，以及随之而来的一系列经济部门对劳动力的需求。这些因素也不会消失。
The pragmatism of the public mood is ahead of Conservative MPs on this issue. The majority has increasingly accepted and welcomed these realities. In an under-appreciated shift, the public now says, by a majority, that migration levels should stay the same or increase. This is largely because so many of those who migrate here legally for work come to do jobs of which the public strongly approves. Nurses, doctors, care workers, computer programmers, business people, scientists and accountants made up the bulk of those to whom visas were awarded last year. But people now also favour migration for fruit and vegetable picking, construction and of university students. The public gets it in ways the government doesn’t.
在这个问题上，公众情绪的实用主义领先于保守党议员。大多数人越来越接受和欢迎这些现实。现在，大多数公众表示，移民水平应该保持不变或增加，这是一个未被充分认识到的转变。这在很大程度上是因为许多合法移民到英国工作的人从事的是公众强烈认可的工作。护士、医生、护理人员、计算机程序员、商务人士、科学家和会计师是去年获得签证的主要人群。但人们现在也支持从事水果和蔬菜采摘、建筑工作和求学的移民。公众明白这一点，但政府没明白这一点。
None of this means that there is no need to debate immigration policy. While parts of the Tory party embrace the aggressive racial divisiveness of the Trump era in the United States, there are signs that most British people want a more decent approach. The immigration debate needs to be fact-based, rational and sensitive. Pretending that the issue will fade away, though, is dangerous. It won’t and it shouldn’t.
这些都不意味着没有必要就移民政策进行辩论。虽然保守党的一些人接受美国特朗普时代激进的种族分裂，但有迹象表明，大多数英国人想要一种更体面的方式。关于移民的辩论需要以事实为基础，理性而敏感。然而，假装这个问题会逐渐消失是危险的。移民不会，也不应该消失。