Stephen Pollard: How to be liberal and tough on immigration

If the main parties ignore issues that matter to voters, they will turn to parties that do talk about them

We'll find out tonight what impact Pim Fortuyn had on Holland, as the votes in the Dutch general election are counted. The reaction to his murder in Britain has not exactly been the definition of mature debate. It seems that some of the chattering classes have only one response to seeing the words "immigration" and "problem" in the same sentence – to shout "racist".

Well, fine. If it helps you feel good about yourself, carry on doing just that. But don't expect to be taken seriously when you furrow your brow and worry about racial tensions in some towns, or the fall in turnout across the country – except, of course, in those areas where racial tensions are at their worst, where turnout rises. Because the main lesson from the rise of fringe parties in Europe is pretty bloody obvious. If mainstream parties ignore the issues that the electorate thinks matter, voters either stay away from the polls altogether or turn to the parties that do talk about them.

Even if, as I do, you think we need more immigration, not less, it's crass to ignore the implications: most critically, how to persuade the existing population that they are a boon, and how they can best settle in and adapt to their new home.

What happens in Holland today will be fascinating. But still more interesting is what happened in November in Denmark, the country which takes over the EU presidency in July. Immigration was the central electoral issue in last year's Danish election, and the proposals by the victorious Liberal Party have changed the nature of political life.

Under its new leader, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the centre-right party won an unexpected victory by concentrating on a strikingly simple immigration policy which turns on its head the main concern of electors, that immigrants are somehow a leech on the state, and is at once both liberal and tough.

It's all very well making the economic case for immigration – that, because of skill shortages in Europe, we need more, not less. And whatever the merits of immigration more broadly – that, as America's history shows, immigrants bring an added dimension to a country, refresh it, and help it to avoid stagnation – such arguments plainly don't wash with their own with voters.

When a newspaper such as The Daily Express runs headlines such as "We're Being Invaded", day in, day out (as it did last summer), it does so because it knows that's what its readers think. Fringe leaders, whether real racists (like Le Pen) or liberals (like Fortuyn) are only ever given the time of day by voters because, unlike the traditional parties, they raise their concerns.

The Rasmussen proposal switched the entire argument around. Denmark, he said, should welcome immigrants. But for their first seven years they should receive no state benefits of any kind, other than schooling for their children and emergency health care. And that, more or less, is it.

By far the most corrosive cause of anti-immigrant feeling is the idea that, far from adding to the economy, they live off the state. Arguing that Britain would have been so much better off if we had opened our doors to the Hong Kong Chinese, instead of shamefully denying them passports, is a fruitless task. They may have transformed Vancouver, which had the sense to welcome them, but the link remains in the public mind between immigration and benefits. As Mr Rasmussen put it during the Danish election campaign: "Denmark must not be the social security office for the rest of the world."

Mr Rasmussen has shown that you do not need to be a fringe politician to deal with these issues. He realised that nothing makes more sense, intellectually and politically, than to tackle the argument head on. I've never understood, for example, the objection to so-called economic migrants. If immigrants really are committed to a new life, and want to better themselves, wonderful: let in as many as want to come, and we'll all benefit from their industry and enterprise. Politicians have always shied away from such an approach – viz the Hong Kong Chinese – because they fear a backlash from the electorate which thinks it will have to pay taxes to fund their benefits.

A Rasmussen-style policy would directly counter that idea. It squares the circle of allowing the gains which immigrants can bring to a country, whilst at the same time taking the ground from under the feet of the racist right. Immigrants will no longer resented, since they can only prosper by their own efforts, and clearly so.

And by the way, if you think the Danish electorate was only persuaded by Mr Rasmussen because it is somehow deeply racist and didn't understand the implications of the idea, benefits towards genuine political refugees needing asylum are unaffected.

Denmark, after all, gives away the highest proportion of its GDP as foreign aid of any country in the world, and in the same November election it elected the first Danish MP with an immigrant background. As Naser Khader, who has a Syrian background, put it: "It is a great victory for me and for the integration policy in Denmark".

stephenipollard@hotmail.com

Stephen Pollard is a senior fellow at the Centre for the New Europe, a Brussels-based think tank