1 in 4 migrants from Eastern Europe to the UK are planning to stay permanently or longer than planned a new Joseph Rowntree Foundation survey has found, and the figure is growing. See this link: http://www.jrf.org.uk/pressroom/releases/290507.asp#1a. On the whole migrants feel more secure in the UK than they do in their own countries. But a desire to integrate is not necessarily coinciding with the desire to stay. The survey has also found that many of those who come to the UK don’t mix with other UK nationals and prefer to socialise with their fellow Eastern Europeans. On the other side the British are considered to be “polite but distant” and apparently migrants face very little prejudice and many are marrying UK nationals and settlin down with families: the famous “tolerance” of the British (which is really just indifference). This has prompted a call for more attention from the UK government to encourage integration. EVERY migrant group who has EVER come to the UK in large numbers (from the Anglo-Saxons of the fifth century to the Ugandan Asians of the 1970s) has stayed. The conclusion being drawn by organisations like the UK think-tank Civitas is that the migrant workers are finding the UK more comfortable and welcoming than they first assumed. Whether this is a benefit or not to the UK is a debatable point. The UK economy is booming at the moment but there is inevitably going to be a downturn soon. The British government likes the situation since migration drives down wages (catering, building, cleaning, factory work etc are the migrant workers' main trades) and lower wages keeps UK inflation low. The question is what will happen when the economy does (inevitably) turn downwards and the new arrivals have to compete with other communities for receding resources. Civitas (which must be regarded as a right of centre body) believes that immigration should be limited as the lower wage economy makes it difficult for the poor to raise themselves out of the poverty trap, that it puts a pressure on housing, the health service, pressure on schools (in terms of numbers and new languages), and in the South East of England there is a major shortage of water resources. If this is the situation now while the UK is in a buoyant financial mood, imagine the problems when it is not. The government of course has no inclination to interfere or to put together any solid programme of intercultural activity, and least of all to instruct its major funding bodies like the Arts Council to adjust its (usually overtly) instrumentalist policies and to inform itself about intercultural working. Instead they will sit by in their British indifference and let the problems build up under the surface for the future while babbling about “Britishness Day” and the multicultural society. It's a pattern of behaviour which UK social policy has fallen into over the last twenty years - the Brixton, Toxteth, Burnley, Oldham and Bradford riots were all the symptoms of this malaise. If ever there was a case for the UK to overcome its “tolerance” obsessions and engage in some proactive intercultural dialogue…look no further than this Rowntree report.