Daily they’re out to get us Mail headline:

Immigration has ‘no positive effect’ on Britain, finds landmark report

It is rare you see even a Mail article that is such a mess. Someone needs to sit down and carefully explain the difference between “migrants” and “immigrants” to both the Mail and the “landmark report” panel. Examples of their mixing them up, and therefore confusing matters, pops up all through the piece. Here are just a few samples:

…Despite the huge influx of more than 700,000 workers from Eastern Europe since May 2004, the number of vacancies has remained at between 600,000 and 700,000. The peers said that allowing more and more migrants to flood into the country created the need for ever more jobs, as they consume as well as provide services.

They called for the Government to set an “explicit target range” for immigration and set the rules to keep within that limit - effectively a cap…

…committee member Lord Layard, a Labour peer and globally-respected economist, said the population would increase by around 190,000 a year for the next 50 years without a limit…

…”We are suggesting that the Government should set a target range for net immigration and then the rules should depend on the target range, rather than the numbers following from the rules as at present.”…

A “target range” (what others would term a “limit”), including other EU states? Impossible, while Britain is in the EU.

In case the “globally-respected economist” Lord Layard is unaware about the EU political arrangement, eastern European origin EU citizens may be termed “migrants” (although what that word means legally seems pretty much anyone’s guess), but they are not “immigrants”. That’s because, under the EU, citizens of any other member state are as entitled to reside in Britain on a whim as Brits are to retire “no questions asked” to “villas in France or apartments on the Costas.” Simply put, EU citizens cannot be refused entry clearance to Britain, because they don’t need to apply for it.

It is only near its conclusion that the piece wobbles over to discover non-EU passport holders. Their numbers are (and can be) far more tightly controlled because they are in a very different category than someone from, say, EU state Poland. That’s because non-EU passport holders can be barred from remaining in Britain (or not allowed to enter, period).

In short, only those holding non-EU passports, and seek to or have had residence granted, technically are immigrants.  Meaning, uh, I suppose people like myself.  And a certain Mrs Crozier, who as anyone can see clearly plots to have “no positive effect” on British society . . . other than to be married to, and have the children of, a serving British soldier.