Gimmicks will not fix our immigration crisis To anyone worried about the arrival of thousands of migrants from Romania and Bulgaria on January 1 when EU restrictions are lifted, relax. Keith Vaz is here to save the day. This week, the chairman of the home affairs select committee told his fellow MPs that he was ready to police the border personally - and will spend New Year's day at Luton airport counting the arrivals. "We will be there for the first flight," he promised, "to see what arrangements have been put in place and how many people turn up." That variety of populist theatre is not uncommon in the immigration debate. Still, we should be grateful that we have a debate at all. During the Labour years, the government first denied the scale of migration then attempted to dismiss any warnings as racist scaremongering. Now at least there is a consensus that concern about immigration's impact upon jobs and services is entirely legitimate. But what has replaced the silence is often a lot of noise. This week, David Cameron announced new measures to limit migrants" access to benefits. While these efforts are welcome, they come absurdly late - and voters are justified in doubting the Government's ability to enforce them. Britain already has a backlog of 432,029 immigration and asylum cases, and only 1.5 per cent of reports of illegal migration result in someone being removed from the country. If we cannot manage this aspect of our system, why would the new policies be sure to succeed? It is also troubling that we do not have reasonably accurate forecasts of how many Bulgarians and Romanians are likely to arrive, which means we cannot predict what we will need in terms of additional services. Moreover, any talk of limiting migration is rendered moot by the laws of the EU. Like it or not, we have entered a free market, in which there is free movement of labour. It is true that we can deter the poorest migrants by putting benefits beyond their reach. Ultimately, however, we cannot stop anyone coming who wants to be here to work. What Britain needs is not knee-jerk reaction or phony rhetoric. It needs a realistic, coherent approach to dealing with immigration. On the whole, the freer a market is then the freer its people, and the wealthier. Free movement of labour has brought enormous benefits to this country. In particular, it has helped in recent years to fill a gap in skills that is emphatically not the fault of the migrants, but of schools that have stagnated despite a massive increase in spending. In some areas, restrictions on movement are, in fact, too tight. Net migration has in part fallen because foreign-born students are counted as immigrants and it has become harder to obtain a student visa. Of course, it is good that bogus applications are deterred - but many universities need bright people from overseas, partly for academic benefit but also for the income they bring, which can then be invested in training home-grown talent. We also need to attract entrepreneurs and investors who can enrich this country: it is therefore welcome that David Cameron has announced a same-day visa service for wealthy Chinese visitors coming to the UK to do business. Nevertheless, the free movement of labour has to be managed. Partly, that must be done by addressing the issue of demand - via welfare, benefits and education reforms that push young British workers to take jobs that they may consider beneath them, rather than rotting on the dole. But we also need more information about (and control over) who comes in and out. And above all, we need to think practically about the impact of immigration on services. If that means limiting or charging for access to some things, then so be it. Otherwise, Britain is going to face severe pressure: the National Audit Office has warned that 240,000 more primary school places will be needed next year to cope with the growing number of children, a rise driven in large part by immigration. So if our leaders make any New Year's resolutions, one ought to be to engage more constructively with the immigration debate, accepting what cannot be done and thinking more practically about what can. That should involve abandoning last-minute gimmicks, and planning carefully for the future - for the benefit of native Britons and immigrants alike.