UK's Cameron wants 'emergency brake' on tax-funded income supplements for immigrants

How anyone could have thought this was a good policy, I cannot imagine. People migrate to your country from elsewhere and can't find a job that pays what they want or need, so the government says, hey, no problem, we'll supplement your income. Remember this fundamental principle: When you subsidize something, you get more of it. So if you want lots of people coming into your country who can't earn enough to live without taxpayyer subsidies, then by all means, offer those subsidies! They'll come. And they're coming to Britain in such large numbers, Prime Minister David Cameron wants to put an "emergency brake" on it. So why not just put a stop to it altogether? Well that gets tricky, because Britain is part of the European Union, and one component of the treaty that established the EU says member states are supposed to extend their welfare benefits to people who migrate from other member states.

So Cameron is now in the unenviable position of seeking permission from other countries to alter his own economic policies:

Mr Cameron, who is meeting European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker later, wants to prevent migrants from other EU nations from claiming in-work benefits for four years, which he says will help reduce high levels of immigration to the UK. He is thought to have backing for his other three negotiating demands - but the benefit restrictions are being resisted by Central European member states, who view it as discriminatory against their citizens. The idea of the emergency brake has been on and off the table ever since David Cameron started trying to renegotiate the UK's relationship with the EU. Arguably, he wanted an emergency brake on EU migration full stop. He's watered that down for it to focus on in-work benefits for up to four years. The current idea would be that Britain could initiate a request for this emergency brake for up to four years if it could prove Britain's social and welfare system is under excessive strain from immigration. But that brake would have to be approved by the majority of other EU member states - and of course, right from the beginning, they have been opposed to suspending benefits for other EU migrants.

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There are those in Britain, most notably Conservative MP John Redwood, who have long advocated leaving the EU over exactly such insane requirements. That is still regarded as an outlier position, at least for the moment, but given the reluctance of EU member states to accept Cameron's request, leaving the EU might be the only way out of this mess for Britain. Meanwhile, guess which country does not currently offer such an income supplement benefit, but has a president who thinks it's a great idea. He is not talking about a treaty commitment to offer these benefits to immigrants, but Obama wants to "reform" unemployment insurance to supplement the incomes of those who have seen their wages decrease - and as a practical matter, the federal government extends such benefits to most immigrants. You want to think such an insane idea has no chance with a Republican Congress, but given the track record of this bunch, how can you really be confident of that? And while we wouldn't have to ask other nations to let us repeal it once we put it in place, try passing the repeal of any welfare benefit when 41 Democrats can block the repeal via a Senate filibuster. We'd be as stuck with it as the UK is now. I have no idea how Cameron will resolve this, or if he'll just have to accept his fate and keep paying out the subsidies. But it's a good object lesson on why you should be a lot more circumspect about establishing such benefits in the first place - for anyone.