The prime minister asserts that immigrants should learn English, and blames too much immigration and too little integration for the disintegration of communities (Immigrants should learn English – PM, 14 April). This is dangerous "dog-whistling", calling to those attracted by the BNP and offering them the same bone, hoping that the signal will be inaudible to the liberals whose support he also wants. It is highly hypocritical, since the PM purports to be concerned about the BNP. He offers to undermine it by adopting its blame-the-immigrants stance. It is this indulgence of bigotry that makes, in Cameron's words, "the space for extremist parties to flourish".
In 23 years of researching immigrants and ethnic affairs, I have never yet found a non-English-speaking immigrant who did not want to learn English. Integration can mean many things. Most significant is the sense that denotes a two-way process; otherwise it merely means assimilation. Immigrants need to be enabled to belong.
You reported that Britons resident in Spain were often insular, monolingual and complained about the society that has received them (No gracias: how most Brits living in Spain feel about integration, 29 March). Perhaps Britons at home should be a little more self-conscious? My wife volunteers at my daughter's school, teaching the kids a few words of her own mother tongue, Spanish. Her most enthusiastic student is Polish. This student's parents pay tax and rent; how is that a drain on schools, housing and the NHS? The UK gets the parents' education and skills for free. They work. They buy things. They build the economy.
Scott Poynting
Professor in sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University
• I was disappointed by Mehdi Hasan's article (So MPs want to talk about immigration? Bring it on, 16 April). While regurgitating tired arguments about the benefits of past immigration on our economy, politics, the NHS, higher education, football and food etc, he fails to move the debate forward.
There have undoubtedly been positives (as well as, presumably, negatives) from past patterns of immigration. Now, however, we must focus, without the left/right prisms, on agreeing future economic migration policy. Politicians, in preparing the ground for debate, must put aside party politics. We need to assess how many people can live sustainably in the UK, and turn our conclusions into policy. We have a finite resource: land. It is about that, and about housing, infrastructure, public services, water, the effects of climate change, communities and government's responsibilities to its citizens. It is definitely not just about the last government's mantras of boosting economic growth (ad infinitum?) and the perceived need for enhanced numbers of taxpayers and carers for our ageing population.
Only Margaret Hodge tried to open up debate on this during Labour's tenure; I can imagine her colleagues' eyes sliding away. If the mainstream parties remain too unsophisticated to work out a mature approach to this debate, they risk the loss of core voters to Ukip.
N Croxley
Falmouth, Cornwall
• Mehdi Hasan rightly points out that "a government study in 2007 estimated that migrants contributed about £6bn to output growth the previous year". The study, however, gave no estimate of the GDP per capita, which is not surprising since all the subsequent studies show that immigration has small impacts on GDP per capita, whether these impacts are positive or negative.
Mass immigration, however, does help employers, not only to keep their labour-cost significantly low, but also to spare them from having to invest in labour-saving methods of production. In the long run it is innovation, not the number of bodies, that creates sustained increases in productivity. Perhaps this is why Japan has refused to allow its immigrant population to cross the 1% threshold.
The previous government did encourage mass immigration. But its underlying agenda for pursuing such a policy was purely political, since new immigrants tend to vote Labour. The economic arguments in support of such a policy, however, remain unconvincing.
Randhir Singh Bains
Gants Hill, Essex
• David Cameron chooses to discuss immigration, yet fails to mention the EU (Editorial, 15 April). Take Italy's decision to grant temporary residence permits to 23,000 Tunisian arrivals. It has wider implications because many of them will want to move on to other EU countries.
When the Spanish government granted a second amnesty to thousands of illegal immigrants, every one of them acquired the right to reside in the UK. We also have Bucharest handing out Romanian passports to Moldovans to facilitate their migration to western Europe. The remedy is either a common EU policy on immigration, dual passports and amnesty policies, or a UK opt-out from the EU's free movement of peoples principle.
Then there is the little matter of our mainstream parties subscribing to that part of Washington's globalisation agenda that favours an ever-expanding EU. First in line are seven western Balkan states, followed by Turkey, Ukraine and Georgia, with all that this implies for the scale of immigration into western Europe. Also, security issues would arise from a Greater EU bordering Syria, Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan and Chechnya.
Yugo Kovach
Winterborne Houghton, Dorset
• Have I got this straight? Cameron says immigration places "real pressures on schools, housing and healthcare", then abolishes a £70m migration impacts fund. Cameron says those applying for a marriage visa must "demonstrate a minimum standard of English", then cuts funding for English courses by a third over two years. All that comes to mind is a four-syllable word of Greek derivation, beginning with "h".
Martin Ewans
Cambridge