Mass immigration has not delivered the economic growth successive U.K. governments claimed it would and has contributed to rising pressure on public services, Britain’s former immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, has claimed in a report written in collaboration with a leading think tank.
The report by the Center for Policy Studies published this week offers several findings that challenge the Western liberal narrative that mass immigration fuels economic growth, provides a fiscal benefit, and is a force for good for European nations.
“The scale and composition of recent migration have failed to deliver the significant economic and fiscal benefits its advocates promised, while putting enormous pressure on housing, public services, and infrastructure,” it states.
The study found that net migration accounted for 89 percent of the 1.34 million increase in England’s housing deficit over the last decade, resulting in a housing shortage and pushing house prices to a record property-price-to-salary ratio.
It warned that Britain would have to build a home every five minutes night and day just to cope with the current levels of immigration. The 515,000 homes needed every year would be the equivalent of adding a city the size of Cardiff to the U.K. every year.
In an accompanying video, the co-authors explained that cumulative net migration in the 25 years leading up to former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair’s 1997 election victory had been just 68,000. In the 25 years to follow, cumulative net migration was at least 5.8 million.
Non-EU migration to Britain has sky-rocketed following Brexit, but the overwhelming majority of new arrivals are not heading to the U.K. to work, and therefore pay taxes and boost the economy. Just 15 percent of those arriving from outside the European Union in the last 5 years came on a work visa.
The hard-hitting video also revealed that Britain’s population increased by 8 million people between 2001 and 2021, of which 7 million were due to mass immigration.
“That’s the equivalent of the combined populations of Birmingham, Manchester, Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Peterborough, Ipswich, Norwich, Luton, and Bradford,” it states.
The report found that mass immigration had “not delivered significant growth in GDP per capita,” and had increased pressures on critical infrastructure “from roads to GP surgeries.”
It also provided details on the difference in the quality of immigration around the world, highlighting that migrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey are “almost twice as likely to be economically inactive as someone born in the U.K.”
Similarly, migrants from Somalia and Pakistan typically pay between four and nine times less in income tax than those from Canada, Singapore, and Australia.
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