In a rebuke of the neo-liberal orthodoxy which has dominated both major political parties in Britain, a study has found that mass migration has not actually stimulated the economy and has been a major drag on public services and the housing sector.
A report from the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) and co-authored by former immigration minister Robert Jenrick finds record levels of immigration imposed upon the country by the so-called Conservative Party — despite promising the public to reduce the influx of foreigners following Brexit — has not been correlated with an increase to economic growth per capita.
While globalist advocates of mass migration argue that it increases tax revenues and lifts overall GDP, thereby giving governments talking points, on an individual basis there is a different story.
According to data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), while the United Kingdom’s GDP grew by 0.1 per cent last year — amid record levels of immigration — GDP per person fell by 0.8 per cent, drastically behind the G7 average of 1.2 per cent, despite the UK seeing the second-highest level of population growth, which has largely been driven by mass migration, The Telegraph reports.
The CPS report remarked: “If large-scale migration of the sort we’ve seen is really so great for the economy, we have to ask ourselves why we are not seeing this in the GDP per capita data”.
The think tank noted that although former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit immigration reforms promised to focus on “highly selective” skills-based immigration, the system has in practice allowed large waves of foreigners coming to the country who either don’t work or are employed in low-wage jobs, because the barriers to entry have been set so catastrophically low. The report found that of the net two million migrants who came to the UK from non-EU nations over the past five years, just 15 per cent arrived in the country with the principal aim of working.
The report also found that the rush to import people from around the world has come with an economic cost. Migrants from Spain, for example, earn 40 per cent more on average than migrants from Pakistan or Bangladesh. Meanwhile, migrants from the Middle East, North Africa or Turkey between the ages of 25 to 64 were nearly twice as likely to be ‘economically inactive’ than native-born Britons.
In addition to not benefitting economically, the average Briton is also suffering costs from mass migration, in terms of public service resources spent on foreigners and soaring inflation in the housing market caused by ever-rising demand.
The report from the CPS said that net migration made up 89 per cent of the 1.34 million addition to the “housing deficit” which tracks the number of homes not built in comparison to population growth over the past decade.
Mass migration has also been a chief player in driving up the cost of rent, with estimates claiming that rent was increased by 10 per cent on average in 2022 due to the influx of migrants. Rent in cities has been particularly impacted, with over two-thirds (67 per cent) of private rentals in London going towards someone born in a foreign country.
On top of artificially driving up housing costs, the government’s mass migration agenda has also placed heavy strains on the National Health Service (NHS), with the number of GP surgeries (offices) only increasing by 4 per cent from 2011 to 2021, despite the UK population rising by 6.6 per cent, again mostly as a result of migration.
Commenting on the findings, former immigration minister Robert Jenrick said: “It would be unforgivable if the Government did not use the time before the general election to undo the disastrous post-Brexit liberalisations that betrayed the express wishes of the British public for lower immigration.”
The report called for the government to divide up the responsibilities of the Home Office and create a new government department solely focused on immigration, given that the Home Office has “fallen short” and proved “too unwieldy to function effectively”.
They also argued for a hard cap on legal immigration — as was the case for the Australian model upon which the British system was supposedly inspired by — to the tens of thousands down from the nearly three-quarters of a million net last year.
While the Conservative Party — which has been in power for 14 years — previously pledged to the public that it would reduce net migration to the tens of thousands, this promise was ultimately scrapped by Boris Johnson. In 2017, former Chancellor of the Exchequer and former right-hand man to David Cameron, George Osbourne admitted that the party leadership never actually had any intention of trying to meet the goal, with party leadership then and now holding the belief that mass migration was economically necessary.
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