Mass migration is slowly bankrupting the UK

One by one, the economic arguments for porous borders have collapsed. We can’t go on like this

For a while, many fooled themselves into thinking there was no economic challenge that could not be surmounted by mass migration. Nearly a million job vacancies? The shortage occupation list can whittle that down, perfectly matching skilled supply to labour market demand. A social care staffing crisis? Import cheap foreign workers, even if it undermines the Brexit promise that only the “best and brightest” would come to Britain once we took control of our borders.

The great irony is that, while immigration was a motivating factor for many who voted to leave the EU, in the past four years we have witnessed an extraordinary liberalisation of our visa system. The latest population projections show immigration adding six million people to the British population over the 15 years from 2021 to 2036. This has coincided with a reorientation of migration flows away from Europe and towards the rest of the world. One study, for instance, found that in the year to September 2023, fewer than 4,000 visas were issued to French nationals, compared to over 150,000 for people from India.

Politicians and bureaucrats, who may feel immensely relaxed reading the latest forecasts, have over the years convinced themselves of the unalloyed benefits of mass migration. Highlyskilled and highly-paid, they said, it would turbocharge economic growth. That conviction was aided by the Government’s failure to produce research establishing which types of migrant are fiscally positive or negative, but a close look at the data reveals the economic case for mass migration, once so compelling, is now collapsing.

Over the past five years, two million people from outside Europe arrived in Britain through net migration, a small proportion of whom came for work. The rest entered as the relatives of workers, international students, the relatives of these students, or as asylum seekers and refugees. In 2023, 144,000 health and care visas were issued, but a further 174,000 dependants came, too. These health and care visas account for two in five of all work visas. Two-thirds of these are for care workers and fall under the least skilled occupational classification. And with all jobs on the shortage occupation list, they are being brought in to work for less.

Student migration to the UK reached an all-time high in 2022, when around 484,000 study visas were issued. This demand was driven in part by the decision to reintroduce graduate visas, opening a backdoor to the British labour market through which international students flew, some having studied short MA courses at less selective, lower quality institutions.

But this is only one side of the ledger. The myth has long been perpetuated that, because migrants are overwhelmingly of working age, they will not be a drain on public services. Government impact assessments seem to have overlooked that migrants still need housing, roads, transport, the NHS – just look at the queue for Bristol’s newest dental surgery. They may need benefits and, eventually, a state pension. As David Miles, OBR executive member, this week warned, immigrants who stay “grow older and have children, so the favourable tax to spending balance does not persist”.

Studies have shown that low-paid immigrants and their dependants will, over their lifetimes, be net recipients of public funds. We may find ourselves with a considerable long-term bill, one far higher than paying British workers to do the jobs, at a time when debt is already at around 100 per cent of the economy.

The trouble is, British workers can’t – or won’t – do the jobs. Around 4,000 people a day are now applying for sickness benefit. New estimates show more than 400,000 extra people have dropped out of the labour market amid record long-term sickness. A staggering 9.25 million of those aged 16-64 are not working or looking for work. This ought to cause widespread panic, but migration covers it up, while allowing politicians to duck difficult decisions.

We are living in a false economy, where GDP per capita has started to click into reverse. Where British workers languish on benefits while the Government ramps up its low-skill, low-wage immigration regime. In 2019, the Entrepreneurs Network think tank found that 49 per cent of the UK’S fastest-growing companies had at least one foreign-born founder. By 2023, the figure had dropped to 39 per cent. Britain should have a functioning visa system, one that welcomes the highlyskilled and provides refuge to those genuinely seeking asylum. What we have instead is a con. No one is fooled anymore.