Shooting yourself in the foot
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Dear Liam Byrne,
Much as you’d like to shout from the rooftops about how wonderful your ‘open door’ policy on immigration is, the Home Office report today provides scant evidence to support your claim.
Your argument revolves around some media-friendly figures. Apparently, migration produced £6 billion of economic growth last year, migrants had high skills levels and were hardworking – resulting in them paying more tax than UK-born workers. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Wrong wrong wrong. Any economic benefit was nullified by the extra costs of schools and hospitals, so their tax receipts had no overall effect on our economy as the government had to spend all the extra cash they received. Your report also mentioned that almost every region in the entire UK is now having problems with crime and housing thanks to the levels of immigration under Labour. Furthermore, the report mysteriously de-emphasised issues such as integration and community cohesion (which have been the biggest losers), making claims that the UK has ‘benefited’ from mass immigration look rather shaky. To say that migrants have “complementary skills” to the UK workforce must be some kind of joke, seeing as many other reports have documented how migrants are displacing UK workers, especially in low-paid jobs. You may also remember the headlines not so long ago about how crime has massively increased in some areas due to uncontrolled immigration. And I wonder if you took into account migrants’ access to our benefits system, which as we all know results in taxpayers’ money being sent to other countries. Have a read of THIS if you would like to find out more.
This report does nothing to detract from the seriousness of the problems caused by mass immigration. Migrants make a net contribution of almost zero to the government but have contributed to the breakdown of communities around the country. Well done, Liam – nice work.
With great disappointment,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
Agreed. Cameron has promised to get serious, firm and fair on this issue. If he wins the election – and I honestly believe he will – he better keep the promise or it will be a long time before anyone trusts the Tories again.
Cameron is certainly getting serious, but he’s still only talking about non-EU migrants, as there is nothing he can do to stop immigration from inside the EU thanks to our EU membership. Time to turn our membership into a trade-only agreement where the political decisions are left to us but we stay inside the European free-trade area.
Switzerland and Norway have got the right idea in my opinion, as does the ‘Global Vision’ think-tank.
Don’t be too quick to paint with that broad brush, as many of my fellow citizens do here in the US. Not all immigrants are low-paid workers, and not all come to your shore seeking permanent residency. I’ve been a guest worker in the UK on three separate occasions since 1994. Each time I’ve paid UK taxes and received no benefits for it. I’ve never used the NHS and was prohibited from accessing public funds of any kind. I have no children, so there was no burden on the educational system. One could argue, I suppose, that I received benefit from my council rates (rubbish collection, police, fire), but overall I doubt the benefit I received was in proportion to my cost in taxes. In my case, HMG definitely got the better end of the bargain.
A very astute point. Individuals who come to the UK, work hard, pay their taxes and then either choose to stay or leave is completely fine with me. However, migrants who get immediate access to all our public services, benefits and god knows what else is totally unacceptable. People should have to show that they are able to contribute to our economy BEFORE they get access to taxpayers’ money.