David Craig, on November 6th, 2014You’ve probably all seen the gushing reports in the mainstream media about a new study claiming immigration has been good for Britain. The study is called The Fiscal Impacts of Immigration to the UK
I’ve read the study so that you don’t have to. And from what I understood, here are a few warnings:
1. Produced by (IMHO) ‘proven idiots’ – the authors of the report are Tommaso Frattini and a (probably appropriately named) Christian Dustmann. From what I remember, it was the very same Christian Dustmann who produced a report for the British government in 2003 estimating that ‘only about 13,000’ immigrants a year would arrive from the 10 countries joining the EU in 2004 if the New Labour government gave them immediate access to the UK on joining the EU. In reality about 230,000 a year flooded in. So Mr Dustmann has a track record for getting things spectacularly wrong and should really give up lecturing us all about the ‘benefits’ of immigration
2. Possibly biased – the report sets out to ‘provide substantive evidence on immigrants’ fiscal contribution’. Not evidence on immigrants’ cost, but on their contribution. It seems the authors had reached their conclusions before doing their analysis
3. Used to attack UKIP – Virtually every media report focused on the supposed benefit – £8.775bn between 1995 and 2011 – contributed by immigrants from EU countries and only mentioned in passing the negative contribution made by non-EU immigrants – a whopping £104bn. Clearly the massively negative cost of immigration should have been the headline, not the dubious claim that EU immigration is good for Britain. But the media was only interested in using the study to attack UKIP
4. Doesn’t account for benefits paid to unemployed Brits – the study completely ignores the fact that the many millions of people who have poured into the UK will have taken some jobs that would otherwise gone to British people. If just 500,000 more British people were in work, then that would be around £5bn a year less that we would have had to pay in benefits. So, for the period of the study (1995-2011) there’s another £85bn cost of immigration. And I’m not including all the social costs of the misery of unemployment on these people and their families
5. Doesn’t include Bulgarians and Romanians – although the two countries joined the EU in 2007, their people only got free access to the UK this year. As Bulgarian and Romanian criminal gangs and Roma gypsies swarm into the UK, one might be tempted to imagine that many of these people will not be making the same contribution as hard-working Polish plumbers and bricklayers.
6. Ignores the social cost – it doesn’t take any account of the cost of the NHS being close to collapse because of increasing demand from immigrants, our education system being overburdened as immigrants have more children, our police being unable to protect us as the immigrant crime rate soars and housing becoming unaffordable for many Brits as the demands from 7 million immigrants pushed up prices and rents
I’m sure there are many other weaknesses in the study.
But basically (IMHO) it’s just a piece of pro-immigration propaganda masquerading as academic research. More garbage from Mr Dustbinmann?
And don’t believe the media reports of immigration being good for Britain. Even this biased study, which hugely underestimates the real costs of immigration, proves immigration has been an economic disaster for our country.
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Your first two points are confirmed in the only part of the paper I read, namely the Assumptions section.
There are some cracking circular arguments here; such as assuming IN ADVANCE that immigrants are making a positive fiscal contribution, hence the education cost is zero (yes, they really do argue that) and the cost of things such as defence actually REDUCES per capita because there are so many more people contributing!
Well, you know the saying: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics! The latter can be manipulated to come up with whatever outcome is considered expedient. Given the high birth rate of much of the immigrant community, and the cost both to the NHS and to the Welfare system of safeguarding the births and then providing the education of these new citizens – a significant of whom will in due course contribute to the UK’s rising crime figures rather than to the economy – what’s to get in a tizzy over?
The National Minimum Wage doesn’t help of course. While employers are able to find new immigrants who are prepared to do a hard day’s work for a very small wage, the demand for immigrant labour will continue. It’s time for our native youngsters, of whatever colour and creed they may be, to man (or woman) up and show a willingness to give a fair day’s work for a not very large wage. The education and willingness of many of our youngsters to work makes them virtually unemployable, but why should they care while “The System” pays them to lie around at home all day playing computer games and deafening themselves with their ghastly “music”? Stop the benefits so that they either work or go hungry, then the need for immigrant labour might reduce and the UK would cease to be such a magnet for immigrants and would-be asylum seekers.
This looks vaguely familiar.
This isn’t the same people who cheated a similar claim a while back. As I recall, their argument was something like ; many are ‘self employed’, so they should be allocated a pro capita amount of the business rates, whilst ignoring whether any recent migrants pay business rates at all.
Yup, I think it’s the same tossers. They also make a lot of assumptions like immigrants owning shares in British companies and paying taxes on the dividends. Next time I see a Somali with 5-10 children, I must remember to ask him which companies’ shares he owns.
The study was funded by the EU…laughable. Enough said.
It seems extraordinary that a few of us, spending (I’m guessing) ten minutes or so glancing through this publication, had no trouble finding all manner of flaws.
The “professionals” at the BBC in contrast, clearly couldn’t spare the time so they just reproduced the ridiculously biased press release instead. Such incompetence and laziness should not be acceptable from any broadcaster, let alone one with the power and authority the BBC still wields.
The left-wing media (I of course include the BBC and C4 in that) presented it as is because it suited their own agenda. If it actually concluded “all unskilled immigration drives us deeper into debt” they would have ignored the study or cherry-picked the most pro-Immigration comments out of it.
Anyway it is not just about the financial cost (substantial), it is about the social cost of having your country and culture race-replaced in front of our very eyes (priceless)
Which brings me onto Dimmy (sic) Dave and his proud statement of his desire for us to have an Asian PM within the next decade or two. Can you imagine any African ruler openly wishing for a white man to replace him? OK it happened in Zambia amazingly but are the Zambians happy about that? See Putin ever calling for a Chechnyan President to replace him? Dave truly is the heir to Blair and needs to be replaced (by an English person) ASAP.
The cost of replacing Tridant is estimated at some 23 billion.
Is there any major power Russia, China , Iran , India which would want to invade England. Truth is except in myth neither did Hitler, recall we declared war on him. He wanted to invade Russia which had and has what we do not land and resources. Why would any nation want to invade our tiny Island.We are no more at risk of invasion than Switzerland.
Yet it does face invasion of sorts which threatens the actual denographic destruction of England. The liberal elite of the ruling parties will not protect us from will do noyhing to protect our borders from this continuing none RU invasion.in fact they intentionally starve the joke UK border agency of fund. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2827429/
Omg, you are so poor. Hope non-english speaking immigrants won’t steal all your benefits after stealing all your jobs.