Large-scale Immigration: Its economic and demographic consequences for the UK
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Immigration is frequently described as providing a counter-balance to the UK’s ageing population. As an ever-larger proportion of British residents is retired, large numbers of immigrants help keep the average age down and contribute taxes to the Treasury coffers. But how much does Britain benefit – and how does this compare with the costs of a growing population?
In this new analysis of the economic and demographic consequences of current levels of immigration, the distinguished Cambridge economist Robert Rowthorn finds that the potential economic gains from immigration are modest while the strains placed on infrastructure, such as housing, land, schools, hospitals, water supply and transport systems, are great
While GDP as a whole will grow with increased immigration, Rowthorn notes, GDP per capita – a much better indicator of the nation’s wealth – will be only marginally affected by the enormous population growth forecast for the coming century.
He cites the Office for National Statistics’ high migration scenario, which sees growth in the UK population of 20 million over the next 50 years and 29 million over the next 75 years – entirely from migration. This is equivalent to adding a city almost the size of Birmingham to the UK population every two-and-a-half years for the next three-quarters of a century.
“Unrestrained population growth would eventually have a negative impact on the standard of living through its environmental effects such as overcrowding, congestion and loss of amenity,” Rowthorn writes.
Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society is an independent, cross-party think tank which seeks to facilitate informed public debate. We search for solutions to social and economic problems unconstrained by the short-term priorities of political parties or conventional wisdom.
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I have been watching Goodwood, and the English Thoroughbreds that we have been selectively breeding for 300 years. They are tested against each other on the track, and they are now the most magnificent creatures on earth.
The British Population was selectively bred by virtue of living on an island, for thousands of years. Any who came had to have the wit and courage to get here, then they had to beat those already here to earn their right to add their genes to the ever more superior pool.
Only in the last century were the sick, lame and lazy shipped in and fed and provided for by the natives, so that they could breed unrestrainedly.
The ‘British’ are no longer the race that they were in Churchill’s Britain, for instance. As a result Britain is no longer the place it once was. The natives are fleeing at every opportunity and the Govt speaks only of ‘nett migration’, so they don’t care if all the natives are replaced by aliens, as long so the numbers don’t breach their ‘rules’.
This suicide is an extraordinary thing to observe. And for the rump of natives like me, immensely sad. This point far outweighs all arguments about wealth (rubbish anyway, reticent people should live off their investments, not their capital which obviously runs out).
There is no need to Britain if it is not to be the homeland of the British, whose traditional values bear no resemblance to anything Mr Clegg or Mr Caneron represent.
Sorry, should be ‘retired’ not ‘reticent’ and ‘no need for Britain…’
Lynn
Well said Lynn.
We are certainly not the same country any more, and what the future holds is nothing other than astonishing – and a tragedy for those who appreciate what is being lost.
Our own natives have similarly ‘dropped the ball’, or, as I tend to see it, had it gradually kicked out of their hands by those with various ideological and financial interests to do so.
The ridiculous side stepping of what is really at stake is extremely frustrating.
It forever talks about figures, finance, “strains”, “point systems”, “benefits”, whilst the hard-left manufacture reports about the “benefits” of what they doing, their opponents bring out their reports to counter it, and the dozy lot in the middle snooze on.
In the meantime, the most fundamental things are lost in this sea of chatter.
I heard earlier this week that the Labour party were publicly criticising the Conservatives over their “immigration record” and their inability to “tackle” things like deporting failed asylum seekers and criminals who broke the law here.
Only in a truly mad country could this be broadcast by the media with a straight face. Yet nobody seems to bat an eyelid.
Yes, the Conservatives are terrible and are not putting much effort into stopping it and doing those removals etc, because, like Labour, they do not really want to do it – but for Labour to really try and blast anybody over an immigration record is breathtaking arrogance and “chutzpah”.
But hey, it is all part of the circus, all part of the charade. It keeps the plebs happy, keeps that “control of immigration” promise perpetually “just around the corner”, whilst things just romp on regardless.
It has been the same game for 60 to 70 years now. No doubt some open borders / mass migration fanatic like Phillipe LeGraine or that truly awful Jonathan Portas (whose ethnic origins does not surprise me in the least) are tapping up some counter-position to this Civitas report as we speak.
Another advocate for the “transformation of Britain”, Kenan Malik, once wrote a very revealing piece in the Guardian that – quite accurately, I have to say – noted how these arguments about housing, hospitals, strains, over-population, and so on have been going on for 50 years and that, since we have “coped”, the advocates of it – like him – tend to take no notice and just continue to manufacture this “new Britain” regardless.
“Unrestrained population growth would eventually have a negative impact on the standard of living through its environmental effects such as overcrowding, congestion and loss of amenity,” Rowthorn writes.
A greater negative effect, I think. If you take account of crime, imported diseases, traffic accidents, tax-dodging, intangible psychological costs and so on, immigration is already very negative, even for Guardian-readers. But not to the people who fund our political parties, who benefit from cheap labour and from a divided society.
Civitas are also good on what Peter Simple called the race-relations industry:
Small Corroding Words, by Jon Gower Davies, is a systematic critique of the philosophy, research and practice of the EHRC [Equality and Human Rights Commission]. It reveals serious flaws in the EHRC’s ‘triennial review’, How Fair Is Britain?, that was used to demonstrate unfairness in Britain. What the research actually shows are the statistical differences between some groups. This line of thinking entails, for example, taking the fact that men are more likely to die in work-related accidents than women as a sign of unfairness. (pp. 8-9) The EHRC inaccurately blames Britain for differences of this kind.
http://www.civitas.org.uk/press/prSmallCorroding.htm
But remember: Großer Bruder is votching you.
The government will continue to try accommodate the expanding population.
Government paid for road and drainage networks (without which the new housing estates would, in many cases, not be economic).
Government paid for “free” education, health care and income support.
And on and on.
But government has no resources of its own – and borrowing and printing will only put off the evil day when the taxes have to be collected (or the government go de facto bankrupt).
Britain (especially England) is overpopulated.
In a free market the output that new people (mostly low skilled and who have difficulty with the English language) can produce here would not justify private companies building the roads and drainage (and so on) needed to accommodate them – and the new people (not being members of established “Friendly Societies” and so on) would not be able to afford health care and education for their children.
So they (the new people) would not come. Britain (especially England) would simply be a too expensive place for them to come to (with land prices and so on).
They come because the government does its best to try and make the country fit the new people – even though the country is greatly overpopulated.
It is a bad policy.
The replacement of the native British population presently runs at a rate of 400k a year – that is the number of native Britons leaving added to the number of immigrants coming in not net immigration – means that 4 million non-native will be added in a decade while around 1-2 million native Britons will be removed from then total of native Britons at the same time. .
The British elite since 1945 has been programmed to attack the very idea of nations. Mass immigration has been the tool they have chosen to attain that end in Britain. We have the word of Andrew Neather, a special adviser to the Blair government that the massive immigration (over 3 million net) during the Blair years was a deliberate policy to dilute the native culture of the UK:
” I [Neather] wrote the landmark speech given by then immigration minister Barbara Roche in September 2000, calling for a loosening of controls. It marked a major shift from the policy of previous governments: from 1971 onwards, only foreigners joining relatives already in the UK had been permitted to settle here.
“That speech was based largely on a report by the Performance and Innovation Unit, Tony Blair‘s Cabinet Office think-tank.
“The PIU’s reports were legendarily tedious within Whitehall but their big immigration report was surrounded by an unusual air of both anticipation and secrecy.
“Drafts were handed out in summer 2000 only with extreme reluctance: there was a paranoia about it reaching the media.
“Eventually published in January 2001, the innocuously labelled “RDS Occasional Paper no. 67″, “Migration: an economic and social analysis” focused heavily on the labour market case.
“But the earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural.
“I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date. That seemed to me to be a manoeuvre too far.
“Ministers were very nervous about the whole thing. For despite Roche’s keenness to make her big speech and to be upfront, there was a reluctance elsewhere in government to discuss what increased immigration would mean, above all for Labour‘s core white working-class vote.
“This shone through even in the published report: the “social outcomes” it talks about are solely those for immigrants.
“And this first-term immigration policy got no mention among the platitudes on the subject in Labour’s 1997 manifesto, headed Faster, Firmer, Fairer.
“The results were dramatic. In 1995, 55,000 foreigners were granted the right to settle in the UK. By 2005 that had risen to 179,000; last year, with immigration falling thanks to the recession, it was 148,000.
“In addition, hundreds of thousands of migrants have come from the new EU member states since 2004, most requiring neither visas nor permission to work or settle. The UK welcomed an estimated net 1.5 million immigrants in the decade to 2008.
“Part by accident, part by design, the Government had created its longed-for immigration boom.”
(http://www.standard.co.uk/news/dont-listen-to-the-whingers–london-needs-immigrants-6786170.html)
“Economic analyses” of immigration are an insult – as if the replacement of the indigenous people of a country with other races were nothing more than an economic act, like an adjustment in interest rates.
In any case, even the economic arguments for immigration are usually fraudulent, as they knowingly omit many of the costs. For instance, people given permanent residence in the country are allowed to bring in some dependent relatives and allow them to live off the state. Also, thanks to Human Rights laws, no resident foreigner can be removed if he has taken the precaution of ensuring he has some kind of “family life”, or established other ties to the country, no matter how much of an unproductive liability he has become, or what manner of atrocities he has committed.