UK transformed without public consent
We published an important briefing paper this week that took a further look at the impact of two decades of massive, uncontrolled immigration. It details from which parts of the world the nearly five million additional overseas-born people have come since 2000, and considers what this has meant for both population growth and societal change. Here are some key findings:
- Around six in ten (62%) of the nine million or so foreign-born population were born outside the EU; nearly four in ten (38%) were born in the EU, according to recent estimates
- Since 2001/2 the Eastern European-born population rose by over a million, the South Asian-born population by 780,000 and the Sub Saharan African-born population by 520,000
- London, the West Midlands and the North West especially have seen major population churn over a relatively short period
- Immigration has represented an overall net fiscal cost of between £4 billion and £13 billion per year for 2016/17 and 2014/15 respectively, depending upon assumptions made by the authors concerned
- The total populations of the South East and East of England have experienced the impact of acute population growth, each increasing by around a million over the past two decades
The result is (once again) growing concern for the changes to our society, the added pressures on services, housing and schools and the choking congestion in our some of our major towns and cities (including London, Birmingham and London). And all this is happening without the public’s consent. Indeed, we have not even been asked.
This week we saw the daily record for illegal migrant crossings of the Channel in small boats being spectacularly broken with 828 people coming over in one day (see our Channel Tracker). How long before even this Olympian record is broken?
Sooner or later, not just the government but the whole of the political class will have to answer to the people, as well as deal with the potential instability that is being stoked up.
Blog of the week
| Britain Can’t Afford To Fly Blind On Immigration In May, Home Secretary Priti Patel told us that Britain would for the first time be able to count people in and out of the country. This promise was made around the same time that the official statistics body (ONS) announced that it would no longer be carrying out the surveys at ports and airports (the International Passenger Survey, or IPS) that focused on long term immigration and that had been in place since the 1960s. The IPS was suspended in March 2020 because of the pandemic. Instead, the ONS said, it would analyse administrative data with the help of adjustments and statistical modelling. It would be some time before the new ‘experimental’ system showed its worth, meanwhile we have little idea of what is going on in the wake of COVID and the introduction of the weak points based system. True, the IPS was proving increasingly unreliable but to abandon a longstanding system for measuring long term migration (other elements of the IPS have been reinstated) with no adequate replacement is inexcusable. Our calls on the ONS to continue with the IPS until the new system moved beyond the experimental stage have sadly fallen on deaf ears. The pandemic presented challenges for assessing the true level of immigration. This is unacceptable. You can read our full blog here |
Migration Watch in the news
Our Chairman Alp Mehmet has been in demand by the national media as usual this week. See below:
‘While we hesitate and seem incapable – reluctant if not incapable – of sending people back because the French won’t have them, then I am afraid the numbers will keep coming and keep going up.’
See also The Conservative Woman’s write-up of our most recent paper on the impact of mass immigration on our society:
The Conservative Woman (now TCW) New warning on social and financial cost of mass immigration
‘The foreign-born population now resident in Britain is huge and the task of integrating millions of new arrivals into our society is enormous. It is absolutely essential to reduce the current massive inflow. And yet, the government have thrown open the doors of our labour market; this can only lead to further large flows of people into the country.’
Telegraph: Now is not the time to chicken out of Brexit and its end to mass immigration
‘Matthew Lynn is quite right, we must honour the vote to control Britain’s borders and if that means reordering our economy towards higher wages and better conditions for British workers, and less dependency on a low-wage business model, I say, great. The choice is clear, we either serve democracy or we cave in to the demands of vested interests.’
Telegraph: Quarter of GP surgeries losing up to 40pc of staff a year in ‘major crisis’
‘We are paying the price of successive governments failing to see the damage done by their short-term solutions to gaps in the NHS and doing little to address growing demand.’
Make your voice heard
It is absolutely critical that this government honours the democratic will of the British people, who have repeatedly shown that they want a reduction in immigration. As we have persistently said, the government may talk big about sovereignty and border control but in the end they cave in to the demands of corporate and other vested interests. Their bombast and empty rhetoric fools no-one, as they will discover come the next election. If you also feel strongly, do please write to your MP and let him/her know how you feel. We all have a voice and we all have a vote, let’s put both to best use.