December 29, 2023 - 11:00am
“I can even picture a cultural and economic renaissance similar to the one in the decades prior to the beginning of World War I.” Those were the words of Deutsche Bank Chief Economist David Folkerts-Landau at the height of the 2015 refugee crisis. Refugees were “the best thing that has happened [to Germany] in 2015”, he continued, arguing that mass migration would be the key to boost the country on the global stage.
Not much has been heard from Folkerts-Landau since, most likely because neither Germany nor Europe have reaped the rewards of migration he promised. On the contrary, a number of empirical studies seems to show that the exact opposite is happening, and that instead of a renaissance, mass migration has become an economic burden.
A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state, which creates the wrong incentives for newcomers. The European experience with Ukrainian refugees provides some evidence for this view: if access to government-paid services is too easily available, it discourages migrants from looking for work, regardless of their country of origin. In some European countries, immigrants are well-integrated into the labour market: 70% in Denmark, 60% in Poland and the Czech Republic, and 50% in the Netherlands, UK and Ireland. But in others, such as Germany and Austria, the number remains below 20%.
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth.
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SubscribeExcellent piece, confirming that the electorate has been gulled over this issue for the last thirty years. In an era of increasing automation is it any wonder that importing cheap labour is a net cost rather than a benefit? And given the increasing evidence as to the “economic inactivity” of such “labour” – in plain speech, their bone idleness – can we be surprised at the expense? Milton Friedman warned that high rates of immigration in conjunction with generous welfare would attract rent-seekers, not entrepreneurs. These “dreamers” are dreaming of handouts, not lending a hand.
The next questions are more serious and go to the heart of our predicament. Given that migration on this scale is economically detrimental; given that it involves multitudinous hidden costs in terms of social capital; given it endangers the welfare state, leaving the indigenous working class badly short changed, why was it permitted, even encouraged?
Answer: elite group-think, in which snobbery plus sentimentality with a dash of Marxist manipulation leads to catastrophe. The very real risk as of today is that such will be the epitaph of the west.
Well stated.
Let us not forget Frau Merkel who permitted c. 1 million migrants into Germany and thereby opened the floodgates into wider Europe. And she had zero mandate for making this decision. It was an hideous abuse of power.
She didn’t send trains, planes or buses to bring them to Germany, causing disruption to the countries through which they passed, and partly dismantled the Schengen Zone. And then to add insult to injury, Saint Angela insisted on forced allocation of quotas to reserttle them with EU members. Disaster.
Remember English crops rotting in the fields?
Temporary seasonal work visas for picking crops is fine. In an ideal world it wouldn’t be needed but it’s not feasible for people with mortgages and rental agreements to up sticks out to the country for a few months of poorly paid work
Indeed. Instead of paying indigenous workers decent wages we should bring in truckloads of desperate migrants willing to work for 55p an hour.
Heard of workfare? No? Back to sleep, then…
well I guess it will never happen again..oops…wasn’t there a massive shortage of agricultural pickers this year.How can that be given the record numbers of immigrants??
Thats the most simplistic response to an issue I’ve heard for a very long time.
Back in the day this work was done by our gypsies and other nomads plus working class city dwellers like my nan who treated it as their annual.holiday. To state that only foreign labour can pick crops is quite ridiculous. Other labour sources are deliberately ignored to bring in low paid docile compliant workers from overseas.
“In an era of increasing automation is it any wonder that importing cheap labour is a net cost rather than a benefit?”
Actually, not having cheap labour doesn’t solve the problem. One of the reasons UK productivity remains stubbornly low is precisely because it imports cheap labour: there’s consequently less incentive to invest in technology that reduces high labour costs and increases automation.
This is the downside of the UK’s initial success in creating near-full employment in the UK after the financial crisis: we allowed the flexible-labour-market policy to turn into a corporate-addiction-to-cheap-labour policy.
The UKs low productivity is due to poor management. Thousands of Boris Johnson clones run businesses through hereditary advantages, rather than actual dynamic entrepreneurs. This isn’t universally the case, but it is the case in more established businesses.
”Answer: elite group-think, in which snobbery plus sentimentality with a dash of Marxist manipulation leads to catastrophe.”
You began well, and then missed the point of the above article, and your own post, completely.
This is entirely intentional. People talk of race replacement, how the social engineering; the tax codes are very much driven with this outcome, have stopped the Native Westerners from having families and children – and thus excused bring in ‘migrants’ as we will not breed ourselves.
You see the thing of the Elites is they do not care who they hold as masses under their authority. They wish to return to Feudalism. Middle Class, with their sense of ‘Justice, meritocracy, hard work, savings, education – powered by the Christian ethos and Enlightenment views on Rights and Democracy, and Freedom – they can not be made serfs. They hold Power, wealth, and Morality and even Patriotism and Fairness as values. They will vote for a just government.
That will never do – so the plan is destroy the Middle class and the skilled Working class, and replace them with groups of unskilled peoples who will not take these qualities. Keep them poor and dependent on Government handouts so they will do as told, keep them separate from the other imported and similar groups – and then the Feudalism.
Sure, the nation will be less wealthy, but what do the super wealth care for money? All they wish for is power, they are corrupted totally. They want a small class of technocrats keeping it going who totally are dependent on doing as told to keep their position, then the masses powerless and totally dis-unified under them. 1984 – you think it was fiction?
The best cure for delusions is often a head-on collision with reality. People who once thought they were exempt from the impact of their ideas are learning otherwise, certainly with the impact of immigration reaching the point where its critics can no longer be dismissed as racists and xenophobes.
Left out of the monetary calculus are the ancillary costs to society – the loss of cohesion, the attacks on cultural norms, the immigrants who bring along the same ideas that made their native countries unlivable, etc. Western hospitality is neither appreciated nor repaid in any meaningful way.
Nice bit of xenophobia. Given that many immigrants come from former colonies, this is just a nice payback. Anyway, the UK would be rudderless without its immigrant political leaders like Sumak etc
That’s a fine job of moving the goalposts. Because the likes of Rishi is what the issue with immigration is all about. When parts of your population cannot be criticized for fear of them turning violent, when certain celebrations are tempered for fear of offending those parts, and when areas of cities are essentially closed off to the natives, mindless accusations of a non-existent phobia miss the mark.
Nice trolling
Well said. The mess of self-contradiction in his muddy mire of a post is a remarkable phenomenon. Have you noticed, he wags the finger about “xenophobia” – fear of foreigners – and in the same breath tells us that the mass immigration of such foreigners is “pay back” for empire – making that fear a rather justifiable response, wouldn’t you say? Especially when scarcely any European now living has taken part in empire. And it is messy, muddy, mindless self-contradictory pap as thrust under our noses by the likes of our antagonist which constitutes the entire argument of the left. Truly, the house of the left is rotten. Time to tear it down.
Walter’s posts are almost always full of contradictions. His primary motivation appears to be revenge and hatred of everything Anglo-American. It makes me wonder if he was somehow personally wronged to make him so bitter and spiteful?
Oh, I see! So multiculturalism isn’t about benefitting the natives of the west at all – it’s about punishing them for what some of their ancestors did in the colonies! And there’s the rest of us thinking that the left had been squealing on about how lucky we all were to have these newcomers among us. Of course, that the ancestors of the newcomers were not averse to a bit of conquest and colonialism doesn’t count, does it? No, no, no because the sin is being white, isn’t it? What’s that? Oh! Whiteness, yes – naturally. That way you on the left can stigmatise a whole ethnic group without actually admitting to doing so. Nice!
So immigration isn’t actually beneficial to the country, it’s a collective punishment to the citizens that live there for crimes of the past? That’s good to know
Yeh those from the former colonies are really sticking it to ‘the man’ coming here and doing crap jobs for poverty wages to make very rich people even richer. Payback? Looks like they’re still being shafted just like their ancestors were under colonialism.
The usual statements of the claimed benefits of large scale immigration are also always made on a current cashflow basis. They take no account of hugely increased future liabilities (pension, healthcare, social care, etc) costs which will not be fully covered by the tax and NI contributions of most immigrants.
They also imply that all immigrants contribute and ignore the obvious fact that we are able to – and should – choose only those who bring the greatest benefit (this may not only be a financial assessment) to the UK. We are failing in our duty to ourselves in not making the effort to discriminate here.
Bottom line: We cannot solve the Third World’s problems by simply evacuating it to the First World.
OK, so far that has been the case, but maybe if we just brought in a lot more it will work this time…. I mean that is the government position, so they should know what they are doing…. It could work….. worth a try.
Very true. I recall a French-German journalist by the name of Peter Scholl-Latour saying very much the same thing: “Whoever takes in half of Calcutta does not help Calcutta, but becomes Calcutta himself.” He died about ten years ago, and I greatly miss his voice in the German media landscape. His knowledge of the Middle East was encyclopaedic as he had not only travelled all over the globe, but especially in the Levant where he had studied at the University of Beirut. The radical left-of-centre voices which dominate mainstream media today, were not as prevalent back then, and his academic background combined with his travel experience and the fact that he had been imprisoned by the Gestapo (his Alsatian mother was Jewish) for trying to join the French army in 1944, made him impervious to accusations of fascism/being a Nazi/etc. As I wrote above, he died in 2014, and things had not quite got as out of hand as they are today.
This piece focusses on the cost of welfare benefits.
However there is a different cost. In the UK the average cost of public services per capita is around £12,500 each. (Police, Roads, NHS , Schools etc) .
So anyone paying less tax (and children and non working spouses dont pay tax much) than £12500 is a net cost to the state. Even if they draw no benefits at all.
Where does that figure come from? – I’ve often wanted to see what certain policies are costing each taxpayer, but have found it hard to see any proper accounting.
It would be useful to get a citation on the figure. Why do you include children in the non-taxpaying class? These are the future of the country and the base upon which future taxation depends. Far more sensible to highlight pensioners who are never going to contribute anything productive in terms of labour once they have retired.
Mr Woolcock – UK Spending Pie Chart in 2024 – Charts (ukpublicspending.co.uk)
It gives a breakdown for each area of spending which most pie charts don’t.
A child is clearly a cost, as is a student, and a big one because of education, and it’s irrelevant that they MAY become net payers once in productive employment. Some, of course, then emigrate, part of the number deducted from gross immigration to give the net figure.
I worked full time and paid taxes from age 15 to 66 and part time thereafter until 71. I lived a healthy lifestyle, was and still am, a very light burden on the state in all its departments. To suggest that my 56 years of contribution is irrelevant and I should not be considered is just as bad as saying, for example, a war veteran’s contribution is irrelevant so let’s scrap the Prosthetic Programme.
I am not having a go at pensioners, I just don’t believe a citizen’s worth should be dependent on their contribution to the state’s coffers. The point I was making was that children are an investment, not a cost and that the same argument could be made (crudely) about pensioners.
Those paying less tax are often the underpaid workers who contribute with their labour rather than cash to the welfare of the state.
Were talking about people who are not working
This is a wildly oversimplified accounting. There are myriad ways to contribute to the country other than the purely financial one of paying taxes to the state. Small business owners, for example, pump billions into the economy in the form of salaries and benefits. The idea that taxes paid to the state are the only form of civic virtue grows directly out of the Leftist idea that the state is the apex of the culture, when in fact it should be at best a servant of the actual country.
This is a vast oversimplification. Income taxes aren’t the only taxes an individual contributes to. VAT is a tax. Cars have to be taxed. Council taxes. Inheritance taxes. There are also duties on things like tobacco and alcohol. These are just off the top of my head, people are taxed far more than income tax.
Corporation tax is also a tax that is paid by the employer of this person, and by the companies that this person buys products and services from.
I remember a photo from Sweden circa 2016 where two grinning young Swedish women were holding up a banner in front of a train load of middle Eastern male ‘refugees’ disembarking a train in Stockholm.
It said, in English, ‘I’d rather house a rapist than a racist’ (they were mocking the immigrant rapist trope).
It was in the Queers for Palestine class of naivety. I wonder if they still think that?
I hope that they never learn from experience.
Some people only learn the hard way and through personal experience. The smart ones learn from history and through warnings given by others. As a young girl, I did not believe my mum and grandma that the iron they used for pressing clothes was very hot. I insisted on touching it when they did not look, and received second-degree burns as a result. It was a painful lesson, but it stuck.
Quite a few of these misguided young women received bitter lessons in reality.
There was piece earlier this week confidently predicting that the West is due for a religious revival.
It is; just not the one that Freddie Sayers wants.
What one is coming then?
I’m sure you know what is the most popular boys’ name in the UK now.
The only good thing I can see amongst a rather bleak outlook is a prospect that this excessive immigration might finally kill off the Western European unfunded welfare states.
These were intended to be contributory systems when founded – i.e. there would not be benefits without at least some contributions.
Today, the reverse is almost true – the more contributions you make, the less (if anything) you will ever receive and the more you will be expected to contribute.
For years immigration sceptics have been warning that the alleged financial benefits to the economy of mass migration were illusory. Unfortunately the do-gooder impulse was too strong for our elite to resist. The wretched of the earth making their odyssey to prosperous Europe in search of that fabled Better Life? Our ever-virtuous elite just couldn’t live with themselves if they really closed the borders. Now there will be a very high price to pay.
[By the way, a similar situation is unfolding with the ridiculous NetZero plan. There will soon be a very high price to pay for the feel good factor our planet-saving elite are determined to enjoy]
I fully agree with you, but I’ve always wondered if they truly think that they will remain unaffected by the consequences? I am aware that arrogance and ignorance often go hand in hand, but do these so-called elites really believe that their resources (money, connections, influence, etc.) can protect them forever? There is an old saying about revolutions eating their children. Of course, that refers to the French Revolution which had escalated and had become so violent that it backfired, and eventually gobbled up the likes of Robespierre and his Sans-culottes like Saturn devouring his own son. History has proven the validity of this statement time and again, and yet our elites have seemingly learnt nothing at all. The advent of the Internet has made it easier than ever before to retrieve information, and to gather evidence. In the past, you could burn letters, papers, books, even tapes and claim with a rather high degree of success that xyz had never been said or written. Information was much easier to contain. The Internet doesn’t forget, and its reach is so vast that information once published cannot be retrieved again. Websites can be deleted, but thousands of people may have downloaded the content before it happened.
Are our leaders really that ignorant or is it sheer arrogance that makes them think they are utterly untouchable?
Importing Moslems leads to a Islamic theocracy. They demand that we assimilate to their divinely mandated culture. In addition, suicide by cop becomes a quick way to paradise for a troubled Moslem. Run amok killing Christians is fully approved in their theology and an assured way to heaven.
Not much has been heard from Folkerts-Landau since,
Such authority,such prescience ,such insight…and so f……g wrong its a crime.He’s an “expert” don’t you know???
Just once could one of these dangerous,charlatans and grifters masquerading as experts be called to account.
He is obviously just one of the ‘Lizard People’ who are our Global Masters, telling us lies to promote their agenda of the destruction of the West. And it is working very well for them.
The only thing that gets me through the day is the knowledge that eventually the sheer weight of numbers means that those responsible for importing these people will no longer be able to escape the consequences of it.
Sadly, no. They count on the public being overwhelmed with news stories that distract them from truths learned from the past
how much is the number for the UK £50 billion, £100 billion.
it won’t be the Tories that end the NHS, it will be migration. We simply won’t be able to afford it.
Ironically the NHS was actually the Trojan Horse for the pro migration, back before it just became normalized. The NHS was pointed at and said to be the justification for immigration, to poach the people to clean, feed, nurse, porter, and doctor from other countries – For the British who would not do it themselves (although closing the medical and nursing schools may have been part of the reason why, odd how things work circularly)
voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth.
Since all parties – and an overwhelming majority of the electorate – are in favour of the “welfare state”, especially the NHS – how will that happen?
It’s not the welfare state that is the issue, it’s importing millions of people who then sit on it
I’m not convinced that’s actually true. Or will remain true.
We are approaching the point where there will be two main groups of people within the welfar state:
a) those who fund it, but are never entitled to any benefits (the amount of means testing will only increase)
b) those who don’t fund it (or hardly contribute) but claim the benefits
When there are more people in group a) than group b), perhaps we’ll start to see some change. Group a) people are better able to campaign and vote much more frequently. Just consider how the percentage of higher rate (40%) taxpayers has increased over the last 20 years. 40% tax no longer means you’re “rich” for most people.
You also imply that there’s a single model of the “welfare state” – i.e. the one we have right now – that is already perfect and which needs no change or improvement. This is precisely the sort of thinking which results in an NHS which is “always in crisis” (or so we are always told).
‘When there are more people in group a) than group b), perhaps we’ll start to see some change. ‘The Welfare State was already bloated (and growing exponentially) with the b) group – stuffed with ‘career claimants’ who learned how to play the system from earlier generations. Having lots of kids is a no brainer to get benefits/housing etc etc. They have now been joined by hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants who need ‘everything’ and, if they don’t bring any dependants with them, they will bring them or give birth to them (no birth control necessary). It’s a fantasy to think the a) group will ever outnumber the b) group. We are on the cusp of an explosion of numbers in the b) group due to the ‘come all ye’ principles of the NHS.
“Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state, which creates the wrong incentives for newcomers.” I was virtually crucified when I wrote and said this in 2014/15. I still have screenshots of my comments and people’s reactions. I don’t get much satisfaction from having assessed the situation correctly back then, but it is somewhat gratifying to be able to say that I did not jump on some bandwagon, but that I took in the facts without blinders and rose-coloured glasses, and had the courage to speak up, too.
As for Folkerts-Landau, somebody should remind him of his ludicrous statements! I also remember his idiotic comments about wanting to establish an unskilled, cheap labour force as the solution to migrant unemployment. All whilst he is sitting on a fortune of 350 million Euros. My extended family owns a business in Austria that tried to employ six migrants in 2016 as part of a government-funded scheme to integrate them in the workforce, and lost all but one of them (an Iranian) when the migrants discovered that they would not be earning 5,000 Euros per month, and were expected to show up for eight hours of work five days per week! One of them said that all this work would take time away from his hobbies, and he wouldn’t be able to play football and socialise on a daily basis! Nobody could expect that from him. The Iranian has turned out to be a valued and skilled employee; as a Christian convert, he was also a real refugee who had faced persecution in his homeland and from his former co-religionists who derided him as an apostate.
As most know, the United States does not provide welfare to illegal migrants. However, that means these migrants need to have children as soon as possible, so they can get welfare benefits. The migrants are coming from around the world, and if they claim asylum, they are likely to be allowed in the country until their cases arrive in court, which can take years. A seven thousand people strong caravan is about a thousand miles away and is bound for the United States. Like Europe, this is more than we can handle. The Western US is out of water due to a record years long drought . Where are they going to go? I sympathize with these migrants. Many are escaping years-long wars and extreme poverty. And I don’t have a solution to the problem. But the Western nations can’t take all of them.
The USA pays them. Last I heard was $2300 on doing the processing, plus phone and shoes and a ticket to anywhere. There it is expected for the community to shelter them. Medical is 100% free to them. De facto as they cannot be turned away from hospitals.
‘‘But the Western nations can’t take all of them.”
We should not take any of them.
Look at New York City, where a forty-year-old program to enable free shelter for the mentally ill has become a boondoggle costing the Big Apple billions each year. Stays in $300/night hotels, medical care, meals… What’s not to like? Or California’s largesse, healthcare for all legal or not. Meanwhile, the average price of a home in L.A. is over $1 million. Being both blue states, taxes soar, the average resident can’t make ends meet, the Dems relentlessly push for denser cities, higher immigration, and chain migration, which means new arrivals bring along both young and old, who benefit from aid while never having paid sufficient taxes to fund these programs. Not to mention benefits from DEI handed out for these folks, whose ancestors never fell under the purview meant of the original affirmative action programs…
Has anyone floated the idea that Merkel was working for Putin?
Why would you even think such a thing. Putin would like a healthy and happy Europe to trade with. He loved Germany when he lived there.
He is not anti-Europe, Europe is anti Putin.
Nonsense. Putin wants a divided Europe so he can reconstitute the Soviet Empire.
That’s rather silly…
Yes and often!
I always called her Honecker’s revenge! Erich Honecker, a life-long Communist, was the German Democratic Republic’s leader until a few days before the wall came down in 1989.
Merkel’s dealings with Russia, the economic dependency on Russian oil, always struck me as suspicious. I never bought into her claims, first made in 2022, that she had always seen through Putin. I disliked and distrusted her from the start. At best she was one of Putin’s useful idiots, as stated in this Politico piece, at worst, she was fully aware of what she was doing. https://www.politico.eu/article/putin-merkel-germany-scholz-foreign-policy-ukraine-war-invasion-nord-stream-2/
Do everybody’s posts immediately go into “awaiting for approval” (sic) or is it just me?
are you a ‘trouble-maker’? because the Mods here watch out for your sort if you are. Are your views controversial? Because that is being a trouble-maker.
“In some European countries, immigrants are well-integrated into the labour market: 70% in Denmark, 60% in Poland and the Czech Republic, and 50% in the Netherlands, UK and Ireland.”
Wait – 50 to 60% is considered ‘well-integrated’???
At a debate in New York’s SOHO Forum, the debater arguing for open borders for the US added one important caveat: We (US) can have open borders but no government help. So people who wish to immigrate through formal channels and not gaps in the border wall essentially fend for themselves.
Well, who knew?
I’m still a fraction of the way through the Report, but here’s a key point the Author slightly manipulates, or at least the Article heading does: – ‘…average costs and benefits of different immigrant groups differ greatly. Immigration for work and study from most Western countries and a number of non-Western especially East Asian – countries show a positive outcome. All other forms of immigration are at best more or less budget neutral or have a negative effect on the budget. The latter applies especially to the motives ‘family’ and ‘asylum’ ”
Now in the UK in our wisdom we swopped EU migration/free movement (i.e Western largely) for much more from other parts of the World – in fact we not only swopped it we increased it. A tremendous Brexit dividend.
The asylum element isn’t, thus far on reading the Report, separated out from the rest of immigration as clearly as might be useful. The choices on asylum granting, and of course on asylum arrivals, isn’t the same as economic decisions the Treasury might push for on Visas and salary caps. The whole of Europe has an Asylum problem at present, and all grappling for solutions. As reported elsewhere yesterday even 16yrs ago Blair in the UK was clear the number too high and something fundamental needed to change. But that was distinctly different from free movement of non asylum seeking.
It’ll be an evening’s reading the rest.
Your mistake, which is common among the liberal left, is to assume that migration is a natural force and not a product of policy. The ‘Brexit dividend’ of mass-migration from the third world to replace migration from Eastern Europe is a deliberate policy choice to lower wages, it is not some sort of accident of nature. The idea that the “whole of Europe has an asylum problem” is a straightforward lie. Tens of thousands of Eritreans and Nigerians are not seeking refuge anywhere except for countries with powerful welfare states. Slovenia had only 6,618 asylum seekers arrive in 2022. Asylum seekers only make up about 6% of the average foreign intake into Britain. Most migrants are here for black market work and welfare.
I admit I tend to instinctively favour the ‘mess-up’ as opposed to ‘conspiracy’ view of things. I don’t thus believe the Tories and Brexiteers always intended to swop EU for Third world migrants to reduce wage growth pressure, but it was predictable and just demonstrates the incompetence and failure to think things through properly.
Evidence for asylum seekers tends to indicate the biggest factors that have them head to the Channel are i) language – more have some English ii) family connection iii) no ID cards in the UK. I suspect welfare rules may have a role, but the Study indicates that’s much less an issue for first generation migrants, so be careful what points you make not actually supported by this specific Article and Report.
I’d implement ID cards asap for a whole host of reasons of which illegal migration and use of public services but one. It’s remarkable that after 14years the Right still doesn’t push this whilst chasing the hope it can get a few onto a plane to Rwanda
There was absolutely no intention of swapping EU migration for non-EU, since we could restrict non-EU migration without leaving the EU. Leaving the EU, of course, put them all into a single category (if we overlook the 6 million EU citizens who applied for right of staying).
The increase in non-EU immigration was quietly increased without public discussion.
Personally, I found the EU migrants whom I met easy to get on with, and they integrated completely, several even marrying British people.
However, overall, even for such EU immigrants, our infrastructure would have been put under yet more strain.
I’d agree CE there wasn’t an explicit ‘swop-intention’, but it was predicted and had some inevitability about it.
An anecdote, although I think there are some national stats that bear this out – EU migrants didn’t apply as often to bring family, and it appeared more often intended to return home eventually. That was certainly what appeared to happen in my workplace. Whereas the person coming from much further afield had a different plan and given the distance involved not unreasonably.
One final anecdote – go into any ED next few weeks one evening. It’ll be carnage and most waiting will be elderly/white. Most working will be from some non white background. It’s complex.
Absolutely not the case in my local A&E, where the reverse can be the case, with entire families of minority ethnic groups accompany a sickly relative. And most staff are white Brits.
Where is that JW?
Not convinced that a short paper can really get to the heart of a 274 page book
There is quite a debate in the Netherlands regarding this report. Some immigrants contribute more than they cost, such as Polish and Romanian agricultural workers. Others may contribute in the beginning, but as their industries shut down they become unemployed. There are differences between first and second generations of refugees. Vital companies, such as ASML, would not be able to operate without immigrants. For a more nuanced analysis see the following, also available in English.
https://youtu.be/M9VZLZ2ohvk?si=5LFtsZ0CZenXjVzi
“There is quite a debate in the Netherlands regarding this report.”
No! There is not quite a debate in NL regarding this report. Where do you come up with this information? Amongst the general public there is consensus that the information revealed in the report reflects reality. There might be some debate amongst left-wing sociologist in favour of mass migration, but outside of academia, people don’t need to debate.
As for your YouTube link, it’s a university channel, and I don’t find the discussion very nuanced. I don’t need an English-language version as I understand Dutch quite well.
Nonwhite immigrants into Germany need to look at Germanies history of dealing with minority groups such as Jews. It’s up the chimney in 2035.
The report is 274 pages. Remarkable how quickly those who’ve commented have looked through it to check the Author not giving a distorted summary.
Oh it’s shoot the messenger now, is it? A typically desperate and threadbare reaction from a left now comprehensively outgunned in all matters of argument and principle. All it has left is illegitimate power and small supply of dust to throw in our eyes.
I think we have to accept these things at face value, yet do so with an abundance of caution. Until someone has property vetted the research themselves, or it has been critiqued by others with more time and expertise, I would accept the results, but temper that with common sense caution.
It confirms what we can see with our own eyes
The headline certainly confirms some folks instinct. The report, when you actually read it, is much more nuanced.
Did the study calculate the benefits of having immigrants in the work force? With the demographic decline of most European nations immigrants are necessary to supplement the work force and fill necessary roles, such as that of British PM. So the costs are calculated, but what are the benefits? If immigrants were removed we would have to close the Canadian health system, and probably the NHS
Alternatively, you could train more doctors and nurses and maybe pay them better
But you are partially right. An economy with fewer immigrants would be different, in some ways better, in some ways worse. I don’t live in an economy, I live in a country, I’d prefer it to be a nation state, not a multicultural mess, Bugmen like you can FO, take your GDP growth and shove it
Europeans like to have relatively pure nation states, Canadians like multiculturalism. Toronto is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, but few complaints.
Certainly, Toronto is a city that exemplifies the depressing mediocrity of a bland multiculturalism. As far as I can tell, Toronto has given up on being Canadian – or having any discernible identity or culture, for that matter. A day in Toronto is like being stuck in an international airport for an extended layover.
Those in favour of immigration for obscure motives keep telling us that, but I say, forget your economic models; we’ve had massive immigration for decades. Where’s the practical evidence around us that it is beneficial? All I see is shortage, congestion, public disorder, increasing racial and religious tension, occupied hotels in once-attractive towns, on and on.
I suspect Walter’s occupation, he’s a sociologist studying social theory including multiculturalism, may have something to do with his viewpoints. Personally, I don’t want to be the test subject in various immigration experiments that have detrimental effects for the indigenous populations.
The NHS is a third world disgrace and needs to be scrapped. Will there ever be a politician with sufficient courage to put this sacred cow out of its misery?
Having now waded through it the Study doesn’t try to calculate the full potential costs of losing the migrants and the impact that could have on certain Sectors – for example if certain services imploded what would be the ripple effect to other economic sectors? e.g if social care capacity dropped 25% how many relatives then couldn’t work because of caring responsibility and what would be that impact etc. It does reference this but doesn’t try to do the calculation which would be v difficult.
The trend in how second generation immigrants do particularly thought provoking. Everything is an aggregation, but it does give Policy makers food for thought.
The difference in where migrants come from too gives much to ponder.
One thing that would also impact any UK equivalent study is that we don’t allow Asylum seekers to work and given the backlog that’s a huge cost. Were we to allow them to work – say after 3mths if their application remained unprocessed – the cost/benefit would be a bit different.
Countries are more than an economic zone.