WHICH OF YOU VOTED LABOUR THEN ? READ THIS Todays Daily Telegraph headline story. Study measures effectives over 17 years - and shows recent east European arrivals boosted the economy IMMIGRANTS from OUTSIDE of Europe cost the public purse nearly £120billion over 17 years, laying bare the cost of Labour’s migration policy, a report has shown. The major academic study also found, however, that recent immigration from Europe – driven by the surge in arrivals of eastern Europeans – gave the economy a £4.4 billion boost over the same period. Experts from University College London said native Britons made a negative contribution of £591billion over the 17 years – because of the country’s large deficit. The report analysed figures from 1995 to 2011. For most of that time the Labour government was pursuing vigorously pro-immigration policies. It found that migrants from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) made a negative contribution to the public purse of £117.9billion because they consumed more in public expenditure – including NHS costs, welfare handouts and education – than they contributed in taxes. The report, to be published in The Economic Journal today, said the non-EEA group – largely made up of people from India, Pakistan and African Commonwealth countries – contributed less because its families tended to have more children and lower employment rates. “Immigrants from non-EEA countries ... contribute less than they receive,” the 50-page study concluded. The native population made a negative contribution in 12 years during the period, a total of £591billion, as the economy ran at a deficit. Immigrants from within the EEA – which is the European Union plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein — took out more than they paid in during only seven of the 17 years. It meant European migrants made an overall positive contribution to the economy of £4.4 billion over the period. Since 2000, European migrants were 43 per cent less likely than native Britons to receive benefits or tax credits, and 7 per cent less likely to live in social housing, the report said. The authors – whose research has previously been criticised by the Right-of-centre think tank Civitas and by Migration Watch UK, which campaigns for tighter immigration laws – emphasised their findings on the contribution of European migrants and gave less prominence to the findings on the costs of non-EEA immigration. Professor Christian Dustmann, of UCL’s Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration, and a coauthor of the report, said: “A key concern in the public debate on migration is whether immigrants contribute their fair share to the tax and welfare systems. “Our new analysis draws a positive picture of the overall fiscal contribution made by recent immigrant cohorts, particularly of immigrants arriving from the EU.” Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of the Migration Watch think tank, said the report confirmed the huge cost of immigration. “As for recent European migrants, even on the authors’ own figures, which we dispute, their contribution to the Exchequer amounts to less than £1 a week per head of population,” he said. Between 1995 and 2011 the foreignborn population in the UK doubled from 3.5 million to about 7 million. The non-EEA population grew from 2.8 million to 4.6 million during the period. Of those, in 2011, just over two million were not working, either because they were unemployed or for other reasons such as retirement or child care. At the same time the number of European immigrants tripled from 723,000 to 2.3 million. That surge was mainly due to the previous Labour government’s decision not to impose controls on the eight eastern European nations, including Poland, which joined the EU in 2004. The method used in the report to work out the “net fiscal contribution” of different groups calculated how much they cost in terms of government funds, such as medical expenses, schooling their children and the welfare state. The total was then deducted from their overall contribution to the public purse, including income tax, national insurance, VAT, council tax and business rates.Vote Labour for an Immigrant Neighbour.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 07:31:12 +0000
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