Got this in my inbox tonight…looks like people like me are net contributors to the
economy : )
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/occ77migrant.pdf
“In 1999/2000 migrants* in the UK contributed £31.2 billion in taxes and consumed
£28.8 billion in benefits and state services, a net fiscal contribution of
approximately £2.5billion after rounding. This is equivalent to around 1p on the
basic rate of income tax.”
*Migrants are defined as “the foreign-born, rather than foreign nationals, are taken
as an approximation of the adult migrant population for the purpose of this
exercise.16 This includes those born in other EEA countries…The fiscal effect has
been calculated for the foreign-born population and UK-born dependent children who
have two parents who are foreign-born or are in single parent households where the
head of household is foreign-born.”
Careful though..”As previously noted, this initial analysis is unsophisticated and
tentative. For example, a simple caseload apportionment of social security spending
does not take into account variations in the average amounts paid to different
groups of people. Similarly, in terms of education and health expenditure, it is
unclear whether migrants incur higher or lower spending per person, on average. With
a bigger programme, over a longer timescale, it should be possible to arrive at more
accurate estimates. As well as refining this cross-sectional investigation,
longitudinal studies estimating migrants’ fiscal impact throughout their stay and
similar analyses for their UK-born offspring are important for understanding the
ongoing effects of migration, particularly how these change over the economic
cycle.”
A very crude but overall interesting finding that challenges the received wisdom
that migrants as a set of people are a drain on the economy. Of course this study,
from the little I have seen of it, admits this and cautions us that these figures
are little more than informed guesses. That said, some interesting questions arise
from these figures:
Which migrants are doing the giving and which migrants are doing the taking? Are
certain migrants producing massive amounts of value and bringing up the profile of
all migrants or are migrants generally hard working net contributors? Does this
study include asylum seekers and the millions of illegal immigrants operating in the
black economy? Does this study take account of the cost of increased medical care
for diseased migrants? The cost of crime in immigrant communities? The additional
cost to schools and councils to accommodate and integrate migrant communities? Does
it count the UK’s millions of Irish residents as migrants (they are mostly foreign
born after all)? Should we figure out which migrants benefit us most and would it be
morally wrong or right to adapt our immigration policies to encourage the migration
of those people over the less successful and disruptive?
Limbic’s theory: I personally think this positive impact by migrants is thanks to
the influx of over 300,000 South Africans into the UK, most of whole fill IT,
Accounting or similar well paid positions. Thanks and tributes can be e-mailed
privately to limbic11@hotmail.com : )
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