[Immigration into Britain has had an overall negative economic effect.]
By John Bean, 29 May 2008
For several years the BNP has been disputing the Lib-Lab-Con claim that somehow immigration has been a benefit to Britain. A few politicians and columnists have of late recognised the problems brought to housing, schooling and the NHS by several million immigrants, but they have still tried to maintain that it has brought economic advantages. This particular canard was blown out of the water by Ralph Musgrove in his article in April Identity which revealed the Home Office tricks to sustain this fiction.
The alleged £6billion annual benefit of immigration has now been officially exposed in a House of Lords committee report as being untrue. The committee, which includes two former chancellors and several former Cabinet ministers, came to the conclusion that the economic benefits “are small and close to zero in the long run”.
The committee took into account the increase in population, which is 190,000 annual gain after deducting from the immigrant total of some 300,000 those (mainly British) emigrating, and their use of local services such as health, education, and social housing.
David Coleman, a professor of demography at Oxford University, said in his evidence to the committee that the Government had excluded costs from crime, security, the race relations process, health ‘tourism’ and imported ailments such as TB. The real cost of immigration could be in the order of £8.8billion a year.
Richard Pearson, a visiting professor at the University of Sussex’s Centre for Migration Research, said: “While migrants have clearly helped alleviate often long-standing skill shortages, they have also filled many low-skilled jobs, often at very low wages. “
Importantly, he added: “These migrants are likely to be displacing, and reducing the incentive on employers to recruit and train low-skilled, indigenous workers”.
Lord Wakeham, who led the eight-month inquiry, said that high levels of immigration threaten to price millions of Britons out of the housing market over the next 20 years and it would add 10 per cent to the cost of homes.
There are gains from immigration in Britain, but it is for the immigrant himself who earns far more than he/she can in the homeland. Remittances will also help the family of the immigrant and his/her country’s economy. British householders will also benefit when they pay a plumber/carpenter/plasterer or nanny half the wage they would to a British born worker.
So also does the employer whose overheads are cut by using cheap labour and thereby holding down indigenous workers’ wages.
(From my Nationalist Notebook column in the May issue of Identity)
Originally published on the website of the British National Party.
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