Spoken word poet Hollie McNish spells out what's wrong with most of the arguments used against immigration. She cites as her inspiration a book by economist Philippe Legrain called Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them.
Spoken word poet Hollie McNish spells out what’s wrong with most of the arguments used against immigration. She cites as her inspiration a book by economist Philippe Legrain called Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them. (Hat tip: Adam Mordecai)
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85 Responses to “Next time someone claims that immigrants are destroying Britain, show them this”
LB
I’ve no doubt there are some who do pay their way. I’ve no doubt there are lots who don’t.
However when you say
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Since
employment levels are higher among the immigrant population it is them
that are subsidising the lazy UK scroungers who would rather live on
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You are wrong. The problem is that in order to subsides others, they need to be paying more tax than they consume in state resources. You are extrapolating from some who do pay their way and saying that must mean all are good. That is not the case.
That’s why we need a threshold. A non racist threshold unlike your immigrants good, brits scroungers argument. Hence a threshold of having to pay more tax than the government per head spend is clear. It means that migrants are paying their way.
Then you rather shoot your own argument down, by pointing out that lots of migrants are working for min wage or less. Rather makes the point. If they are earning so little, they aren’t even paying enough to cover the 2,000 per person, a year the NHS costs.
Asylum is something different from economic migration. Asylum is a must for those that need it. Those that came via a safe third country, or those that don’t qualify, have to leave.
On blame,. I don’t blame the migrants at all. There is a lot to admire about their enterprise. However migration is optional. We need to choose which we accept. If you want to accept low skilled migrants there should be a means where you agree to sponsor one. That means you guarantee to make up the short fall in taxation for as long as they are here. Are you prepared to do that? I doubt it.
Paul Oliver
I bet Hollie McNish makes damned sure she doesn’t live anywhere near an area where there are large numbers of immigrants (or their dessendants).
David McKendrick
Even MigrationWatch’s figures show that there is a net contribution from each migrant of around £1000 a year after government contributions such as NHS, Welfare, hospitals, schools, roads etc are taken into account. There is no shortfall in taxation according to FullFact.org’s researches. But don’t let the facts distort your opinions…
I at no point said that Migrants are working for less than minimum wage. This would be illegal and is obviously not the case since no employers have been prosecuted for paying less than minimum wage. I just said that UK Citizens seem unwilling to work in some jobs that pay minimum wage while migrants are willing to work hard in these jobs.
As to having a threshold; in Scotland the population is roughly the same as in 1953 when the Queen came to the throne. Not because there are few immigrants but because there is a tradition of high emigration. If we set a threshold for immigrants how soon will other countries retaliate by refusing to have Brits emigrate to their countries? There are already moves by Spain to stop Brits from retiring there and using their health services.
Last year over 50 million people landed in UK. Most were either UK tourists returning or foreign tourists coming for short visits. UKBA issued over 500,000 visas to visitors and immigrants. EU migrants and visitors don’t generally need a visa and neither do visitors from USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa etc. What would happen to the UK economy if you were to curtail these flights, apart from the obvious reduction in pollution?
LB
Post the numbers then. It’s so easy to show that the vast majority of migrants do not pay their way.
Let me start you off.
Total spending in the UK is 722 bn a year.
http://tinyurl.com/lvx8gpr
Total population in the UK is 62.74 million
http://tinyurl.com/n3ntvvk
Spend per head, is then 772 bn / 62.74 million or 11,508 pounds per person per year.
All links you can go and check.
Now how much do you have to earn to pay 11,508 pounds a year?
http://listentotaxman.com/index.php is a tax calculator
Plug in 36,000 and you are talking about 11.5K in taxes. [If you include employer’s NI]. If you exclude employer’s NI, then its 44,000
So you’re claim, and I’m asking you to justify it, its that each migrant is earning more than 36,000 a year. That’s per migrant, dependents included. If its a family of 4, you need to scale it up by 4 times if just one is working.
That’s your claim isn’t it? That all migrants are beneficial.
The argument above excludes one major item. That is pensions debts. Those are rising at 734 bn a year. Not factored in. Even when they leave the UK, they still get UK pensions. Weren’t you arguing the state shouldn’t pay those?
So come on, should be easy for you to find out what the average migrant pays in tax. Hard number. How many thousands do they pay?
I’m not for curtailing freedom of movement of people. I’m just for curtailing the rights of visitors to the UK to consume public money unless they pay more tax than they consume. Its’ a simple test.
David McKendrick
You are assuming that all tax is income tax and ignoring the fact that even buying petrol the majority of the cost is actually tax. Anything you buy including services includes VAT. Have to factored in the fact that not only do you pay tax when you earn but probably pay even more tax when you spend? You cannot even buy insurance without paying tax. I pay a big chunk of Council Tax every month and even my pension that I paid into is still taxed when I get it back.
On the basis of your figures to generate £11,508 in income tax per capita the average income would have to be £36,000 which simply is not true. It is closer to £25,000 and that is not for 62.74 million – it is only the percentage who are actually in work so it excludes the young, the old, those looking for work, the disabled and those not employed but not looking for work such as stay at home mums or housewives and students.
Apart from taxes paid by individuals, most of tax revenue raised in the UK is paid by businesses. And even in the case of the taxes paid by individuals the top 10% of high earners pay almost 90% of the total income tax paid in the UK. Some of these people are in fact foreign born – people like Al Fahed who owns Harrods but is not “employed” in the UK so he doesn’t have a salary but does have access to the profits earned by his company.
And to get a full pension if they were not living in the UK but were living in the EU they would have to have paid NI contributions for 30 years. If they moved outside the EU the pension would be frozen and would not rise year on year.
http://fullfact.org/factchecks