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”
David McKendrick
https://www.leftfootforward.org/2013/05/how-attractive-is-britain-to-benefit-tourists/
LB
So you don’t have a figure for the average income per migrant do you? Neither does full facts. Without that number you cannot make the decision, and nether can full facts.
Full pension? They still get a partial pension if they have worked less than 30 years. It’s still money going out.
Even for the young, lets take that person working in Starbucks. 2K a year in costs for health care. It’s the average spend. If they have a child, then you need to add on top 6K for education. Then there is a share of the common goods used by all, police, defense etc
So take their wages. Take off the tax. Now, what do they spend the rest of their money on? Food – VAT free. Rent – VAT free. It turns out that for the low paid, very little extra tax is paid. They aren’t owning companies, so they won’t be paying corporation tax. Might be if they are contracting, but then they would be high paid and the sort of migrants we want to welcome.
The breakdown of taxes is here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_Kingdom
Corporation tax is 9%. Where did you get the idea that most tax is paid by companies. Even that 9% is paid on behalf of the shareholders. Its just another tax on people.
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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.
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In which case its far worse. You’ve just argued against yourself. There are 30 million tax payers. That means the average spend per tax payer isn’t 722 / 63 million, but 722 / 30. Each tax payer needs to fund the rest.
So that just pushes the barrier even higher.
That’s why the figure of 11.5K in tax to be a benefit, appliers per person. If they come, without dependents, the figure is 11.5K. If they bring dependents, then the barrier needs to be higher.
Why should the UK taxpayer have to pay a migrant to be in the UK? You’re avoiding that.
Jimmy
‘Dessendants’? Don’t you speak English?
LB
Still doesn’t tell me how many pounds in tax the average migrant pays, dependents included. I had read it the first time round.
Neither does fullfact checks.
Until you have that figure, its all waffle. You can’t show that they are a benefit.
Now some are, and lots aren’t. The question is how to make sure we only get those that are a benefit.
Let me turn in wrong. Abu Qatada I think you agreed wasn’t. Abramovitz probably is (Al Fayed has gone to Switzerland).
At what level of tax would you say each migrant has to pay to be a benefit, and to not be taking money from others?
David McKendrick
Why do you keep up the pretence that all migrants cost the NHS £2,000 per year? If they never visit a doctor, dentist, health centre or hospital then surely they cost the NHS nothing. It is not workers from the age of 20 to 50 that cost the NHS it is children and elderly. 90% of NHS beds are occupied by people over 60 years old. I think that Starbucks would be surprised to hear that their employees are using so much healthcare yet taking so little time off sick.
Migrants from outside the EU on a settlement visa are not allowed access to any public funds for at least the first 5 years they are in the UK. So if they lose their job they don’t get sickness benefit or disability or housing benefit or tax credits or jobseekers or anything else they paid into. So how can they be a drain on the Welfare system?
The average spend per taxpayer may well be £11,500 but this is not spent evenly across the whole population. It is concentrated on the young, the old and the disabled. These groups are not groups where migrants are concentrated.
I have no idea what the average spend is on those that are out of work but since I was only out of work for 4 weeks in my whole working life I don’t think that I got a great deal spent on me. And I now live off a privately funded pension – not the State Pension. Similarly if migrants are not accessing public funds then you cannot attribute government spending to them. It is like the government’s latest rant that immigrants are causing A&E departments to overflow whithout actally asking whether anyone in the A&E queue is an immigrant.
If you do stop immigration then how do you fill the NHS jobs that these skilled doctors, dentists and nurses from overseas are doing? 30% of doctors and dentists and 60% of nurses. Most of them trained overseas before coming to work here.
And if you stop the 500,000 immigrants then do you also stop the 350,000 emigrants too?