Migration Advisory Committee buries mass migration's economic pretensions
£25bn lifetime asylum cost from 2024 grants alone
MAC report reveals asylum and partner visas impose massive lifetime fiscal deficits on UK taxpayers, unmasked by short-term modelling flaws across governments. Net migration policy drains resources amid welfare explosion.
Migration Advisory Committee buries mass migration’s economic pretensions.
The MAC’s latest report calculates asylum routes deliver unambiguous net fiscal losses to taxpayers.
Asylum seekers show low employment rates, high economic inactivity, and early access to benefits.
They claim exemption from the no recourse to public funds rule.
Lifetime costs mirror Dutch findings of €400,000 per person.
In 2024, 108,138 claimed asylum in the UK.
Half receive initial grants, but appeals push approvals to two-thirds.
That projects 70,000 grants this year alone.
Taxpayers face £25 billion in lifetime costs from them.
This excludes pre-grant housing, crimes, or prisons.
Partner visa holders generate a lifetime deficit of £109,000 each.
Graduate visa stayers contribute little, their earnings aligning with dependents, not skilled workers.
Even skilled worker visas yield fiscal gains from just the top 30% of earners, who provide 72% of benefits.
Fiscal Modelling Trap
UK fiscal rules assess impacts over five years.
This timeframe renders nearly all migration fiscally positive.
Longer horizons reveal costs that dwarf short-term gains.
Governments base policy on this narrow window.
The flaw persists across decades and parties.
Cross-Party Endurance
Conservatives proposed raising family visa thresholds to £38,700.
Labour paused that increase.
Both imported net drains while ignoring post-five-year realities.
Net migration rises under current policy.
Welfare costs balloon amid 10.4 million working-age disability claims.
Taxpayer Burden Compounds
Annual migrant benefit claims hit 472 daily despite 200 sanctions per day.
Total cost nears £10 billion yearly.
Asylum adds to this, with low high-end earnings.
Dutch data underscores lifetime drains; UK patterns match.
Housing pressures mount, unmodelled by MAC.
Institutional Blindspot
MAC academics, sponsored by the Home Office, model only direct fiscal flows.
They omit housing shortages, wage suppression, crime, and birth rate drops.
Yet even narrow analysis indicts policy.
Civil servants and politicians prioritise short-term optics.
No party reverses course.
Recruitment to public services falters amid fiscal strain.
The report exposes migration as a mechanism that transfers wealth from taxpayers to long-term deficits.
Decades of governments, Labour and Conservative alike, sustain this through modelling sleight-of-hand.
Ordinary citizens fund £25 billion asylum tabs and £109,000 partner shortfalls while living standards stagnate.
This fiscal pathology erodes the state’s capacity to deliver on basics, entrenching decline.
Commentary based on The fiscal case for mass migration is being demolished by David Shipley on The Spectator.