Migration Watch UK: News

Migration Watch UK Press Comment on ONS Net Migration Statistics August 2015

2015-08-27T12:09:44+01:00

Responding to today’s net migration figures, Lord Green of Deddington, Chairman of Migration Watch UK, said:

"Net migration at one third of a million a year is clearly unsustainable. Nearly half of the inflow is now from the EU, including 50,000 from Romania and Bulgaria as we have long predicted. This underlines the need for serious concessions in the forthcoming negotiations.

These figures also show that non-EU students are staying on in large numbers; that must be addressed.

There could hardly be a worse time for the Treasury to cut the funds available for immigration control."

Labour Leadership candidates on immigration

2015-08-17T11:49:09+01:00

On July 25^th the final hustings of the 2015 labour leadership election were held in Warrington. During the course of the hustings the candidates were asked ‘where do each of the candidates stand on Britain’s place in the EU and can we solve the immigration issue while remaining in the EU?’

The Candidates went onto give the following responses.

Andy Burnham said that Labour had to address people’s concerns about immigration. He said that he didn’t want to be on the doorstep anymore in Leigh (his constituency) and feel that you have to ‘avoid people’s eye when they bring up the subject.’ He also said that part of Labour being in a position to go back into government would be it being in a position to answer people’s concerns about immigration. He said that ‘part of Labour’s ability to get back into government will be to answer those concerns.’ He said that he thought freedom of movement was a good thing, but that it was not the same as a ‘freedom to claim and that should be a clear principle that we start with.’ He said migrants should only be able to claim once they had contributed. He said that migration shouldn’t lead to people’s wages being undercut. He said that the communities that were most affected by European migration should get more help and more funding for the services that were particularly affected like primary school places and GP’s.

Liz Kendal said that EU membership was vital for dealing with the issue of migration. She said it was important to get a ‘fair deal on immigration from Europe’ and that people who come here ‘should pay in before they take out.’ She went onto say that ‘we shouldn’t let David Cameron determine our future in Europe on whether Polish people get tax credits or not.’

Jeremy Corbyn said it was important to ‘protect freedom of travel and work across Europe.’ He said that where there are issues of supply of houses and school places the blame should fall solely onto the government ‘that had failed to provide them’ rather than onto migrants.

Yvette Cooper said that there was ‘a challenge from migration and we have to face up to that.’ She said that the undercutting of wages had to be stopped. She said that it was ‘deeply unfair for those that come’ and also for ‘those local workers that end up being undercut’. She said that ‘at its worst’ the exploitation of migrants was akin to modern slavery and it should be made a crime.

Asylum Outcomes in the UK

2015-08-14T16:18:19+01:00

The Home Office produces an annual ‘cohort analysis’ of asylum claims permitting a comprehensive understanding of what eventually happened to the people who claimed asylum in the UK in a particular year.

This short blog will outline the outcomes of the 2012 asylum cohort. Data is available for the 2013 cohort however around one third of them have an unknown outcome at this stage (they likely remain in the system, perhaps at appeal stage etc). For this reason we will be looking at 2012.

In that year there were 21,843 applications for asylum. Of these, 5,635 (26%) were granted refugee status at what is known as the ‘initial decision’ stage and an additional 953 were granted some other form of protection. This means that they did not meet the criteria of the refugee convention however it was considered to have been unsafe for them to return home so they were granted humanitarian protection or discretionary leave to remain. A total of 10,908 people had their application for asylum rejected at initial decision.

All applicants have the right of appeal, and 7,744 lodged an appeal against their unsuccessful applications. Of these 2,080 were successful.

Thus the total number of people granted asylum or another form of protection in 2012 was 8,668, or 40%. 10,806 were unsuccessful in their application for protection, with an additional 2,639 cases where the outcome is still unknown.

Just 4,656 people who applied in 2012 have left the country (2,904 were forcibly removed and 1,752 departed voluntarily). This means that of the 10,806 applicants who were unsuccessful, 6,150 remain in the UK.

In total therefore, 8,668 of the 2012 cohort remain in the UK legally and 6,150 remain illegally. The total of these, 14,818, is 68% of the total number of applications for that year.

However, the cases where the outcome is unknown are presumably still in the system so a final proportion of those applicants still in the UK is not yet available. As of now, we know that only 4,656 of the total cohort for 2012 have left meaning that 17,187, or 79% remain in the UK.

Looking over the longer term, in the ten years between 2004 and 2013 just 60,000 people were removed of the 240,000 applicants meaning that 75% remain in the UK.

Table 1. Data extracted from Asylum Cohort Analysis, 2012 and 2004 – 2013

Cohort Analysis of Asylum Claims	2012	2004-2013
Applications	21,843	240,338
Grants of Asylum at Initial Decision	5,635	36,051
Grants of Humanitarian Protection/Discretionary Leave	953	19,720
Grants on Appeal	2,080	27,152
Total Granted Asylum/Protection	8,668	82,923
Total Refused	12,806	141,657
Cases Decision Unknown	2,639	15,758
Enforced Removal	2,904	40,482
Voluntary Departures	1,752	19,427
Total Departures	4,656	59,909
Total Remain in UK (Applications minus Departures)	17,187	180,429
Total Remain in UK as % of Applications	79%	75%

These data can be found at Table as.06 of the Home Office Asylum Statistics here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/427908/asylum2-q1-2015-tabs.ods

Lessons from Calais

2015-08-13T09:37:14+01:00

The most effective way to tackle the crisis in Calais is to tackle the motivation of the migrants who seem so determined to get across the channel. That is the conclusion of a report issued by Migrationwatch today.

The report concludes that the main motivation to cross the channel is not to seek asylum (France is a safe country) but the ambition to work illegally in Britain and send money home. Furthermore, these migrants calculate, correctly, that they are very unlikely to be deported to their home countries. The report traces the decline in the credibility in the UK immigration system over the past twenty years and calls for early action to reverse the perception that, once across the channel, these migrants are home and dry.

Specifically, the report calls for:

A full search of trucks arriving in Dover.
Contingency planning for military aid to the civil authorities.
Detention in additional detention centres nearby for those migrants discovered in Dover.
A “one stop shop” to consider asylum claims and deport those whose claims fail.
The use of the UK’s aid programme as a carrot and stick to negotiate return agreements with source countries.
A doubling of expenditure on enforcement over the next three years.
An expansion of the immigration detention estate.
In the longer term, the introduction of ID cards in the UK.

Commenting, Lord Green of Deddington, Chairman of Migration Watch, said: “Some of those in Calais may well have a case for asylum but they should be claiming in France which is, of course, a safe country. The real issue is about others who believe that, once they have crossed the Channel, they will be able to work illegally and send money home with very little risk of deportation. More security measures in France will not be sufficient. We need to change the perception that Britain is a “soft touch”. That means arresting, detaining and, where possible, deporting those who have entered our country illegally. The Foreign Secretary is right when he says this should be our ‘number one priority’ but we need thorough searches in Dover to achieve it.

To read the full briefing paper please click here:

http://migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/11.39

Response to House of Commons Library blog on our paper on Economic Characteristics of Migrants in the UK

2015-07-28T16:44:37+01:00

Steven Ayres, a researcher at the House of Commons has blogged on our report "Economic characteristics of migrants in the UK in 2014".

His blog starts by noting that its purpose is not to critique "the report itself, but rather to investigate whether the source of the data, the Labour Force Survey (LFS), is capable of providing evidence that is robust enough to support these claims".

He then focuses on the final section of the report only. This showed the LFS data broken by age-band and by country group to examine possible reasons for differing rates of benefit claim overall. This section was clearly introduced with a cautionary note about some of the benefits involved and its purpose is to observe general differences across the age distribution.

Mr Ayres reproduces the chart showing housing benefit by age for people born in Pakistan and Bangladesh and writes "One particular claim is that there is a 10 point gap in the claimant rate between UK-born and Pakistan/Bangladesh born 40-44 year old housing benefit claimants" and then points out that any such assertion cannot be made with much statistical confidence. He is quite correct, but our report made no such claim. Instead, the commentary on the chart said merely "Rates of housing benefit claim are considerably greater than the UK-born rate for those aged 30 and over". For someone writing with the ostensible authority given by its appearance on the House Of Commons website, it is disappointing that Mr Ayres has set up a straw man in saying explicitly that a particular claim was made when it simply was not.

Mr Ayres then draws attention to a passage in the LFS User Guide that says

Comparison between the data collected by the LFS and administrative data collected by other Government departments shows that the LFS consistently undercounts benefit claimants.

It is correct that this is what the User Guide says. Mr Ayres then goes beyond this in writing "The LFS has shortcomings as a source of benefit claimant data due to discrepancies (which can be substantial) between individual respondents’ descriptions of the benefits and tax credit they receive and the official DWP / HMRC figures on benefit and tax credit claimants drawn from administrative databases". Taking the closest published administrative data gives the following comparison to the Apr-Jun 2014 LFS data. We will leave it to readers to decide just how substantial the differences actually are.

	Jobseeker's Allowance	Child Benefit	Tax Credits	Housing benefit
Labour Force Survey	1m	7.7m	4.8m	3.9m (age under 70)
Administrative data	1.1m	7.6m	4.7m	3.5m (age under 60)
(Admin source)	ONS claimant count statistics Apr-Jun 2014 avge	HMRC published for 2013	HMRC published for April 2014	DWP published for 2013/14

Mr Ayres further notes that some of the explanation for higher rates of benefit claim among some country groups might be because they live in London, and suggests that this 'omitted variable' might be the 'causal factor' for higher rates. We have no doubt that a reason that some groups have high rates of housing benefit claim is because they live in high-cost London (although the Somali-born people singled out by Mr Ayres overwhelming live in social housing which isn't subject to market rents). But living in London is a choice they make. It is notable also on this point that whereas we observed very different rates of benefit claim between people born in India and those born in Pakistan and Bangladesh, very similar proportions of these two groups live in London.

The purpose of our paper was to illustrate differences in outcomes between different migrant groupings and between migrant groupings and the UK-born population and obviously these will be determined by both opportunities and choices.

Finally, Mr Ayres draws attention to DWP administrative data on 'key out-of-work benefits' by nationality at time of registration for National Insurance Number. For the reasons he outlines this does not match exactly country of birth, but is a reasonable proxy for migrant status in the absence of more certain data. He then claims "these figures do reveal a quite different conclusion to that in the Migration Watch report: that, in February 2014, claimant rates were 7.4% for non-UK nationals and 12.7% UK nationals". These figures reveal no different conclusion at all. The DWP figures are primarily (by both number and cost) Jobseeker's Allowance, and ESA and incapacity benefits. In paragraph 22 of our report we note in relation to these benefits "Rates of claim for Income Support and Jobseeker’s Allowance differ little between migrants and the UK-born: these cost around £7bn. Migrant rates of claim are noticeably lower only for sickness/disability benefits and the various allowances for carers etc." It is the much lower rate of claim to these sickness and disability benefits that account for the difference between UK and non-UK claimant rates in the DWP figures, so there is no different conclusion in our report on this point at all! Again Mr Ayres has set up a straw man and asserted we have reached a conclusion that we simply have not, and again this is very disappointing.

Our intention, as we set out at the start of our paper, is to provide some insight into the issue of whether it is reasonable to ascribe the same economic performance to migrants into the UK as to the UK-born population, and also to counter simplistic contentions like 'EU good/non-EU bad' (or vice versa). Wherever possible it was 'reality-checked' against data published by DWP, HMRC and other official sources. It by no means purports to be the last word, but rather seeks to help identify areas that need to be considered carefully in carrying out both assessments and forecasts of the impact of migration and in the development of policy on migration.

You can read the original blog by Steven Ayres here: http://commonslibraryblog.com/2015/07/28/migrants-and-benefits/

The Economic Characteristics of Migrants in the UK in 2014

2015-07-21T10:34:06+01:00

Key labour market outcomes of migrants to the UK show wide variation, particularly in employment status, wages and benefit claims. In these terms migrants from some regions have particularly strong economic characteristics compared to those born in the UK while others have much weaker economic characteristics.

Assessments of the current and future impact of immigration to the UK often assume that there is no difference in the economic characteristics of migrants in the UK. The justification given for this is that overall the migrant population tends to be younger and thus more likely to be working. However, such assessments rarely take into account either the type of employment or the rewards of it.

While much debate is conducted in terms that distinguish between EU and non-EU migration, it is clear that the picture of labour market outcomes is not simple, with both groups containing a mix of countries from which migrants to the UK exhibit very different characteristics.

The group of migrants in the UK from Western Europe, India, South Africa and the ‘Anglosphere’ exhibit strong economic characteristics – they have high rates of employment at good wages and low rates of benefit claim.

Migrants from Eastern Europe also have high rates of employment but they have lower wages and higher rates of benefit claim than those born in the UK.

Migrants from Africa apart from South Africa have overall employment rates and wages on a par with the UK-born, but much higher rates of benefit claim.

Migrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh have lower rates of employment combined with lower wages and higher rates of benefit claim.

Overall outcomes in comparison to the population of UK-born residents are summarised in the following table.

	Employment rate	Wages	Rate of benefit claim	Approx adult population
EU15	Better	Better	Better	1.25 million
EU A10	Better	Worse	Worse	1.25 million
USA, Australia and NZ	Better	Better	Better	250 thousand
Africa (excluding South Africa)	Similar	Similar	Worse	1 million
South Africa	Better	Better	Better	150 thousand
India	Better	Better	Better	700 thousand
Pakistan and Bangladesh	Worse	Worse	Worse	650 thousand
Rest of World	Similar	Slightly worse	Slightly worse	2 million

Some large migrant populations are not strong economic performers when examining these three key characteristics, and economic performance even equivalent to that of the UK-born population cannot be inferred simply from generally younger age or likelihood of being in work.

Read the full briefing paper here:

http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/1.42

Response to the Royal College of Nursing's report 'International Recruitment 2015 '

2015-06-23T16:24:05+01:00

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN, the nursing union) yesterday published a report ‘International Recruitment 2015’. The report generated a number of provocative headlines such as ‘New immigration rules will cost the NHS millions’ (The Guardian) or ‘New Immigration Rules will cause NHS chaos’ (Sky News).

These headlines are misleading for a number of reasons. Firstly, the rules referred to are not new. In 2011 the Home Secretary Theresa May announced that anyone who enters the country on a Tier 2 visa after April 2011 will have to earn a minimum of £35,000 by the time that they are eligible for indefinite leave to remain five years later with the intention of breaking the almost automatic link between work and settlement. For those earning below this threshold, their visa would be eligible for one more year and then they would be required to leave. Many reports referred to the nurses being at risk of deportation; in fact their visas would merely expire. They’d only be subject to further immigration actionF if they subsequently chose to illegally remain after their visas expired.

Many reports refer to the changes causing ‘chaos’ in the NHS; this seems very unlikely given the number of nurses that would be potentially affected by the changes. Only those nurses from outside the EEA recruited since 2011 are subject to the new rules. Even before the rules were changed in 2011, a majority of foreign nurses were being recruited from inside the EEA and since 2011 just 3,365 nurses from outside the EEA have been recruited to work in the NHS. In 2014/15 there were just 665 nurses recruited from outside the EEA, compared with over 8,000 from inside it. The NHS currently employs over 350,000 nurses so potentially around 1% of current nurses are subject to the rules. All those affected will have been perfectly aware that if they didn’t earn £35,000 after five years they wouldn’t get permanent residence, as would their employers. These are hardly conditions that would create ‘chaos’ and indeed the RCN have had many years to prepare for this point.

While the RCN is opposed to the £35,000 threshold, the main point of the report was that there should be more nurses trained in the UK. Recruitment of nurses from overseas is costly and is estimated by the RCN as being as much as £12,000 for each non-EEA nurse recruited with an average cost of £6,000.

There are also serious ethical questions about recruiting nurses from poor countries. The RCN report itself recommends that nurses are not recruited from countries with ‘fragile health systems’. Many countries from which large numbers of nurses were recruited in the past either have extensive shortages or will do so in the future. India, for example, already had a shortage of 2.4 million nurses in 2012 and this will likely only worsen in the future, according to the World Bank. The Caribbean will likely face a shortage of 10,000 nurses by 2025.

The RCN’s report recommends that the government must increase domestic recruitment levels and end the UK’s dependence on recruiting from abroad. This is in part due to the sheer number of countries expected to face a deficit of nurses in the long term; the European Commission has estimated a potential shortfall of 600, 000 in the EU by 2020 while other countries like Australia and America plan to recruit more foreign nurses.

One of the main arguments made for importing workers from abroad is that British people don’t want to do the jobs immigrants are willing to do. But last year 37,645 nursing students were turned away from courses they applied to; an increase in places could eliminate the need for costly overseas recruitment.

Many of yesterday’s headlines were a distortion of the facts; the rules referred to aren’t new and the numbers of nurses affected would not cause major disruption to the NHS.

To read the RCN report in full, click here:

Migration Watch UK Press Comment on ONS Net Migration Statistics

2015-05-21T12:56:28+01:00

Responding to today’s net migration figures, Lord Green of Deddington, Chairman of Migration Watch UK, said:

The latest figures are appalling. We need to stop and think where this mass immigration is leading. It points to a probable increase of three million in the UK population over the next five years in the face of very strong public opinion. Any further cuts in resources for immigration control would be absurd.

The government are right to focus on the need to ensure departure. Non-EU migrants are arriving at a rate of 300,000 a year but only 100,000 are leaving. It seems that half of those staying on (about 100,000) originally arrived as students.

Meanwhile, the nearly 50% increase in net EU migration suggests that simply curtailing benefits is unlikely to be effective.

Immigration and the demand for housing

2015-04-29T11:35:17+01:00

Huge impact of immigration on the demand for housing

Nearly two thirds of additional households since 1997 headed by an immigrant

The impact of immigration on the demand for housing in the UK is much greater than the public realise. That is the thrust of a paper issued by Migration Watch today.

Nearly two thirds of the households formed in the United Kingdom since 1997 have had a foreign-born (immigrant) head of household; that is 1.8 million out of 2.7 million. Not all members of those households will be immigrants, and other households will include immigrants, but, broadly speaking, immigration has accounted for about two thirds of new households since 1997. The numbers are even higher in recent years. In the last ten years, between 2005 and 2014, an annual average of 133,000 additional households were headed by a person born overseas. In the last five years the average was 115,000 (78%), compared with 32,000 headed by a person born in the UK (22%).

If each additional immigrant household over the last ten years had been provided with a new dwelling we would have had to build the equivalent of 133,000 homes a year - that is over 360 a day or one every four minutes[i]. With current levels of building at around 140,000 a year and the number of new homes needed at around 250,000[ii], this shows clearly how the shortfall in the construction of new houses is largely due to increasing pressure for housing as a result of mass immigration.

The precise impact on housing demand will be influenced by other factors than immigration – market forces, the need to replace inadequate housing and changes in the number of shared households. Nevertheless, immigration has made a substantial impact on the demand for housing and must have contributed to driving up both house prices and rents[iii].

Recent official projections of future household growth have been deafeningly silent on the issue. Our report shows that almost 80% of additional households in recent years have been headed by an immigrant. On present trends immigration will continue to be a major factor in housing demand.

Commenting, Lord Green of Deddington, Chairman of Migration Watch, said

“Communities all over the country are being asked to accept new housing developments without being told that, across the country, most of the additional households are nowadays due to immigration. It is surely obvious that, a major reduction in immigration is essential to reduce the acute pressure on housing which we are now facing. We call for the government to publish an official estimate of the impact of immigration on housing demand – past, present and future. This has to be a key part of any informed debate about both immigration and housing.”

[i] This is not to say that the majority of newly built homes go to households headed by immigrants, as explained in paragraph 18 of the paper

[ii] The figure of 250,000 comes from the Barker Review of Housing Supply carried out for the government in 2004. This target has never been met, leading to Shelter pointing out that since the review the cumulative shortfall in private housing is now well over a million homes. http://england.shelter.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/689447/Solutions_for_the_housing_shortage_-_FINAL.pdf

[iii] There is wide variation in the size of immigrant households but on average their average household size is greater and they are more likely to live in overcrowded conditions. So, person for person, immigrants have required less housing than the UK born. However, the data presented here relates directly to the number of households and thus takes that into account. For example, a house containing a large number of young Eastern Europeans is one household in the Labour Force Survey; as is one person living alone.

Read the full briefing paper here: http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/7.18

Full Fact on East European migration falls well short of the mark

2015-04-22T14:55:42+01:00

This week Full Fact - a fact-checking organisation now regularly heard on the BBC - attempted to check the following claim put to Ed Miliband by Jeremy Paxman during the leaders’ interviews of 26^th March 2015:

“You were predicting figures of between 5,000 and 13,000 immigrants a year from the expansion of the EU in 2004 and actually something like 400,000 people came in.” [1]

Mr Paxman was referring to the government commissioned report, authored by Professor Christian Dustmann et al which estimated that between 5,000 and 13,000 migrants from the A8 countries would come to the UK following their accession in 2004. [2] The estimate was used to reassure the public ahead of the accession and to justify the decision not to impose transitional controls on workers from the new EU countries.

At the time Migration Watch UK called this estimate ‘almost worthless’ and we were correct. See here.

The official migration statistics for the decade following accession estimated that net migration averaged almost 50,000 per year. However, the Census of 2011 revealed a significant undercount. An ONS review of the net migration statistics suggested that they had undercounted net migration by around 350,000 across the decade, principally from Eastern Europe between 2004 and 2008. This suggests an additional 50,000 a year bringing the total to some 100,000 East European net migrants a year. Migration Watch UK have called on the ONS to revise the migration figures but they have so far failed to do so. On the other hand, the ONS has carried out census-based adjustments to the official labour market statistics which show that by the end of 2014, the number of A8 workers in the UK had increased by nearly 850,000 (i.e. not including dependent adults or children). Meanwhile, the Annual Population Survey shows that the A8 population has increased by over 900,000 in the ten years from 2004 to 2013 - also suggesting net migration of just under 100,000 per year. While these are different data sets they provide a consistent pointer as to the scale of net migration over the last decade.

The Full Fact article ‘Faulty figures or misinterpretation? EU migration predictions under Labour’ offered Professor Dustmann the opportunity to clarify his prediction of between 5,000 and 13,000 migrants a year. According to the article Professor Dustmann was commissioned to provide an estimate on the assumption that all EU countries opened up their labour markets to A8 workers. Of course only the UK, Ireland and Sweden did so with every other government opting to impose transitional controls.

Full Fact reports that Professor Dustmann claims that he predicted that 46,000 would come to the UK if other countries kept their labour markets closed. However there was no such number in the report, its Executive Summary stating:

“In the case that Germany restricts free movement of workers for a longer period than the UK, some of those immigrants to Germany may use the UK as a destination. However, even in the worst case scenario, migration to the UK as a result of Eastern enlargement of the EU is not likely to be overly large.”

While Professor Dustmann has pointed out elsewhere that his report suggested that up to a third of potential migrants to Germany might come to the UK instead if Germany imposed transitional controls, he also makes clear that "this was a speculative observation rather than an estimate". [3]

So it not true that Professor Dustmann had estimated that migration would be around 46,000 a year. His actual estimate, rather than any speculative observation, was in fact out by a factor of 10, taking his median prediction. It was clear that the estimate at the time was likely to be incorrect and, indeed, we said so in clear terms at the time.

Full Fact are establishing themselves as a leading independent fact checking organisation and so it is all the more important that they stick to the facts. The fact here is that Professor Dustmann's subsequent self-justification cannot alter that his estimate - widely reported as an authoritative indication of likely Eastern European migration to the UK - turned out to be simply wrong.

[1] Jeremy Paxman, ‘Cameron and Miliband: The Battle for Number 10’, Channel 4/Sky News, 26^th March 2015.

[2] Dustmann, C., et al, The impact of EU enlargement on migration flows’, Home Office Online Report 25/03, page 8, URL: http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/14332/1/14332.pdf

[3] Christian Dustmann and Ian Preston, ‘How Early Estimates for Migration Flows after EU Enlargement in 2004 are Misinterpreted’, CReAM Blog, 16 January 2014, URL: http://creamcomments.blogspot.ie/2014/01/how-eearly-estimates-for-migration.html