UK Study Shows Mass Immigration Will NOT Help the Economy
May 14, 2024
Supporters of open borders often claim there will be major economic gains from relaxed border and immigration policies. However, a recent report has found that mass immigration failed to deliver the alleged economic benefit its supporters promised. Instead of economic gains, projections show it will actually lower per capita GDP and further strains services such as healthcare and housing.
The study, by the British think tank Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), examined the fact that Britain has seen a near doubling in the percentage of foreign-born as a share of the UK population. This figure leapt from 9 percent to 17 percent between 2001 and 2021, a period that saw more people arrive in the UK than had arrived in the previous 1,000 years. Supporters of large-scale immigration said it would boost the UK economy, but the CPS report shows that has simply not been the case.
The main finding, based on projections, is that GDP per capita decreases by 0.4 percent in a high-migration scenario, even though overall GDP would increase 1 percent. This is critical as it strikes at the heart of the “growing the pie” argument used by some open-borders groups. This weak argument, used by an open borders group recently in a U.S. House Budget Committee hearing in which FAIR presented our costs study, was that mass immigration creates more economic activity and grows the “pie.” Unfortunately, as FAIR and the CPS study now show, the more people in a country and the less productive those people are on average, the smaller the piece of that pie everyone gets.
https://www.fairus.org/blog/2024/05/14/uk-study-shows-mass-immigration-will-not-help-economy
