by Jim Chimirie on X
Somewhere in Britain today, once every minute, a stamp is placed on a document and settlement or citizenship changes hands. Nearly 200,000 people received indefinite leave to remain this year, a 16-year record. A quarter of a million more became citizens. Shabana Mahmood is preparing reforms to slow this. Her own backbenchers are already working to gut them before they pass, exempting care workers and refusing to apply the rules retrospectively, so the 1.2 million migrants already approaching eligibility will sail through regardless of what Parliament decides.
The government cannot explain this contradiction because there isn’t a clean one to give. Its own forecasters, the ONS, say Britain needs net migration near 230,000 a year simply to stop the working-age population collapsing before 2030, a figure they themselves call historically high and massively unpalatable. Two thirds of the public want it below 100,000. Ministers are therefore asking a shrinking, ageing workforce to fund immigration on a scale the public has repeatedly rejected.
The OBR has already done the sum the government won’t say aloud. Low-skilled migrants cost more in public spending than they contribute in tax over a lifetime. Yet the visa data shows precisely this pattern taking root. Just 3.3 per cent of Zimbabwean workers have left Britain since arriving, 4 per cent of Nigerians and 4.5 per cent of Ghanaians. Compare that with 61 per cent of Saudis, 40 per cent of Belgians and 39 per cent of Germans. The routes Britain opened widest were those feeding the care sector at minimum wage, and they are the routes people do not leave. This was a conscious decision, repeated year after year, by governments that knew the costs.