Thanks to campaigns by the Conservative & Reformer Post, and careful analysis by Robert Jenrick and Karl Williams, we are beginning to appreciate the catastrophic costs of low-quality mass migration.
In fact, even using the OBR’s lowball assumptions, current levels of mass migration will cost the country upwards of £600bn a year.
That is half of total public expenditure – a sum that will rapidly obliterate the public sector and lead us to a Lebanese-style bankruptcy.
Our country is being utterly overwhelmed. We already have more than 1.2m migrants on benefits. Social housing in many London boroughs is now 80% migrants. In fact, housing illegal immigrants now costs nine times more than the winter fuel allowance would have cost. All said and done, mass migration is already costing low-income British households over £350 a week.
The scale of mass migration is unprecedented. Gone are the days of select hard-working doctors with a passion for British culture. Much of what we are importing is pure evil. That is why immigration will define this Prime Minister and the next; just as the war defined Chamberlain and Churchill.
Fortunately, there are hundreds of great ways to stop the catastrophe, providing the political will is there. One quick fix that could save us trillions is voluntary (or paid) migration. This is where migrants leave the host nation in return for a payment on returning to their home country and giving up all residence rights.
Countries like Sweden and the US are already embracing voluntary migration with great success. Sweden is a particularly potent example. This once peaceful country was overwhelmed with young men from the ‘Islamic arc’ (MENAPT Countries). The vast majority failed to integrate, lived off benefits, flooded the country with more dependents and turned to crime: particularly rape, violence and gang offences. Within a few years, this erstwhile Nordic paradise became the rape and murder capital of Europe.
Now Swedes are beginning to reclaim their country, with net migration falling below zero and thousands being forcibly and voluntary repatriated. Do not believe the neoliberal defeatism. What Trump and Sweden prove is that it can be done. As Ben Habib says, ‘We can get our country back.’
Both Sweden and the US now offer troublesome and costly migrants several thousand pounds to give up all residence rights, leave and never come back. The local media have dubbed these voluntary remigration deals ‘F*** Off Payments.’
So far, no-one is against them.
Socially and economically, they make sense. Over their lifetimes, 95% of migrants consume vastly more than they put in. Even more so taking account of their higher propensity for crime, tax evasion and integration problems.
Moreover, our infrastructure and housing stocks are overwhelmed and crumbling. As we all know, new construction projects in the UK are particularly expensive, bureaucratic, and often vehemently opposed by local residents. Hence, it is no surprise that leading economists such as the OBR’s David Miles, are pointing out that we would be much better off if we cut almost all immigration and allowed our population to fall. That is yet another economic reason to pay recent arrivals to go away.
Patently, any such scheme is going to be targeted to those costing the most or putting in the least. With the rapid growth in sickness, worklessness, social housing claims and crime among the foreign-born population, there are some obvious targets for paid migration.
For example, we can ‘employ’ foreign-born benefit claimants (whether dual nationals or foreign nationals), to give up their UK residence rights and permanently move abroad. We could pay them generously for doing so – say £25k – on condition they never return. If they choose not to take the money, the offer stays open, but in the meantime, they can never claim British benefits or pensions. Why should the taxpayer pay them when they have a lucrative job offer abroad?
Similarly, we could solve our enormous housing crisis this way. Again, foreign-born migrants in social housing could be offered a large sum to permanently move abroad. As they now have the means to secure accommodation elsewhere, they can never claim social housing or benefits again.
Crucially, this might be a way to achieve consensus on Rupert Lowe’s popular bill for mass deportation of illegal immigrants. i.e. – no housing, no benefits, no pension and no healthcare. Instead, a single ticket home and $3000 on arrival.
Voluntary migration can be a huge win-win for both sides. There is growing evidence that people enjoy better mental health and longer lives in sunnier climes with more outdoor space. Life is often cheaper elsewhere. And, crucially, most migrants – and especially those committing crimes or claiming benefits – are simply not thriving in Britain. In fact, the UK was ranked third-bottom in a recent human-flourishing index of countries. In a separate survey, we ranked as the second-most miserable country in the world (behind Yemen and Iraq!). Paying struggling people to return home could be a big step to solving our mental health crisis.
However, to reap the benefits of voluntary migration, we must secure our borders first; as allies like Denmark, Sweden and America are already doing. You cannot have a ‘revolving door’ where people come in, only to be paid to leave again. That means moving to a system of short-term only visas and restricting settlement to just a few thousand of the most talented migrants.
While the social and cultural benefits are all too obvious, Voluntary remigration can genuinely transform public finances as well. As debt levels soar across western economies, more and more states are being forced to issue long-term budget forecasts. We see exactly this in the UK; with the OBR forecasts putting a straitjacket on the spending of Truss, Sunak and now Starmer and Reeves.
With the OBR now forecasting a cost of over £0.5m for every low-wage migrant who stays (and at least double that for benefits claimants and dependents), paying low-end migrants to leave can free up truly enormous sums. Let’s say, each year we paid 250,000 low-value migrants £25k each to leave forever. Using OBR assumptions, we can assume an average lifetime cost of £750k each if they had stayed. Thus, we could bank over £180bn a year for public sector spending or tax cuts. Wow! That is an instant 15% boost to the entire public sector budget!
Moreover, paid remigration can catalyse our post-Brexit reset for a 21st century Britain. Thanks to AI, we can create a hyper-optimised dynamic immigration system, tapping vast amounts of real-time data. Using myriad datapoints like age, dependents, nationality, qualifications, language skills, health, criminality and tax records, AI can determine the optimal price and duration of every visa offer.
For example, a Somali halal butcher might be offered a 6-month visa for £1bn (he ain’t coming!), while a Canadian oncology consultant with an exemplary record could stay for as long as they work full-time. This is the future of visas.
This is not just a great policy; it is a great way to Unite the Right. Recent polling has found the public massively support compulsory deportation of criminals and rolling back our migration catastrophe. Paying millions to voluntarily return to somewhere they might flourish is compassionate, economically fabulous and something we can all get behind.
By Andrew Hunt, Great British PAC Policy Chief.
Author Andrew Hunt graduated from Cambridge with a Law degree in 2003. He worked in TV production before moving into finance. It was here that he became fascinated by how personal investors and small companies could turn negligible resources into enormous fortunes. Applying the same mindset and principles, Hunt was able to retire in his thirties. He now invests in interesting projects which aim to make the world a better place and runs a radical centre-right environmental think tank. He is also the author of Better Value Investing.
Main Image: For illustration purposes only. Image created using AI.
