Mass migration not delivering economic benefits, study finds

Mass migration has not delivered significant GDP growth per capita for the United Kingdom, but it has increased strain on the country, according to a new study.

While illegal immigration recently hit record highs in the United States, legal immigration poses a significant issue for the U.K., where legal migration levels are more than 25 times the level of illegal levels, according to a report Wednesday from the Centre for Policy Studies, a U.K. think tank and advocacy group.

The percentage of foreign-born people in the U.K. nearly doubled over two decades, with 9% of the population being foreign-born in 2001 to 17% in 2021, which is even higher than the U.S., where 14% of people are foreign-born. 

Additionally, the United Kingdom has seen 10 million people move to the U.K. and 6.3 million leave since 2010, resulting in an additional 3.7 million new migrants.

While the study acknowledges that "correlation is not causation," but states that a "country with more people in it will normally have a higher GDP because there are more workers," and the increase in migration has coincided with a large decline in GDP per capita growth. 

Additionally, although the U.K. has increased the number of homes by 2.11 million from April 2013 to March 2023, the country still has a housing "deficit of 1.34 million homes, with net migration in effect accounting for 89% of the deficit," per the study. Compounding the housing issue is that migrants tend to converge in London and the South-East, where the housing pressures are the greatest. 

The study's researchers argue that immigration should be capped overall, Parliament should set an annual migration "budget" and the U.K. should be more selective about who it lets in by preferring immigrants who are highly skilled. 

The study was written by two members of Parliament – former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick and Neil O'Brien – as well as CPS Research Director Karl Williams.

"‘Immigration is consistently one of the top concerns of voters and they deserve a Department whose sole mission is controlling immigration and securing our borders," Jenrick said. 

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