Former U.K. immigration minister: Migrants do more harm than good to the British economy

05/01/2024 / By Ava Grace

Robert Jenrick, a former immigration minister in the United Kingdom, has admitted that migrants do more harm than good to the British economy.

The member of Parliament (MP) for the Newark constituency previously served as secretary of state for housing, communities and local government under former British Prime Minister (PM) Boris Johnson. Jenrick was promoted to immigration minister under the term of incumbent PM Rishi Sunak, but stepped down in December 2023.

According to the former minister, mass migration is causing a housing crisis while failing to increase wealth per person. He warned that Downing Street has become “hooked” on mass migration, but it is not improving the economy.

“The economic model that we’ve become hooked on isn’t working. If importing hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to the U.K. was a route to prosperity, the U.K. would be one of the richest countries in the world,” he said.

“Instead, for almost the last two years, we’ve had a recession in GDP [gross domestic product] per capita. I care about the prosperity of our own citizens, not the overall size of the economy.”

According to Jenrick, the U.K. government “modeling of the benefits of immigration has consistently overlooked the fiscal costs arising from pressure on housing, public services and welfare.” (Related: ‘Death trap:’ UK starts housing illegal migrants in controversial barge ‘Bibby Stockholm’, as it surfaces government spends 7M per day on asylum seekers in hotels.)

On the matter of housing, he noted that the country currently would “have to build a house every five minutes, day and night, purely to keep up with the level of net migration to this country.” But this isn’t being accomplished, resulting in a spike in home prices and rents alongside severe shortages in public housing.

U.K.’s illegal immigration hits unprecedented levels under the Tories

The Conservative (Tory) Party, which Jenrick and Sunak are members of, promised a reduction in net legal immigration “from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands” ahead of the 2010, 2015 and 2017 elections. It also promised an “overall” reduction ahead of the 2019 election. The Brexit campaign was also fought mainly on an anti-immigration basis, according to the National Pulse.

But the opposite happened under Tory leadership, with net immigration increasing from 196,000 in 2009 to 745,000 in 2022. Illegal immigration also hit unprecedented levels under the Tories.

Jenrick’s resignation as immigration minister in December 2023 stemmed from the government’s published draft emergency legislation on the Rwandan migrant deportation scheme. According to him, the law – which sought to get the scheme up and running – did not go far enough. Under the scheme, migrants who enter the U.K. illegally would be deported to the Central African nation of Rwanda.

“The government has a responsibility to place our vital national interests above highly contested interpretations of international law,” Jenrick wrote in his resignation letter to Sunak, which was posted on X. “I am unable to take the currently proposed legislation through the [House of] Commons as I do not believe it provides us with the best possible chance of success.”

Jenrick, who served as immigration minister from October 2022 until December 2023, has been more outspoken on the need to tackle the arrival of small boats on the southern coast of England. People who arrived in the small boats were breaking into Britain, he said, adding that it was “profoundly wrong” for people to be entering the country in this manner.

“If you or I crossed an international border, or literally broke into another country, we would expect to be treated very seriously.”

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