According to a former government minister, illegal immigration puts the United Kingdom in danger of “existential depletion” by costing the taxpayer at least £14 billion annually in public services alone.
Dame Andrea Jenkyns, Deputy Chairwoman of the European Research Group and former Minister of State for Skills under short-lived Prime Minister Liz Truss, informed fellow MPs this week that official figures show that each illegal immigrant costs the taxpayer £12,000 annually in public services. Dame Andrea predicted that the cost of services alone would exceed £14.4 billion because of the anticipated 1.2 million illegal immigrants living in the country.
The National Health Service (NHS) in England receives funding from the government equivalent of approximately 10% of its yearly budget. This was noted by the former government minister and outspoken opponent of neo-liberal Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who said, “Imagine that as a cash injection for our national health service.”
“Too long, people have thought of the UK as a free lunch. In remarks obtained by the Daily Mail, she stated, “You will soon be assured a lifetime all-you-can-eat banquet for you and your extended family if you study, work, marry, or sneak your way in.”
“Free legal protections, social services, housing, healthcare, education, and access to one of the world’s biggest philanthropic sectors.” To keep expecting the British taxpayer to foot the price is blatantly unjust.
Jenkyns also noted that the Home Office, the government agency responsible for immigration, anticipates spending £482 million on immigration enforcement this year and nearly £8 million daily to house boat migrants who entered the English Channel without authorization from French beaches.
The British government has also allocated a minimum of £370 million in public funds to Rwanda, allowing Kigali to receive up to £150,000 for each illegal over a five-year period to process their asylum claims. In addition, the government has agreed to provide France with £478 million to strengthen enforcement measures against people traffickers, even though Paris has refused to return migrants and the French Navy has actively assisted migrants in reaching UK territorial seas.
The numbers Jenkyns provided also failed to account for the costs to the public of mass legal migration, which has exceeded illegal migration multiple times over and reached record highs under the Sunak administration despite Conservative Party pledges to cut net migration after Brexit.
The “only viable remedy to take back full control of our borders,” according to Dame Andrea, one of the 11 Tory MPs who voted against the Rwanda bill because it did not go far enough, would be for the government to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. This would take away the court’s authority in Strasbourg to intervene on migrant deportations, as it did in 2022, which prevented the first scheduled flight to Rwanda and destabilized the deterrence scheme.
In addition to calling for increased coastline surveillance and a suspension of payments to France until they start stopping more human-smuggler migrant boats, the former minister of state has suggested that the so-called Conservative government should abandon its “soft approach” to illegal immigration in order to address the “existential” threat.
Notably, since the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act went into effect last month—ostensibly paving the path for the eventual relocation of migrants to the East African country—more than 2,000 undocumented individuals have crossed the English Channel.
Based on estimates using Home Office statistics from the Press Association, the number of illegal immigrants who crossed the busy canal between England and France between Saturday and Monday was 396. This brings the year’s total to an estimated 8,674.
According to the news agency, this was a 35% rise from the 6,415 illegal crossings that were reported last year and a 15% increase from the 7,581 arrivals at the same location in 2022. point of the year.
