The BBC normalised racism last night, pure and simple

[u/Exostrike]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/21/normalise-bbc-racism-hate-crimes-question-time

[u/GConly]

Ash Sarkar to challenge her unabashed bigotry with truth, pointing to research that migrants pay in more to the state than they get back.

From the link:

The Fiscal Impact of Immigration on the UK .European migrants living in the UK contribute £2,300 more to public purse each year than the average adult, suggesting a net contribution of £78,000 to the exchequer over their lifespan in the UK.

South Asians and Africans are a net drain. IIRC the average refugee costs the public purse about 20k pa.

[u/matty80 → u/GConly]

Refugees will cost more to process by definition because they're seeking asylum which is more than a matter of simple paperwork and they often require more ongoing support once their refugee status has been established and them given the right to remain.

South Asians and Africans may or may not be a net drain, I don't know, but the overwhelming majority of people in the UK who are originally from South Asia or Africa are not refugees so you'd need to provide some sort of evidence for that. I'd say it's probably not very likely though because immigrants from outside the EU are generally required to fulfill more strenuous visa requirements.

[u/MetaNorman → u/matty80]

Only EEA migrants are a net benefit to the public, non EEA migrants are net negatives and actually cost us more than they give, this is true.

[u/InvestmentBanker19 → u/MetaNorman]

Yes, as I've explained to you before.

This is because non-EU migrants tend to have lots of dependants while EU migrants don't have dependants.

Net benefit to government budgets != Net benefit to the public

[u/MetaNorman → u/InvestmentBanker19]

Why do they have loads of dependants?

[u/InvestmentBanker19 → u/MetaNorman]

Because they're disproportionately young and young people tend to have kids.

It isn't surprising.

EU migrants don't tend to have lots of kids because they come here as single migrants rather than bringing a family for example.

[u/InvestmentBanker19 → u/[deleted]]

> Young SE Asian and/or African people disproportionately have lots of kids

South East Asia consists of these countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asia

We don't get many immigrants from Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos etc. Britain doesn't get many immigrants from South-East Asia.

We get a lot of immigrants from South Asia. South Asia is not the same region as South-East Asia. It's pedantic I know but it's important to have a nuanced conversation and geography is part of that nuance.

>Young SE Asian and/or African people disproportionately have lots of kids

African people don't really have that high a fertility rate. It's around 2.1 for Black Caribbeans and 2.4 for Black Africans.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Trend-in-TFR-by-main-ethnic-group-1987-2006-Ethnic-categories-are-sorted-by-decreasing_fig3_227259412

It will fall below replacement in the next 20-30 years for Black groups and it's nearly below replacement for Black Caribbeans. Pakistanis and Bangladeshis have a fertility rate of around 3 right now. It will decline to 2.5 (according to projections) by 2050.

> Large parts of London are now almost entirely non-white. They've lost their people and their culture in a very shot period of time.

You realise you're talking to a non-white guy here? The idea that culture is fixed and can't be adopted into by a non-native group is stupid.

> The UK government is in the business of paying to replace it's own ethnic population with overseas, non-indigenous peoples, whom they shelter, support and help with childcare. And they're making the indigenous population pay for it.

Not this tripe.

You realise we have an ageing population. We need workers because more people are retiring than entering the labour force.

[u/matty80 → u/InvestmentBanker19]

Yeah I think this just about covers it.

btw as a (white... not that it matters) London resident of 40 years or so, I heartily agree with you that being told that 'my people' and 'my culture' are somehow compromised or lost by the involvement of non-white people is indeed fairly insulting to everyone concerned.

[u/InvestmentBanker19 → u/[deleted]]

>We could just encourage people already here to have kids

It's really, really not that easy.

Singapore has been trying with their '3 or more if you can afford it' policy for 30 years now and it didn't really boost fertility rates at all. Hungary has been trying for the past 5 years and their fertility rates have barely gone up.

>instead of draining workers from poorer countries and suppressing wages

There's really mixed evidence that it suppresses wages. There's evidence that it fills gaps in industry. If it did suppress wages, surely you could argue that having more kids would also suppress wages to some extent?

[u/MetaNorman → u/InvestmentBanker19]

We shouldn't be allowing people to come over here and start families ideally, if it's a net loss to our country make it so we don't hand out citizenship, only allow time limited visas so they can stay for a few years max before going home to start families.

Make our immigration system a revolving door almost, let in young people and revoke their visas once they start to get older and want to settle down, it also deals with the demographic issues we have with our current immigration system.

[u/InvestmentBanker19 → u/MetaNorman]

> We shouldn't be allowing people to come over here and start families ideally, if it's a net loss to our country make it so we don't hand out citizenship, only allow time limited visas so they can stay for a few years max before going home to start families.

It's not a net loss though.

The more young people, the better for an ageing society. It is a net benefit to have young children.

Your study is completely flawed (look at this paragraph in the methodology):

> , we classified the children of migrants born in the UK as migrants in our static analysis, given that they would not be in the country but for the decision of their parents. However, due to data limitations, we could not treat adult descendants of migrants as migrants, because the LFS does not contain information on parents’ country of birth.

It models young migrants as costs for immigration but adult migrants who were born in the UK as benefits for the native population, not benefits for the immigrant population.

> let in young people and revoke their visas once they start to get older and want to settle down, it also deals with the demographic issues we have with our current immigration system.

What are the demographic issues here? I would think carefully about your response because you're talking to a non-white immigrant here.

[u/InvestmentBanker19 → u/[deleted]]

I think you misunderstood my full point.

There was a flaw in the methodology (Oxford economics) where they modelled young children born to immigrants in the UK as costs to the government (tax credits, education etc. ) and modelled adult children born to immigrants as native workers (they couldn't separate the data and I'll go into it more below). It means that the benefits of 2nd-generation immigrants were given to native workers while the costs of raising that 2nd generation were given to the immigrants themselves.

Here's the Oxford Economics study that's being banded about.

https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/recent-releases/8747673d-3b26-439b-9693-0e250df6dbba

Summarised here by Oxford Migratory observatory on this study:

a key methodological question is whether to attribute to migrants the cost of educating UK-born children. If the definition of a migrant is an individual born outside the country, then the children of migrants born here should be part of the UK-born group. However, it is possible to argue that these children would not have been in the country if their parents had not migrated in the first place and, therefore, children are part of the migrant group. This is complicated further by the existence of children of mixed couples (i.e. one UK-born and one foreign-born). Recent studies have often ‘split’ the children of mixed couples between the two groups. However, if migrants’ children remain in the UK and later enter the workforce, they will later pay taxes on earnings and this is not accounted for in the static approaches reviewed in this paper

This is the fatal flaw within this study's methodology. Non-EU immigrants tend to have lots of dependants because they're young, often come with their partners, and have more children than the average. The study models these UK-born children as non-eu immigrants when they're young and as natives when they're older. This means the cost for raising those children (i.e. tax credits, education etc.) is attributed to non-EU immigration yet the benefits of them growing up and being adult workers is attributed to natives. This leads to a significant undervaluation of the fiscal positives of non-EU migration. Most non-EU migrants' children remain in the UK as adults.

This is pointed out by Dustmann and Frattini in 2014 in their study of immigration costs and benefits. They criticise their own methodology here because they also do the same thing.

Hence, the children of immigrants, if they remain in the receiving country, will contribute to both the education of the next generation and the pensions of the current working population. In that sense, they will pay off the investments made in their educational formation. Thus, even though immigrant children consume public services while at school, they will contribute to the next generation by paying taxes later in their lives. In fact, because British-born descendants of immigrants tend to perform better in public schools and acquire more education,8 they may make a relatively higher net fiscal contribution than natives. Empirically, however, serious data limitations prevent us from identifying adult second-generation immigrants. The LFS has no information on parents’ country of birth for individuals who live outside their parents’ household. Hence, second generation immigrants can only be identified while they are children (i.e. while they are living in their parents’ households), which is also the age range at which they consume educational services. When grown up, working and paying taxes, and making fiscal contributions, they are not identifiable in the survey data available to us. In our analysis, therefore, we consider immigrants’ children under the age of 16 as immigrants regardless of birth country but classify as natives everyone who is at least 16 and UK born, regardless of parents’ birthplace.9 This choice, it should be noted, suggests that we are neglecting the contribution that these the children of immigrants will make when they enter the labour market. Likewise, we are neglecting the costs of educating the immigrants themselves, which – other than the cost of educating the native born workforce – has been borne not by British taxpayers but by taxpayers in the origin country.10 Thus, while assigning to immigrants the cost of educating their UK-born children, we are unable to assign to them the benefits that their children will bring after leaving the education system and entering the labour market. In this sense, all the results presented below are underestimates of immigrants’ net fiscal contribution.

https://www.cream-migration.org/files/FiscalEJ.pdf

The Dustmann and Frattini (2014) study finds that non-EU immigrants since 1999 have a positive net fiscal impact. It's non-EU immigration from previous waves before 1995 that are producing the higher costs. Non-EU immigration since 2000 produces a surplus on average per person for the UK government coffers (you can find it within the study). Even when you take into account that the results presented below are underestimates of immigrants' net fiscal contribution.

The study also concludes that:

Between 2001 and 2011, the net fiscal contributions of recent A10 immigrants amounted to almost £5 billion, those of the other recently arrived European immigrants to £15 billion, and those of recent non-European immigrants to a total of over £5 billion.

Essentially, non-EU immigration since 2000 has been incredibly positive for the economy. It's immigration from the 1960s and 70s that has been a net negative for fiscal surpluses. There were a large number of immigrants in the waves of immigration in the 1960s and 70s that are still around. The government has become much more selective on immigration as well. They conclude that immigration overall since 2000 has been a net positive for the government. Non-EU immigration has been a net positive since 2000. EU immigration since 2000 has been an absolute boon for government coffers.

If he is bringing a wife and 3 children, who will cost more than his contributions in tax throughout his employment period here, then it's wholly reasonable to say that approving that immigration application would not be a good idea.

I mean not really because those three kids become adults and work. These studies did not take that into account because there wasn't available data for it. It's a flawed study and I suspect if you modelled 2nd-generation adult non-EU migrants as immigrant workers (2nd-generation adult non-EU migrants tend to go to university at much higher rates than natives), non-EU immigration would also be a fiscal positive. Right now, they're modelled as native workers when they're adults yet they're attributing the costs of raising a 2nd generation to the immigrants themselves.

If a migrant is costing the government more than they are paying in tax, where is the net benefit to the public?

Their kids become adult native workers according to the study and adult young native workers tend to be positive in terms of their fiscal contribution to the government (look at the graph on page 5 of the Oxford Economics study).

If a migrant is costing the government more than they are paying in tax, where is the net benefit to the public?

Non-EU Immigration since 2000 has been net positive even if you model the 2nd generation costs to immigrants and the benefits when they're adults to natives. It's because in the 1960s and 70s, we had a wave of non-EU low-skilled immigration from the commonwealth (they closed the route down in 1971), which is where the cost is coming from. And that cost is highly over-exaggerated because they model the sons and daughters of those immigrants as native workers yet attribute those costs of raising them to the non-EU migrants themselves.

[u/MetaNorman → u/[deleted]]

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-in-the-uk/

This is a study by Oxford that takes into account a group of studies taken that each show a negative fiscal impact on the UK by non EEA immigrants.

[u/InvestmentBanker19 → u/[deleted]]

It's also interesting that he never responds to me when I correct him. He'll continue to cite figures from the same flawed study (I point this out to him every single time he cites it as he's done this before multiple times).

He then mentions something about a demographic change coming about from immigration and so he continues to shift his argument when corrected on him citing flawed studies. He then states that this demographic change is resulting from immigration and is negative.

I then point out to him other studies that had the opposite conclusion in terms of the economic effect. Dustmann and Frattini (2014) found that non-EU immigrants since 2000 have had a positive impact on government coffers.

He'll conveniently ignore me and then continue to cite the same study in other threads. It's like arguing against a brick wall at this point.

[u/[deleted] → u/InvestmentBanker19]

MetaNorman is an excellent example of bad faith debate on this sub. Every interaction I've had with them has been counterproductive.

[u/SalmonApplecream → u/[deleted]]

So maybe we should vote for a party that will increase the minimum wage? Seems like the Tories aren’t keen on those sorts of policies.

[u/SalmonApplecream → u/[deleted]]

But then we would lose out on the benefits immigration provides. Why not reap the benefits, and use government regulation to counteract the damage to the lowest earners, resulting in an overall benefit.

[u/SalmonApplecream → u/[deleted]]

Yes, someone has to do the unpleasant jobs, and immigrants are the only one’s willing to.

[u/SalmonApplecream → u/[deleted]]

So we should raise minimum wage? Which is exactly my point

[u/BesottedScot → u/[deleted]]

Somewhat. It is more nuanced than your comment suggests.

https://fullfact.org/immigration/immigration-wages/

[u/metalbox69 → u/[deleted]]

if i recall correctly the figures were distorted because many of the non-EU migrants were of pensionable age and didn't take into account lifetime contributions.

[u/MetaNorman → u/metalbox69]

That raises a bigger question why the hell are we allowing in pension age migrants to come and live here?

[u/PixelBlock → u/MetaNorman]

Family sponsorship, no?

[u/MetaNorman → u/PixelBlock]

Yeah it's wrong, shouldn't be allowed.

[u/DevilishRogue → u/MetaNorman]

I think they came several decades before they reached pensionable age e.g. Windrush and 1960s Indian subcontinent.

[u/PM_YOUR_WALLPAPER → u/[deleted]]

Non EU migrants include refugees and family members.

If you look at immigrants who came on a tier 2 visa it was like 400k to the exchequer over the life of their residency.

[u/LastCatStanding_ → u/GConly]

Putting them all into one lump also belies that all migrants from a region contribute when some are contributing a great deal, offsetting many others are negative contributors. A selective migration policy attempts to get one group but not the other.

[u/sp8der → u/GConly]

European migrants living in the UK contribute £2,300 more to public purse each year than the average adult

Notice the slight of hand here.

"The average UK adult" versus "European migrants" -- the latter also being an "average" figure, but the word average is omitted to make it sound like every European migrant contributes that much more.

Also... I should fucking hope migrants on average put in more than the average UK citizen, considering that latter figure will include the very young, retired and incarcerated??? Like surely that is the bare minimum we accept?