Why Britain can’t continue to rely on immigration for economic growth - Yorkshire Post Letters

Two impulses open us to the vast and seemingly ineluctable wave of settlers arriving here. One is a combination of libertarianism, egalitarianism and humanitarianism. This includes the commendable idea of offering safety to those in danger. But throwing in the bonus of increased affluence leaves us unable to distinguish those for whom economic advantage is the primary driver and without a legitimate basis for excluding them.

It is a moral and practical absurdity to suggest that national borders can be abolished as a barrier to settlement and yet be retained as demarking a step change in entitlements. The ‘no borders’ agenda carries with it a new ‘pan-human’ sense of identity and responsibility which would have losers as well as winners.

The second and currently more powerful impulse for accepting migrants is to increase our Gross Domestic Product. We hear of a shortage of essential workers, but the bigger crisis is that of funding these workers and our own multitude of non-workers.

In the government’s thinking, every variety of worker that might generate extra revenue for them is ‘essential’. When these migrants acquire the frailty to which our natives are prone their answer will be more migrants.

This is a reckless and delinquent approach to our problems. More responsibly, the state would spend less. This need not be as painful as might be expected. It could draw upon the liberal challenge to our notion of geographical exceptionalism.

Our debt and deficit have ballooned under a government that has spent freely on popularity and buoying up the economy (80 per cent of normal salary for the Covid unemployed). Ironically, this is set to be replaced by one even more committed to unaffordable generosity at other people’s expense.