A new study is shedding light on the actual economic effects of immigration on the UK, and its results may come as a surprise, says Deutsche Welle. Produced by the University College London's Centre of Research and Analysis of Migration, it analyses the fiscal impact of immigration on the economy since 1999.
From their work, the study authors tell us that EEA immigrants to the UK have had a strong positive impact on public finances, contributing about £25 billion to the UK economy between 2000 and 2011. While, on average, UK citizens paid seven percent less in taxes than they had received in state spending, immigrants paid four percent more in taxes than received in benefits.
The report said that this was likely to be partly because immigrants who come to the UK to work are young and fit and therefore less likely than British people to have serious medical conditions that need treatment from the NHS.
A further breakdown of the figures shows that immigrants from outside the EEA made a "negative fiscal contribution". The report states that this is "partly explained by their demographic structure – non-EEA immigrants have had more children than natives and we have allocated educational expenditure for children to immigrants".
Among its other findings, immigrants from the EEA who came to the UK in 2000 or later made an especially positive contribution - even in times when the UK was running budget deficits.
One explanation for this could be that immigrants were far better educated than the British in 2011, with only 21 percent of the adult population holding a university degree. In comparison, 32 percent of recent EEA immigrants and 43 percent of non-EEA immigrants had a university degree.
According to one author of the study, professor Christian Dustmann, these figures show that the UK attracts "highly educated and skilled immigrants rather than benefit seekers".
What is also interesting is some of the basic data. The immigrant population, we are told, has grown from about 4.8 million in 1995 to around 9 million in 2011, an increase from 8.4 percent to 14.7 percent of the general population in just 17 years.
Breaking these figures down into EEA versus non-EEA immigrants, in 1995, the former made up under 20 percent of the total. UK immigrant population but more than tripled between 1995 and 2011, growing from 885,000 to 2.8 million.
Over that same period, the non-EEA population grew at a considerably lower rate, increasing from 3.9 million to 6.1 million, so that by 2011, 32 percent of the immigrant population was composed of EEA immigrants.
However, between 2000 and 2011, the net addition to the UK immigrant population was about 1.5 million for EEA and 2.9 million for non-EEA immigrants, meaning that despite an increase in EEA immigration, non-EEA net immigration was twice as large as EEA net immigration during that decade.
This, and much else from the report will be of great use to anyone with an interest in the immigration debate. On the face of it though, immigrants from the EEA comprise only a third of the overall immigration numbers, are better educated than the native population and make a higher net financial contribution.
This, though, is by no means the be all and end all of the issue. Displacement of the settled population, localised overcrowding, strain on the infrastructure, and pressure on public services are also matters to be taken into account, to say nothing of the lack of democratic legitimacy in governments allowing in large numbers of immigrants without public assent.
A telling issue, though, is that the immigration from the EEA is less problematical than immigration from elsewhere, which also means that exit from the EU is not going to solve the problem. This is far more than just an EU issue.
Interestingly, the survey had received only very modest media coverage in the UK, so much so that I'd only just noticed it in Deutsche Welle, over a week after its first publication. That suggests we are not getting a balanced view on immigration – if there is one to be had.
But, if we are to have a proper debate, we need much more and better information than is being published by the popular press or the UKIP website. And, whatever your view of it, this study adds to our sum of knowledge.
