Kaep

You might enjoy this Migration Watch UK press release announcing an estimated per capita benefit from immigration of 4p per week.

http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/pressreleases/pressreleases.asp?dt=03-January-2007#148

Fester,
while we may scoff at the 4p/week per capita this equates to about $AU 300 million per annum.

KAEP, Fester and rojo,

The figures discussed on that site were probably arrived at in a similar manner to the figures that were arrived at by the Productivity Commission. The Productivity Commision showed a small financial gain, but also found that we were working longer hours to get that money.

However, it is only possible for the UK Government and the Ausralian Productivity Commission to depict immigration having any benefits at all because many of the negative effects are not properly accounted for in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measure.

If we had an index which measured prosperity more accurately than the GDP, it would, in fact, show a very large negative impact. This was shown by John Coulter, a previous leader of the Democrats in a media relase on behalf of Sustainable Population Australia on 19 January at http://www.candobetter.org/population/spa-mediaRelease-19jan06.html

This was also discused on the thread "Solve the housing crisis - wind-back immigration" at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=310#5434

Daggett

Thanks. Yes, I am quite aware that the 4p a week study probably ignored a number of factors that could well turn the modest benefit into a substantial liability. MWUK does a good job of "keeping the bastards honest" about immigration into the UK, and closely scrutinises publications on the subject. The political climate is changing there: Criticising immigration does not make you a racist(as still seems to be the case in Australia), and there is now public acknowledgement that immigration degrades the living standard of low income Brits.

I often wonder why the UK does accept immigrants so readily. Having 60 million squeezed into an area marginaly bigger than Victoria must create great problems.

Just quickly,

Someone asked why Britain lets so many immigrants in.

It is a bit complex but Britain was obliged to allow all British citizens free entry and this applied to any member of the Commonwealth. This meant that the poorer countries in the Commonwealth tended to be sending countries of large numbers of often poorly skilled immigrants (although not exclusively poorly skilled). This caused gluts in housing and all kinds of things, as well as social distress, but since British immigration policy is made in parliament (dissimilar to French policy and only partly similar to Australian policy) it was not possible to easily make policies to avoid logistical problems because they always were subject to be blown up as cause celebres in Parliament by political grandstanders.

The solution, in the end, was to break up the Commonwealth, which is why Australians and Canadians are no longer able to go and work in UK.

There is a netsite called Migration Watch in England which has some very well researched and accessible articles, mostly from academics and journalists.

By the way, now that UK is in the EU they are going to be subject to new EU laws guaranteeing housing to all. Citizens will be able to sue the government for lack of housing in France and Scotland in 2008 and I think everywhere else.

Can you imagine this ever happening in Australia where if you are homeless it is your fault and you should shut up and crawl into a hole and die or enslave yourself to some pukey upstart who does have land and a factory simply because you are not filthy rich?

Apologies for not being abreast of the rest of this article; I am responding to an email asking for my opinion.

What a country WE are turning in to. I prefer the EU laws.

Sorry I have to go to work; this page looks interesting.

Sheila N