Illegal immigration costs quantified after Mayoral statement

Migrationwatch, the immigration think tank, has released a new report which seeks to quantify some of the misunderstandings over the true cost of migrants.

The report was made in response to a paper released by the London School of Economics earlier this year at the request of London Mayor Boris Johnson. When Johnson made the paper public he cited a number of references which may have been taken out of context, such as claiming that immigrants were far from a financial burden. Johnson, in introducing the paper, said he had hoped to provide factual information into the debate on immigration which he said had been in the past dominated by anecdote, hearsay and myth.

The new report suggest that Johnson had not read part of the paper which clearly stated that its findings were based themselves on heroic assumptions and that figures were at best ball-park estimates.

Johnson also said that providing an amnesty for illegal immigrants would not be a financial burden to the country and could instead benefit Britain by up to £3 billion each year. This figure was only briefly referred to in the paper, with two paragraphs in the 125-page document using numerous hypotheses to project a possible increase of such a number. The paper also pointed out that no facts exist which would allow any accurate forecasting on the economy.

Migrationwatch suggest the true cost of an amnesty would be more like £130 billion and added that the general public had fortunately more common sense than the mayor.