Asylum seekers who remain in the UK are likely to cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds over their lifetimes, according to the government’s official immigration advisers.
A new report by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) said people entering Britain through asylum and refugee routes make an ‘unambiguously negative’ contribution to public funds.
The committee cited research in the Netherlands which put the ‘lifetime net fiscal impact’ of each asylum seeker at minus £390,000, and a similar study in Australia which estimated a figure of minus £198,000.
Chairman of the committee Professor Brian Bell said: ‘I would be very surprised if Australia and the Netherlands were not good comparators for us in terms of general labour markets in terms of the types of people who are coming on asylum.
‘I don’t want to put a figure on it, but I think those sort of headline numbers that come from those countries, it wouldn’t surprise me if a similar order of magnitude was true in the UK.’
The MAC report said: ‘We expect the lifetime net fiscal impact of those entering through asylum and refugee routes to be unambiguously negative.
‘This is largely due to their low employment rates and wages, high rates of economic inactivity and their exemption from the “no recourse to public funds” rule.
How should the UK balance compassion for asylum seekers with the financial burden on taxpayers?
Go to comments‘For example, analysis by Migration Observatory suggested that 56 per cent of those who reported initially arriving in the UK to claim asylum and were of working age were in employment, compared to 75 per cent of the UK-born population.
‘When in employment, their median annual salary was £20,000 for men and £18,000 for women, compared to £31,000 and £22,000 respectively for the UK-born.’
It added: ‘Note that many of those who enter through the asylum route will also have incurred substantial additional costs from being housed in asylum accommodation.’
The MAC report, published today, also showed the huge costs of the visa system which allows British-based sponsors to bring their partners to Britain.
It said one year’s intake of 51,000 foreign-based spouses who came here in 2022-23 ‘will incur a net lifetime fiscal deficit of minus £5.6billion in present value terms – an average of minus £109,000 per applicant’.
They were the ‘partners of British citizens and settled residents’, it said.
Prof Bell said: ‘We make no formal recommendations but believe that the government should give our findings close consideration as it implements changes to the immigration system.’
Figures published last month showed there were a record 110,051 asylum claims lodged in Britain in the year to September.
Asylum seekers – including small boat migrants – now make up 44 per cent of net migration to Britain, which stood at 204,000 in the year to June.
Prof Bell said this trend is set to continue, with migration patterns seeing a greater proportion of migrants having an overall cost to the public purse.
