The UK’s open borders policies will see the population boom by nearly 16 million by the middle of the century, resulting in a requirement for the equivalent of 15 Birmingham-sized cities worth of housing to cope with the mass influx of foreigners, a report from Migration Watch UK has found.
A new report from Migration Watch UK has found that if immigration to Britain remains at the record pace set last year when net migration hit 606,000, and if the birth rate remains steady, the population would grow by almost sixteen million more people over the next 25 years, or 80 million overall, adding fuel to the fire of the housing crisis and exacerbating the struggles felt by working and middle-class Britons.
According to the think tank, this would mean that there would be a need for at least 6.5 million more homes over the time period, which would require the construction of approximately 260,000 homes per year, or 720 per day just to keep pace with the mass migration-driven population growth. Migration Watch noted that this would equate to the housing equivalent of at least 15 cities the size of Birmingham, the nation’s second-largest city, over the same time frame.
Migration Watch has launched a petition to call on the government to reduce net migration to 100,000 people per year, which they argued would reduce the additional strains placed on the housing market, as well as mitigate the downward pressure on wages for the native population.
Despite the overwhelming opposition to immigration remaining so high, the think tank said that the government of Rishi Sunak seems intent on putting the focus on the illegal boat migrant crisis in the English Channel, which in reality, represents a fraction of the flows of foreigners that the legal routes have provided.
While many voters believed that backing the Conservative Party in the last general election in 2019, and indeed voting for Brexit in 2016, would result in lower migration, the opposite has happened under the leadership of the globalist Tories, with net migration hitting record highs each of the past two years.
After leaving the EU, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson ushered in a points-based immigration system allegedly based upon the stringent Australian model. However, crucially Johnson’s plan flailed to set a hard cap on migrant flows and at the same time reduced the salary threshold for “skilled workers” from £35,800 to just £20,960 for those with enough ‘points’, resulting in millions more people from around the globe being eligible to move to the UK.
This has meant that the open borders agenda first instituted under Tony Blair in the late 90s was put on steroids by the so-called Conservative Party, who appear to believe in mass migration just as much as the Labour Party behind closed doors while making false promises to the public for political gain. While mass migration may help the Labour Party more in terms of vote share, the Tories also benefit given that it enables their donor class to artificially keep wages lower and inflate the value of their properties.
Indeed, over the past 30 years — the same time during which the country was subjected to mass migration — wages have essentially remained flat, with the median income only increasing by £90 in real terms per week since 1997. Yet, at the same time, the average price of a house in Britain jumped from £130,499 in 1997 to £269,242 in 2022, thereby prohibiting millions of Britons from getting on the property ladder, which is one of the key methods of building generational wealth and prosperity.
Commenting, Alp Mehmet, Chairman of Migration Watch UK, which has also officially launched its “Campaign to Cut Immigration,” said: “The impact of runaway, mass, immigration is huge, and housing is just one aspect of our lives that is adversely affected. But, if net migration were reduced to 100,000 per year or less, the housing shortage would be no more; the pressure would lift – at a stroke.
“Young people would have better prospects of getting onto the housing ladder. And more of our beautiful countryside would be saved for future generations.”
“This is why the public want immigration to be cut and they have been ignored for far too long. The ‘cut immigration campaign’ with our petition is their opportunity to send the government a loud, unambiguous message that enough is enough. If the government fail to act now the fundamental changes to our towns and cities and, indeed, to Britain itself will accelerate even further.”