Blogs

Introduction 1.1 There have always been episodes of migration to Britain but, as this paper demonstrates, those episodes were small and demographically insignificant until the Second World War. A study of official census records from 1851 until the present shows that the number of people born abroad living in Britain

In 2012 the Home Secretary announced her plans to tighten some aspects of the student visa system, mainly below graduate level. The Australian, American and Canadian governments have also recently reviewed their student regimes. This note compares the outcomes and demonstrates that the UK is internationally competitive.

The Guardian recently posted an article in their ‘DataBlog’ section which claimed to examine the facts behind our headline claim that 150,000 eastern European migrants pay no more than £1 a week in direct tax.  It is disappointing that despite writing under the tagline “Facts are sacred” the author, Tom

In a Today Programme interview on 30 April about our paper published that day (see Briefing Paper 1.38), Mr Portes did not challenge our findings that low paid migrants pay little or no net direct tax.   However, he suggested that we had overlooked the effect of other taxes paid by the

About 150,000 pay only £1 a week net tax A new study out today reveals some of the ‘hidden’ costs to the UK taxpayer of the unprecedented wave of low paid Eastern European immigration in the past decade and how they are being ‘subsidised’ by the UK taxpayer. The research

In her article for The Independent on Sunday on 20 April, Barbara Roche criticised Yvette Cooper for failing, in her recent speech, to make “the single most important argument on migration; that immigrants put more into Britain than they take out”.    She continued “Their net contribution – equivalent to more