Should we be worried about 370,000 migrants on benefits?

MORE than 370,000 migrants who originally came to the UK for work, study or a holiday claimed work related benefits last year. Of these, 258,000 were from outside the European Economic Area. In the first study of its kind, the government matched benefit data with border control and tax records from 2011. Conservative ministers said it was “scandalous” that this data had not been examined before and warned of the need for tighter immigration controls. But some commentators wondered if the government wasn’t trying to shift the blame as the dole queues across the nation grow.

Preventing benefit tourism

Labour left our immigration system in a complete mess, employment minister Chris Grayling and immigration minister Damian Green write in The Daily Telegraph. “Millions of people came through its open doors to the UK – sometimes in the backs of lorries… sometimes as failed asylum-seekers who were never asked to leave.”

What came as a complete shock though, say the two ministers, was that the previous government had never correlated immigration and benefit statistics. “It was a scandalous omission.”
 
Grayling later told the BBC’s Today programme that releasing ‘immigrants on benefits’ figures was not "scaremongering". It’s really important “to have a benefit system in which people can have confidence".
 
Of course we should be willing to support those who are entitled to support, said Grayling, but we also need to know that those who are receiving benefits are entitled to them. "Maybe there isn't a problem right now", he added, but the government is working to tighten the rules to prevent a situation in which "benefit tourism" is an issue.
 
At last, ministers are on the case

No previous Government has recorded the nationality of benefit claimaints, blogs Paul Goodman on Conservative Home. At last, some ministers in the Conservative party want to show they are “on the case” at a time when “voters are more sensitive than ever to the impact of immigration on jobs and benefits”.
 
If they're not doing so already, ministers should be looking at other ideas such as security bonds to be paid by non EU migrants, to prove that they can support themselves before entering the UK, adds Goodman. We also await their proposals on how best to deal with family migration. They won't meet their pledge of reducing overall immigration “without action on this front”.
 
Migrants claim less benefits than Brits

Polly Toynbee on Twitter asks: “Why is BBC News leading on bogus scare on immigrants drawing benefits?” Toynbee asks readers to “see facts”, directing readers to a blog by economist Jonathan Portes.
 
Portes writes on his blog that: Even the statistics presented today show that migrants impose “less than proportionate costs on the state” compared with people born in the UK. It’s hardly surprising, because most migrants come here for work, are young, and aren’t entitled to benefits straight away.  
 
The headline ‘Benefits being claimed by more than 370,000 migrants’ presents us with a meaningless number, like all such numbers, out of context, adds Portes. A better headline might have been: ‘Migrants less likely than Britons to claim out of work benefits’.  
 
Conservative blame game

Whipping up a storm of innuendo and misrepresentation, Grayling and Green suggest hundreds of thousands of people are “coming in the backs of lorries” and claiming UK benefits, blogs Don Flyn for Open Democracy.

But over half the 370,000 figure quoted are actually British citizens. They didn’t arrive here yesterday – many will have come ten, 20 or more years ago, and are fully a part of British society.

The 370,000 also represents just over six per cent of the 5.5 million people in receipt of these benefits - “Not such a large figure after all”, says Flyn. But with the economy in dire straits, “is it any surprise that some ministers would want to leap into the lifeboat labelled ‘In the event of emergency, blame immigrants’?” ·