Looking the Wrong Way: Why Blaming Immigration Distracts Britain from Its Real Problems

Immigration is not the cause of Britain's biggest problems, and treating it as the cause stops us from fixing what actually is. The money we spend on asylum is small next to the costs that really shape our public finances. The UK is not an outlier in Europe. Migrants are not driving crime. And for centuries, people who came here have built the industries, food, science and health service we rely on. Illegal crossings do need better control, but control and compassion are not opposites.

Point 1: The cost of immigration is small compared with what really drains the public purse

Point. Asylum spending is a real cost, but it is a fraction of the spending that actually squeezes our schools, hospitals and wages.

Evidence.

• The Home Office spent about £4 billion on asylum support in 2024–25, of which £2.1 billion went on hotels. Including Ministry of Justice costs, total asylum spending was about £4.9 billion.

• In 2025–26 the government spent about £109 billion just on interest on the national debt, around 8% of all public spending. That is roughly 27 times the Home Office asylum support bill, and it buys no services at all.

• Spending on welfare cash transfers, mostly pensions and benefits, is forecast at £333 billion in 2025–26.

• HMRC estimates that £59.2 billion of tax that was owed went unpaid in 2024–25, the highest ever in cash terms. That is nearly 15 times asylum support.

• On benefits: in June 2025, about 16.4% of Universal Credit claimants were not UK or Irish nationals, meaning around 84% were. By January 2026, the foreign-national share had fallen to 15.5%. Most foreign nationals on Universal Credit are EU citizens with settled status who have lived and worked here legally. People still waiting on an asylum decision cannot claim Universal Credit at all. The government does not publish benefit data by race, only by nationality, which itself shows benefits are paid on need and legal status, not background.

• For comparison, the Sovereign Grant funding the Royal Household was £132.1 million in 2025–26, rising to £137.9 million in 2026–27. The UK also paid around £3.25 billion to the EU in a single recent year under the Brexit settlement, with the Treasury estimating a total net cost of about £30 billion.

Explain. The royal grant and the Brexit bill show that plenty of other spending is debatable, yet neither dominates headlines the way asylum hotels do. The spending that truly dwarfs asylum is debt interest and uncollected tax. If someone is genuinely angry about where their taxes go, asylum is one of the smaller lines on the bill.

Point 2: The UK is not "overrun" compared with the rest of Europe

Point. Britain's share of immigrants and asylum seekers is broadly in line with, and in some cases lower than, comparable European countries.

Evidence.

• Just under one in five people in the UK were born abroad. In Germany the figure is 20.5%, in Spain about 19.3% and in France about 14%. Norway has around 1 million foreign-born residents in a population of about 5.6 million, roughly 18%.

• The UK received about 100,600 asylum claims in 2025. Germany received about 168,000, France 152,000 and Spain 144,000.

• Relative to population, Spain had 2.9 first-time asylum applicants per 1,000 people in 2025, against an EU average of 1.5. The UK's 100,600 claims across roughly 69 million people works out at about 1.4 per 1,000.

• Net migration to the UK fell to about 171,000 in 2025, nearly half the previous year.

• Around 41,500 people crossed the Channel in small boats in 2025. That is serious and dangerous, but across 2018–2025, 62% of small-boat arrivals were ultimately found to have a genuine claim.

Explain. If Britain is "overrun", then so are Germany, Spain and Norway, and those countries have not collapsed. The UK is a typical Western European country in this respect, not an exception.

Point 3: Migrants are not driving crime, but headlines make it look that way

Point. The data does not show that foreign nationals commit more crime than British citizens, and the habit of naming someone's religion or origin in headlines deepens division.

Evidence.

• In England and Wales, non-citizens made up 12.1% of the prison population in June 2025 and 13.1% of cautions and convictions in 2024, while they are roughly 13.5% of the adult population. In other words, overall conviction and imprisonment rates are similar.

• Migrants tend to be younger, and young people commit more crime in every population. An earlier Migration Observatory analysis found that if foreign nationals offended at the same rate as British citizens of the same age, they would make up about 15% of prisoners, higher than the actual figure.

• A 2025 study of 40,913 articles from 30 UK outlets found that 70% linked Muslims or Islam with negative behaviour or themes.

• The press regulator IPSO's Editors' Code already says a person's race, religion or nationality should not be mentioned unless it is genuinely relevant to the story.

• After the Southport attack in 2024, false claims online that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker helped spark riots, even though he was born in Cardiff.

Explain. When a crime by a Muslim or migrant is labelled by faith or origin, and a crime by a white British person is simply "a man", readers learn a false pattern. I propose newsrooms follow the spirit of their own code: leave nationality and religion out of headlines unless it is essential to understanding the story.

Point 4: Immigration has made Britain stronger for centuries

Point. Many of the things people call "British" were built or transformed by immigrants.

Evidence.

• Food. Fried fish was brought by Jewish immigrants and became half of fish and chips, and curry houses turned dishes like chicken tikka masala into national favourites.

• Science. Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, both born in the former Soviet Union, won the 2010 Nobel Prize for isolating graphene at the University of Manchester.

• Healthcare today. Around 21% of NHS staff in England reported a non-British nationality in June 2025, including about 36% of doctors and 30% of nurses. Roughly 42% of licensed doctors in the UK qualified abroad, which means other countries paid to train many of the professionals treating us.

• Business. In 2025, 54 of the UK's 100 fastest-growing companies had a foreign-born founder or co-founder.

• Taxes. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that a high-wage migrant arriving at 25 makes a net lifetime contribution of roughly £1 million to the public finances. The Migration Advisory Committee found average Skilled Worker migrants generated a net fiscal surplus of £16,300 in 2022/23, against £800 for the average UK-born adult.

Explain. Take immigration out of Britain's story and you lose part of the NHS, the high street, the dinner table and the science lab. That is not a side benefit; it is the fabric of the country.

Point 5: Control illegal immigration, but never lose compassion

Point. I agree that dangerous, unregulated crossings need to be reduced. But most people who make them are fleeing situations none of us would tolerate.

Evidence.

• 117.8 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced at the end of 2025, about one in every 70 people, and most refugees are hosted by low- and middle-income countries, not Britain.

• The largest refugee populations come from countries including Afghanistan, Sudan, South Sudan and Syria. In Afghanistan, girls have been banned from secondary and university education under Taliban rule.

• Eritreans, the largest group arriving by small boat in the year to June 2026, had asylum grant rates of 87% in 2024 and 2025, because independent decision-makers found they faced real persecution.

• The system does say no: the initial grant rate fell to 39% in the year to March 2026.

Explain. Stronger enforcement against smugglers and faster, fair decisions are sensible. But a person escaping war, genocide, forced child marriage or starvation is not a criminal for wanting to live. Compassion and a working border can exist together.

Counter-arguments, and my response

"Asylum costs have exploded." True: Home Office asylum support rose from £739 million in 2019–20 to a peak of £4.7 billion in 2023–24. Response: much of that rise came from a slow decision backlog and expensive hotels, which is a failure of administration, not of the people waiting. Faster decisions cut costs for everyone.

"Low-wage migrants cost more than they pay in." Some think tanks, such as the Centre for Policy Studies, argue that if most long-term migrants are low earners, the lifetime cost could be very large. The OBR itself finds low-wage workers of any origin have a negative lifetime fiscal impact. Response: this is an argument for smarter visa design and better pay, not for blaming migrants in general. It also applies equally to low-paid British workers."Foreign nationals on Universal Credit have risen sharply." The number rose from about 883,000 in 2022 to about 1.26 million by mid-2025. Response: claimant numbers rose for everyone, reaching a record 8 million people in July 2025, and the foreign share has since fallen.

"Muslims are over-represented in prisons." Muslims make up a larger share of prisoners than of the population. Response: most British Muslims are British citizens, not recent migrants, and offending is strongly linked to age, poverty and deprivation. Religion is not the cause, which is exactly why putting it in headlines misleads.

"Taxing the wealthy won't work." Wealth data is imprecise and a wealth tax could drive rich people abroad. Also, small businesses, not millionaires, make up the largest share of the tax gap. Response: those are design problems to solve, not reasons to stop looking. Closing the gap and reforming how wealth is taxed would raise far more.

So here is my question to you: why do so many of us point at the person who arrived on a small boat, rather than at the unpaid tax, the soaring debt interest and the untaxed fortunes that cost this country so much more?