You don't understand why people see a difference between humans and trade goods?
While that sounds overly excessive, the UK at a fifth of the population size is spending 6.5, billion pounds a year to encourage illegal immigrants to come into the country. I understand it's not a perfect comparison but I think it's worth pointing out that there are far stupider and more expensive ways that other countries are dealing with the same situation.
Can you expand on this for non UK readers?
In the past few years there have been huge numbers of illegal immigrants abusing that system. And successive governments have absolutely no strategy for dealing with it. Hence record numbers of illegal immigration and a huge bill.
Really the whole situation is painfully dumb, but the politicians and civil servants couldn't care because they don't suffer from the consequences of their own incompetence.
The real question here, though, is where does the 6.5 billion pound number come from? Who is quoting it, what's their justification for that figure, and does that give a real and accurate account of any "drain" on the UK economy?
( eg: of that amount how much goes into the pockets of "illegal immigrants" and stays there (or is transferred out of the UK), how much goes into the pockets of UK shopkeepers and landlords and recirculates within the UK economy )
The big picture on economic flow activity really is important in these debates, the US is facing one cost of immigration enforcement being the loss of cheap labour in construction, hospitality, and agriculture, with knock on effects - these costs over and above the costs of funding a massive and unaccountable para military force.
I got my figures from Google, and it's the money the home office say they spent housing asylum seekers, again this takes into account no other negative knock on effects.
For example when I searched for the same information just now I found links to both newspaper reports and a current UK audit that state*:
Home Office says Labour inherited asylum system in chaos with applicants stuck in backlog.
Accommodation for asylum seekers is expected to cost more than £15bn, three times the amount the Home Office originally estimated, according to the latest figures.
The Conservative government signed contracts in 2019 that were due to pay £4.5bn of taxpayers’ money to three companies over a decade.
However, a report by the National Audit Office, the government spending watchdog, says that number is now estimated to be £15.3bn over the 10-year period.
Still, it's not all that bad, the new UK government is claiming that:
A Home Office spokesperson said: “As this report shows we inherited an asylum system in chaos with tens of thousands stuck in a backlog, claims not being processed and disastrous contracts that were wasting millions in taxpayer money.
“We’ve taken immediate action to fix it – increasing asylum decision making by 52% and removing 24,000 people with no right to be here, meaning there are now fewer asylum hotels open than since the election. By restoring grip on the system and speeding up decision making we will end the use of hotels and are forecast to save the taxpayer £4bn by the end of 2026.”
> but I think that level of impact assessment is going a bit too far. I doubt any other project has ever had to take those into account.
Well, you'd be wrong on that point, it's common for economists to look at the knock effects of money moving through through an economy, there's even several terms for different aspects of that, eg: multiplier effect **.
(I recall that one from high school economics 101 some 45+ years past)
In this instance it's literally a case of UK taxpayer money being paid out to other UK taxpaying companies, mostly large, some small, and being injected back into the UK economy as ?? (more building, more investment, more taxable activity).
* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/07/uk-asylum-seek...
** https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/1948/economics/the-multip...
- Food and Nutrition Service (USDA) (~$142B)
- NIH (~$47B)
- Tenant-Based Rental Assistance / Housing Choice Vouchers (HUD) (~$36B)
- Pell Grant Program (~$34.5B)
- Federal Highway Administration (DOT) (~$62.8B)
- Environmental Protection Agency (~$41B, might be out of date)
- Department of Energy (~$58B)
- Department of State (~$58B)
- Department of Housing and Urban Development (~$62B)
- Department of Labor (~$98B)
Comparing it to national militaries is a bit silly IMHO, since as the world’s largest economy the US federal government spends heavily across almost every sector.
mcphage•5mo ago