I once angered a friend by suggesting that one reason that the United States has a housing crisis is that we are importing millions of people and have no place to put them.
They were furious. It was such a xenophobic thing to say.
Of course, I was merely pointing out that supply and demand are a thing. Even if unlimited immigration were otherwise a good thing, you can’t dump millions of people into a constrained market and not expect price increases.
Soaring immigration is fuelling Britain’s housing crisis, says Bank’s chief economist https://t.co/nULxD3gD5J
— David Strom (@DavidStrom) May 10, 2024
Saying true things can get you in a lot of trouble, at least when you pop somebody’s ideological balloon. But you can’t do the right thing until you know the truth.
Ever since Tony Blair decided to remake Britain into a multicultural utopia, Britain has imported millions of migrants, forever changing its demographics. For instance, in 2022, Britain’s net migration was 725,000, with about 2/3rds coming from outside the European Union.
Aside from the cultural implications–all those videos of London’s streets filled with antisemites protesting Israel speak volumes–are the merely practical issues, such as answering the simple question of where you put everyone.
Building new housing in Britain is pretty difficult–think Portland or San Francisco rather than Texas or Florida and you will get the idea–and not enough is getting built to house everybody. I’ve written about Brits being kicked out of their homes to house migrants (yes, that is a thing), but there is a more common problem: rents are skyrocketing even faster than baseline inflation, which is a key part of why inflation is so high in Britain.
So says the Chief Economist for the Bank of England, and he is right. Further, he says about 90% of the shortage is caused by importing more migrants than the country can house.
High levels of immigration are fuelling Britain’s housing crisis, according to the Bank of England’s chief economist, who blamed skyrocketing rents on a shortage of properties.
Huw Pill said higher interest rates were not responsible for record hikes in rental costs, which jumped by 9.2pc in the year to March.
He said “quite large increases in immigration” were piling more pressure on Britain’s housing stock, after net migration hit a record-breaking 745,000 in 2022.
In comments made after the Bank of England held rates at 5.25pc for a sixth consecutive meeting on Thursday, Mr Pill said: “The population is growing.
“To some extent, the rents are really a reflection of supply and demand factors [and] reflect things that aren’t to do with monetary policy.”
It shouldn’t be controversial to say this, but of course it is. Although a lot less controversial than it used to be. Ordinary Britons have been uncomfortable with the massive immigration for quite a while, but the consensus in the political class was pro-immigration.
One of the reasons is that there has been a belief that immigration is good for the economy. It boosts GDP, or at least it should.
However, a new study that was just released seems to contradict that assumption. As the percent of Britain’s foreign-born population has increased, economic growth has slowed quite considerably. This may seem counterintuitive, but the statistics show it pretty plainly. 
While illegal immigration recently hit record highs in the United States, legal immigration poses a significant issue for the U.K., where legal migration levels are more than 25 times the level of illegal levels, according to a report Wednesday from the Centre for Policy Studies, a U.K. think tank and advocacy group.
The percentage of foreign-born people in the U.K. nearly doubled over two decades, with 9% of the population being foreign-born in 2001 to 17% in 2021, which is even higher than the U.S., where 14% of people are foreign-born.
We can speculate as to why the inflow of migrants has suppressed economic growth, but the data is there. I suspect that the explanation is pretty simple: non-European migrants are undereducated and have values that are dramatically different from the average Briton’s. They don’t appear to integrate well, either.
A Dutch study shows the difference is pretty stark. When measuring the net economic impact of migrants from different regions it’s pretty clear that immigrants from the Anglo-Saxon and East Asian countries bring the most benefit, and those from underdeveloped countries the most cost.
This was not an anti-immigration group that concluded this; it was the University of Amsterdam’s School of Economics.
In sum, the UK’s immigration policies have harmed native Britons. Their housing costs have skyrocketed and their economy has slowed.
So much for the pro-immigration consensus.