Net migration hit 685,000 in 2023. The OBR says it's +£4.3B net to the public finances. Bottom quintile wages in high-migration sectors fell 3% in real terms. Both are true. The question is who gets which half of the deal.
"Immigration is net fiscally positive and fills critical skill gaps the domestic workforce cannot supply fast enough. Without immigration, the NHS would not function — 26% of NHS staff are non-UK born. The fiscal contribution pays for public services that benefit everyone. Restricting immigration would shrink the economy and worsen the very public services people want improved."
This argument is backed by OBR data. It is internally consistent. The NHS dependency is real, not rhetorical. The fiscal contribution is positive on the OBR's methodology.
The honest measurement problem: the +£4.3B aggregate is a mean, not a distribution. High-skilled immigration (doctors, engineers, finance) produces a large positive fiscal contribution per person. Low-wage immigration in high-supply labour markets produces a smaller or negative contribution per person — particularly when housing, school places, and NHS access are factored in at the margin.
The wage data at the bottom is the structural tell. When you add labour supply in roles where workers are already plentiful, wages fall — that's not immigration being bad, it's supply and demand working as designed. The harm lands on the people who were already competing in that market. The benefit (cheaper services, higher corporate profit) lands on consumers and employers. The distributional transfer is real even when the aggregate is positive.
The housing bottleneck makes both effects worse. The UK builds 0.43 homes per person added (break-even is 1.0). When housing cannot expand to match population, shelter costs rise for everyone in the bottom half of the income distribution, regardless of whether their wages rose or fell. The fiscal benefit of immigration goes to HM Treasury; the housing cost goes to renters.
The planning system is the load-bearing constraint, not immigration levels. The UK would face a structural housing shortage even at zero net migration: planning permission refusal rates mean domestic population growth alone exceeds supply. Land value capture by developers and landowners means granted permissions do not translate into built homes at affordable prices — developers hold land with permission, waiting for further value appreciation. Fixing immigration without fixing planning exports the scarcity problem to the remaining population. Fixing planning without fixing immigration removes the scarcity problem regardless of migration levels. The honest argument for immigration restraint is not that immigrants are bad — it is that immigration interacts destructively with a pre-existing structural failure that the political system has chosen not to fix.
Sources: OBR Fiscal Sustainability Report, ONS Migration Statistics, MHCLG Housing Delivery Statistics.
The aggregate fiscal positive is a Measurement Loop failure (Invariant 3): the mean hides the distributional negative. The Housing-Birth Loop compounds it: immigration → 0.43 homes per person added → shelter costs rise → young households cannot form → fertility falls → more immigration required to fill workforce → repeat. Immigration is both a symptom of the Demographic Trap and a mechanism that, without housing reform, deepens it.