Tag Archives: Perverse Incentives

155,000 illegal immigrants receiving welfare benefits in the socialist UK

From the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Verum Serum)

Excerpt:

Tens of thousands of workers with no right to be in Britain have been claiming benefits thanks to an extraordinary loophole in the law.

Ministers have discovered that Labour allowed 155,000 illegal immigrants to qualify for sickness benefits and maternity pay. Government sources put the cost to the public purse at ‘tens of millions of pounds’.

They say the shambles is a damning indictment of how Labour lost control of both the benefits and immigration systems with taxpayers left to foot the bill. Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith will outlaw the practice in welfare reform legislation expected to be unveiled this week.

Ministers believe most of those abusing the system came to work in Britain for a limited period and overstayed their visa. Others managed to get a job without a work permit.

At present, someone could be illegally in the UK and able to claim Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), paid to those too sick to work, as well as statutory payments such as maternity or paternity pay and sick pay.

Astonishingly, the Work and Pensions Department has not in the past asked to see work permits when assessing claims for ESA.

Employers, meanwhile, have not been asked to show proof that workers are in Britain legally when processing claims for maternity or paternity pay or sick pay.

[…]Hundreds of thousands of National Insurance numbers were handed out under Labour to illegal workers as, alarmingly, there was no requirement on JobCentre staff to check whether a person was in the country legally.

[…]However, the European Commission has warned ministers that the rules may infringe the human rights of EU citizens and are ‘not compatible’ with EU law. It has started legal proceedings against Britain to have restrictions on welfare claims by incomers scrapped.

[…]The scale of the welfare challenge facing Britain is laid bare today in figures which show at least 330,000 children – around one in 30 – are growing up with a parent claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance.

The Labour Party is the UK-based equivalent of the Democrat party here, and Democrats also advocate for similar welfare programs for illegal aliens. Here, illegal immigrants get free health care (from emergency rooms, that cannot turn anyone away), free schooling in public schools, and free birthright citizenship. And they get to work without paying any income taxes. It’s a mess. This is being paid for by everyone else who plays by the rules. And all this doesn’t even include the crime problems.

Now consider this article from the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Verum Serum)

Excerpt:

Ministers today faced calls for an inquiry into claims that their open-door immigration policy was designed to make Britain more multicultural and allow Labour to portray the Tories as racists.

A former Labour adviser alleged that the Government opened up Britain’s borders in part to try to humiliate Right-wing opponents of immigration…

The Daily Mail reported on Saturday the controversial claims by Andrew Neather, who worked for Tony Blair and Jack Straw.

He said Labour’s relaxation of immigration controls in 2000 was a deliberate attempt to engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country and plug gaps in the jobs market.

He said the ‘major shift’ in immigration policy was inspired by a 2001 policy paper from the Performance and Innovation Unit, a Downing Street think-tank based in the Cabinet Office…

Ministers were reluctant to discuss the move publicly for fear that it would alienate Labour’s core working-class vote, Mr Neather said. But they hoped it would allow them to paint the Conservatives as xenophobic and out of touch.

‘I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date,’ Mr Neather added.

That’s right. This mess was intentionally created.