Benefits for Immigrants

The petition is entitled Stop Giving Benefits To Immigrants Who Are Able To Work and the explanatory notes say

"I am sick of hearing about immigrants coming into my country illegally and then claiming benefits they should not be getting. Why should I work hard and pay ridiculous amounts of tax to fund their lives of luxury? It is about time the Government stopped wasting money on people who don't deserve it. If people want to come and live in our country they should have to work like we all do."

I'm sick of hearing this, too. Mostly because I don't believe for a minute the problem is the scourge people like the petitioner think it is, and I feel that refugees and other immigrants are given an appalling press by, well, the press.

But let's face it, I don't know that I know any more than the petitioner does - so, before I castigate him for his ignorance and bigotry, I did a spot of research.

Broadly, to be able to claim benefits, you have to have legitimately lived in the UK for at least six months under various things like being an EU or Commonwealth citizen, or the relative of a citizen. Or else you have to be an asylum seeker (gets very limited benefits) or a refugee. You can't just turn up and claim benefits, except in the latter case.

According to the BBC, 28,000 people applied for asylum in the UK in 2006. And more than 18,000 people whose applications had been turned down were deported. So that's around 10,000 extra people who are either still waiting for their cases to be heard, or have been granted refugee status. The latter are broadly entitled to everything that a British citizen is, including benefits, and employment. Which presumably means that if they're able to work but are claiming benefits, they'll be expected to seek work and be able to show that they're doing so. (Incidentally, these 10,000 people include children. Can't find figures for how many, though.)

Now, I cannot for the life of me find data on how many people in the UK actually subsist solely on "benefits". There are around 1,700,000 people classified as "unemployed", but other benefits claimants aren't, of course, in this figure. Still. Let's suppose for a moment that all 10,000 of those people who haven't been deported have in fact been granted refugee status, and that they're all adults who are capable of working, but none of them have got jobs, so they're all claiming Jobseekers' Allowance. That's an 0.6% increase on the unemployment figures. Less than the seasonal fluctuation figures. Tiny. A mind-bogglingly small number of people.

Actually, of course, it'll be a smaller number. Some of them will still be waiting for their status to be settled (which means they're on rather smaller benefits than something like Jobseekers' Allowance, and they're not allowed to work, and quite a bit of the benefit is in the form of vouchers. Not a luxurious lifestyle); some of them will be children, so not claiming benefits as such; some will actually be being supported by families or by the savings they've escaped with; some will be unable to work, or past retirement age.

In short, the petitioner (who signs himself "Mr England" - does anyone think he's given his own name there?) is sick of hearing about something that's not actually an issue. Is listening to the ranting of bigots and, instead of questioning it, is leaping into his own bigotry. It's really rather disgusting.