British workers will be on average £2,500 a year worse off by 2031 due to immigration suppressing wages, the Conservative Party has claimed in a new analysis.
Using figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Bank of England, the Conservatives calculated that immigration will cost UK workers a total of £89.8 billion in suppressed wages over the next five years, leaving the average worker £2,521 a year worse off.
The projections are based on OBR forecasts that cumulative net migration between 2026 and 2031 will total around 1.4 million, increasing competition for jobs and placing downward pressure on wages. The Bank of England found that a 10 per cent rise in the immigrant-to-native ratio in a given occupation and region is associated with a 0.93 per cent reduction in average wages, pointing to a fall in average annual earnings from £38,220 to £35,699 by 2031.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp called for a binding annual cap on inward immigration and a tightening of visa rules. He said a Conservative government would attach new conditions to Indefinite Leave to Remain status and extend the waiting period to apply for British citizenship from 12 months to five years after obtaining ILR.
Philp said high immigration has real consequences across society and that British people feel it in how much they earn, adding that Labour had opened the door without any plan to deal with the consequences.
The analysis comes as migration has risen up the political agenda. Some 752 migrants reached the UK on Wednesday alone, the highest number of Channel crossings in a single day so far this year.
Reform UK home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf travelled to the Spanish territory of Ceuta, where more than 60,000 African migrants arrived last week in what has been described as the biggest ever one-day surge of illegal migrants into the EU. Yusuf described the surge as an invasion and said that unless borders are secured, similar scenes would become increasingly common.
Spain condemned what it called the selfish, polarising and unlawful reaction of some EU countries to the influx, saying that almost all of those who reached Ceuta have since returned.
