Britons pay staggering £8billion bill to cover record number of unemployed migrants

Official figures showed 1,689,000 non-UK nationals are either unemployed or classified as economically inactive because they are not looking to enter the workforce.

The latest figure is a slight increase on the 1,676,000 recorded at the start of 2024, the Office for National Statistics has revealed.

Pressure is mounting on Home Secretary Yvette Cooper after the Labour Government paused Tory plans to increase the income requirement to bring a foreign partner to the UK from £29,000 to £38,700.

Conservative measures to stop foreign students and care workers bringing family members with them to the UK led to a 35 per cent drop in visa applications in the first half of 2024.

Despite voters expressing concern about a surge in net migration post-pandemic, Labour is now facing calls to increase new arrivals to deliver Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner’s home-building boom.

Sir Keir Starmer was also dealt a blow yesterday after GB News revealed more than 20,000 migrants have crossed the Channel so far this year.

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The Centre for Migration Control put the cost to taxpayers of record levels of migrant worklessness at as much as £8.5 billion a year.

Robert Bates, research director at the Centre for Migration Control, said last night: “For all the talk of a fiscal 'black hole', the Labour Government seem to be missing the glaringly obvious fact that mass migration is causing economic pandemonium.

“There is no reason for us to continue handing out so many long-term visas when we are currently having to bail out over a million migrants who are already in Britain but not working.

“This is the very definition of a Ponzi scheme, and we will only compound the problem if we do not change course soon.”

He added: “Our elderly are facing a potentially deadly winter as Keir Starmer cancels the lifeline of the winter fuel allowance, but at the same time he is doing nothing to clamp down on workless migrants.”

The Centre for Migration Control calculated the cost attributed to workless migrants could skyrocket to as high as £20.3billion.

However, a Government spokesman said: “It is incorrect to apply an average cost to migrants out of work as estimates need to take into account individual circumstances.

“Most education and welfare costs are not applicable to working-age migrants who are not students.”