Britain will need to build another 15 cities the size of Birmingham by 2046 to accommodate soaring numbers of migrants if current trends continue, an academic has warned.
Dr Rakib Ehsan, who has voiced frequent concern over the rise of identity politics and the limitations of multiculturalism, was commenting in the wake of the latest figures published by the Office for National Statistics earlier this week.
These put net migration to the UK at a provisional total of 728,000 in the year to June 2024, down 20% from a revised record of 906,000 in the year to June 2023.
Dr Ehsan, whose book, Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong About Ethnic Minorities, was published in 2022, said the latest numbers were “by anyone’s reckoning staggering”.
A “huge question mark” now stood over the 728,000 figure, he suggested, adding: “I suspect that this, too, will prove to be yet another gross underestimate, and that Britain’s immigration crisis – its gaping open border and the attendant social and economic costs that come with it – will only worsen.
The 906,000 figure, roughly equivalent to importing three cities the size of Nottingham, was “terrifying” in itself, Dr Ehsan said.
Under the last Tory government, net migration had risen exponentially, from 184,000 to “these latest gargantuan figures”, he pointed out.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Dr Ehsan continued: “And that is before you factor in ongoing immigration. If present trends continue, Migration Watch UK – another apolitical think-tank that has always proved reliable in its forecasting – calculates that the UK population will rise by at least 16 million, reaching up to 87 million people by 2046.
Referring to the UK’s biggest second city, population 1.15 million in the 2021 census, he said: “That would require building no fewer than 15 new cities the size of Birmingham, a demand that all the brownfield sites in the country would never come close to meeting.”
Consequently, “vast swathes” of England, especially the south, would need to be “concreted over” to build housing for the new arrivals, who would also require doctor’s surgeries, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure.
There was also another problem, in that whereas before Brexit, EU migrants from Poland and other European countries had dominated, now non-EU migrants “swelled the ranks”, Dr Ehsan emphasised.
In provisional figures for the year ending June 2024, one million of the 1.2 million arrivals to the UK came from countries such as India, Nigeria, Pakistan and China.
A total of 55% of study visas given to Nigerian nationals were for their dependants and family, a fact Dr Ehsan said was “bizarre”.
He asked: “Why does someone coming to university in Britain need to bring their mum along with them – and what possible benefit will she offer to the UK economy?
“The answer, very likely, is none.”
Dr Ehsan, who regular appears on GB News and Sky News, warned: “The future of Britain rests not on millions of migrants arriving on our shores every year, but on a new economic, social and political settlement.
“We must end our addiction to cheap foreign labour, and rehabilitate our country by investing in our own citizens at last.”
