Ben Lowry: ​At last, a public awakening on the disastrous scale of mass immigration – even in Ireland

In the UK, a series of violent attacks by immigrants have exposed the almost total loss of control of our borders, and the shambolic deportation system in which far too many asylum requests have been granted and those which haven’t almost never led to a return.

For those of us who follow things closely, the problems were visible decades ago. I was already a sceptic about immigration in the 1990s, and became all the more so from 2001 when I read reports from that vital – but overlooked – organisation Migration Watch. It did what our politicians failed to do – monitored the numbers of people coming into our nation and the resulting cultural change.

Now Britain has been changed irreversibly and, contrary to what the disciples of multi-culturalism say, it has changed for the worse.

Why is it on the radar so suddenly?

​The obvious answer is that most people do not follow events closely and that the great majority of the UK population has – until very recently – lived in areas with little or no immigration (such as Northern Ireland). But the numbers of people that have come into the UK are now impossible to ignore.

The number of net immigrants to the UK over the last 20 years is approaching seven million, into a country of fewer than 70 million people. The overall population has increased from an estimated 60.5 million in 2005 to a current estimate of 69.5 million, the great bulk of that from immigration.

The impact is far more serious than even those bare figures suggest. The influx of people is exacerbated by several factors (and it is accurate to use words such as influx, however unpalatable it is to squeamish liberal supporters of mass migration).

First, it is happening into one of the more densely populated countries in the world, the UK, which is in the top quarter of countries ranked globally by density. But in fact most of it is into England, which, if it was a standalone nation state, would be among a handful of the most densely populated nation states. Population density is a key factor in quality of life – generally the lower, the better (think France, think Australia, Canada etc).

Second, much of it is happening from profoundly alien cultures, and in some cases from hostile ones. Imagine the idiocy of allowing in people from cultures that despise you, as for example some Muslim communities do (admittedly a small minority of the global Muslim population), yet we have been weak around those who shriek racism at anyone who even hints at the problems of cultural difference.

And third, much of the legal immigration into the UK has been low paid, which is a massive net cost to the country. It means that millions of the new residents into the UK cost far more in schooling, benefits and healthcare than they pay in taxes.

It might sound wise after the event to make these points now, but it is another problem that has been stark for more than a decade.

For example, it is a decade since I began to write about the far too large number of people in Northern Ireland on Disability Living Allowance, as it was then called – approaching one person in eight. That was one in eight of the entire population, and given that very few children were on DLA the number of adults of working age was even higher.

The reality was that far too many people with mild illness who could work were not doing so, resulting in our increasing reliance on immigration to fill jobs that the existing population would not do. In other words, a consistent critic of immigration is not targeting migrants, as liberals claim, but is criticising the native population for preferring benefits to certain jobs.

While the scale of mass immigration into the UK has done permanent damage to the country, the situation is not beyond hope. The belated backlash means we can – as a start – slash the number of incomers.

• Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter editor