Is this a drag on the economy? Well, in a sense, every citizen that is taking from the government spending is doing so at the cost of either a taxpayers burden now, or a future taxpayers burden in interest payments and repayment for national debt. But in real terms? The welfare payments for jobseekers (1%) and disability (8%) and child credits (5%) and housing benefits (11%) for the ENTIRE country of the United Kingdom is 25% total; not just immigrants, the entire country (Office of Budget Responsibility, 2019).

E.U. nationals come to Britain, are very likely to work, and are unlikely to become economically inactive. But there is evidence that they present a depressing factor on wages and employment for local working class and educated workforces. There is also an argument that many send their wages abroad via remittances and reduce the supply of capital domestically, but that’s also not part of this article (more here though).

But it must be said; non-E.U. nationals do present a real, likely, and current drag to the British economy, however small, and we must decide if that is something we would like in an economic sense. In the sense of our rights as people, we discuss it later. They certainly do not provide much demand to the economy, if nearly a third of them do not work, and so cannot provide much purchasing power compared to other immigrants.

Finally, I would like to discuss the lump of labour fallacy (Kagan, 2018). It is an economic argument that immigrants do not steal jobs, as jobs are not a single lump, and new demand creates new supply. I have two points to make against this defence; the first is that short-term, new jobs cannot be created so quickly to compensate for the new demand, and the second is that the United Kingdom is in a period of massive economic crisis, where companies are, or will be, leaving and taking their jobs with them, and new jobs are not being created particularly quickly. Long term, this may not be the case, but in the short-term, evidence shows it certainly seems to be, and with a constant stream of immigrants, it’s constant downward pressure on the market. The people who are not affected are the wealthy and the educated, and so it is not surprising that the majority of the educated and wealthy are pro-immigration, but those without these are not.

What does this mean for the Libertarian policy? In sheer economic terms, immigration is not good for the poor, working, uneducated class, but would likely provide a high supply of cheap labour that is good for businesses, as well as a competitive labour market is very attractive to employers in the future (when we need to attract them, let’s say, post-Brexit). Non-E.U. nationals do not provide much economic stimulus at present, and present higher rates of economic inactivity, which represent a drag on the economy and a burden on the taxpayer, although said burden is very, very small.

As the burden to pay for the welfare of the elderly is so large, I would recommend this policy to be followed only with E.U. countries, as they have high rates of employment, and simply hope we can outgrow the massive pension bill that our children shall have to deal with. Alternatively, reduce pensions, but that is political suicide.

Policy 17: The right to remove or reject foreigners who are convicted in a British court of Law

According to the House of Commons (2018a), 9,000 prisoners out of 86,000 were foreigners. Of this, 54% of them were from the E.U. (and 5% of the total population), and Africans made up a further 18% and Asians a further 12%.

As we are currently overpopulated in prison by 8,700 people (more on that here), being able to remove and reject these prisoners would certainly help reduce overpopulation to the point of having 300 cells spare.

That said, there is a point to consider. In this country, we have the right of passive resistance. The government already have a habit of arresting protestors if it can get away with it (see more in article); would this create a system where a perfectly reasonable protestor may be ejected from the country for facing down the government? It would create a dual-legal system; the natives can risk facing the law, but immigrants must shut up and look away. I would love to see some consideration about this, but the Manifesto has a single sentence to summarise this.

Policy 18: A contract to be made where a citizen can sponsor an immigrant to become a citizen, except when proven dangerous ‘beyond reasonable doubt”

Policy 19: We will end delays on married or civil partnered couples by expediting visas



I put these policies together because their points will be similar.

As a person who is married to a foreign citizen, who has her own degree, gave birth to my child, has worked for the British government before, has no criminal record, a perfect credit rating, and has travelled to and from the United Kingdom multiple times to study and visit, we still face a barrage of questions and issues when we come to the United Kingdom.

I am aware of the danger of using false marriages to get people into the country, but there are only 41,000 family visas given out each year (Home Office, 2017) compared to 530,000 illegal immigrants who are in the U.K. (ONS, 2015), it would be better to allow fully married citizens to enjoy their freedom with their spouse when it would take 13 years to equal an illegal population of the U.K., and could be done so with the government watching the comings and goings of them, and with the expectation that the citizens are able to get married to their own wife or husband without having to hope that Big Brother approves of their match, or of their own personal situation, to allow them to live with their spouse.

Again, while I understand the argument that ‘They are going to come here and soak up all of the [jobs, welfare, and money]’ (and if they are not from the E.U., then it is quickly likely to be one welfare, if they are from the E.U., then likely jobs, according to the statistics), the impact on the British economy is minuscule with only 41,000 such marriages happening per year, making it less than 0.1% of the total population of the U.K..

I also see the argument that ‘Oh, it’ll be used by [insert minority here] to conquer the country’. Firstly, the Libertarian Manifesto has stated multiple times that they reserve the right to cast out dangerous people. Secondly, it is a worrying argument; I won’t point to how the Jews were refused to enter the United Kingdom before the Nazis killed them; I won’t point out how the United Kingdom turned away from the Armenians in Turkey before they were killed; instead, I’ll point out that when we begin to base policy on your people, rather than merit, then the seeds of policies based on race begins, a mistake we have seen too often in history. You already know the arguments; let’s move on.

There is also another argument to be made; should you only be allowed to come to the United Kingdom if you prove you’ll work? Does a man or a woman not have the freedom to enjoy the raising of their children? They are only good people if they come to work in whatever work they can find, scared to be fired lest the British government deem them not worthy of being their husband or wife’s spouse and cast back from the darkness whence they came? But then, do the British taxpayers not have the right to refuse to pay for someone who doesn’t work, but comes here anyway?

Shouldn’t a British citizen be able to make the choice if they want to marry someone from whatever background they want? Are the poor only allowed to marry inside this country? Is marrying a foreigner a right for the rich? Because currently it is, as you must have enough money to ‘purchase’ the right for your spouse to come.

As such, I do not see a massive negative effect of this policy, I can see the liberal arguments in favour of it, and I believe it is an issue of freedom.

Moving on, it is not so easy to simply ‘prove someone dangerous’. Do you know why so many of the ISIS fighters returned to the United Kingdom? That only 10% are prosecuted (Dearden, 2019)? Because all of the evidence is in the Middle East. Unless they are stupid enough to load evidence to their Facebook or something, the Crown Prosecution Service has no evidence, Syria cannot and will not provide evidence (due to a lack of a functioning government, for a start), and we’re not going to send someone over to go and get it. To leave the level of evidence required at ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, the legal standard, means that you’ll only reduce the number of known dangerous people by 10%. It’s simply not a very effective law; it sounds nice, but it won’t do anything.



Conclusion:

The Manifesto has the usual problems; they talk about border agreements, but never discuss which countries they would have them with. They talk about ‘getting rid of the dangerous people’, but don’t discuss how difficult it is, and how they would overcome it. They discuss a focus on immigrants with ’British values’, but don’t mention what they regard as British values, or how they would test it.

They mention some policies I agree with, such as marriage visas, and the right to refuse immigration, and to send immigrants who are criminals back, but are so vague with some policies that I don’t know what they precisely want. Typically, Libertarians are pro-migration, but they talk a lot about how to refuse it. I assume they do so because they want to appeal to the anti-immigration crowd. This manifesto at least recognised that a welfare state and their preferred immigration ideal are not compatible.

They talk a lot about they would choose immigrants who help the British economy; firstly, they do not specify which immigrants those are (I assume you fill it in with whichever immigrant you like); do they prefer cheap labour to keep production costs low, or do they want educated people to improve efficiency and innovation for long term growth? They just don’t say.

On the flip side, they discuss nothing about the economic inactivity of some parts of the immigrant population, and how to solve this problem. It also feels like spitting into the sea; the amount spent pales in comparison to state pensions.

Finally, their policies would depress the wages and employment of up to half of our current generation; we already see higher unemployment, and recently, a Nobel prize winner Angus Deaton noted that inequality will lead to the death of democratic capitalism in the United Kingdom (2019). I have written about this before, and we have seen it in our elections. I believe that the Libertarian Party is focusing on all the wrong parts, and their policies would accelerate this future while they chant “Free market efficiency” into the fiery skyline of London.