The Truth Behind “Foreigners Claiming Benefits”
How misleading headlines fuel outrage—and what the real data tells us.
Thank you to all my new (and existing) subscribers. It’s so good to know people are finding what I do useful. I’m especially grateful to those who have chosen a paid subscription and those who have ‘bought me a coffee’. Having a little bit of income helps with putting these newsletters together!
This week, I want to look at the way some of the media cover issues around immigrants and their regular sleight of hand when reporting on the subject, prompted by Telegraph Headline a couple of weeks ago:
Be honest, what does that headline conjure up in your head?
Many of the responses on social media were very much along the lines of “How dare foreigners come here and claim benefits”.
This is exactly what the Telegraph (and other Right-wing outlets that ran with a similar headline) intended.
So, I thought we’d take a look at what the stats show and, more importantly, what the words they use mean.
“More than one million foreigners claiming benefits”
Let’s start with what they mean by ‘foreigners’.
The Telegraph is referring to anyone who is not a British citizen.
However, to be claiming benefits they can only be from the following groups:
Those with Settled Status from the EU Settlement Scheme
Certain Commonwealth individuals with particular links to the UK (which was only granted between 1971 and 1983)
Those with a successful Refugee status
Those with Indefinite leave to remain
To qualify for indefinite leave to remain, you must generally have lived in the UK lawfully for either 5 or 10 years, depending on your visa type, you must pass the £50 ‘Life in the UK’ test and demonstrate you can speak English with a ~£150 test.
Indefinite leave to remain can be a precursor to applying for British citizenship, which involves providing lots of documents and evidence - for example, dates for every time you came in and out of the UK during the last 5 years, and costs a further £1,630 (£1,214 for children).
It takes years of living, working and contributing to society, for ‘foreigners’ to be able to claim benefits. These are NOT people rocking up in the UK and claiming Universal Credit the following week!
And now a look at the benefits they’re claiming
While a million foreigners claiming benefits sounds like a lot, for context it’s worth looking at how that compares to UK benefit claimants:
Source DWP data
1 in 7 (~14%) benefit claimants are non-UK, which seems reasonable given over 16% of the UK population were born abroad. (Being born abroad doesn’t necessarily mean someone is not a British citizen, but that census data is the best statistic we have available for ‘foreigner’!)
The types of benefits being claimed differ between UK and non-UK claimants. For example, non-UK claimants claim Universal Credit while working with no other benefits, at twice the rate of UK claimants, and non-UK claimants claim only Housing Benefit with no other benefits at four times the rate of UK claimants.
Around 37% of people on Universal Credit are in work, but for non-uk claimants that’s around 50%. People only claiming Housing Benefits are also far more likely to be in work as they are surviving without needing other help.
So these are people who have spent years living in the UK before being allowed to claim benefits, and are now also quite likely to be working but unable to make ends meet on their salary alone - which says more about low-paying employers than the claimants!
“Households with at least one foreign national claimant received more than £7.5bn in universal credit in one year”
Now, onto the subheading. This came out of a freedom of information request to the Department of Work and Pensions from the Right-wing pressure group, Centre for Migration Control.
These households may well contain a foreign national married to a British citizen. I grew up in just such a family!
Universal Credit is calculated on a household basis, so it could be being paid because the British half of the partnership is the one needing the support.
A British woman married to French man who’s lived and worked in the UK for 30 years, with 3 children, claiming in-work Universal Credit would fall under this category.
And if one half of the couple does not have the right to claim benefits (immigrants that have not yet lived here for 5/10 years and passed the various tests), then the couple can only qualify for the standard allowance for a single person. But that scenario is still captured in that statistic.
The UK spent £80.9Billion on Universal Credit (and the legacy benefits that are being replaced by Universal Credit) in 2023/24. The fact that less than 10% went to households that happened to contain a foreign national doesn’t seem that shocking to me, given over 16% of the UK population were born abroad!
Thanks to the UK’s close ties with Europe pre-Brexit and our centuries-long history of imperialism, we have had a diverse population for decades.
Of the 10 million people born outside the UK, 5.8 million have lived here for over 15 years. 75,000 arrived here before 1951!
And of those 10 million, 3 million arrived in the UK as children.
The idea that someone who has lived and worked here for over 10 years should not be entitled to any benefits when they fall on hard times, just because they’re ‘foreign’ is absurd to me.
What about asylum seekers?
While this particular headline wasn’t referencing asylum seekers, the claim often comes up about them “coming here to claim benefits”, so I just want to touch on that too. I will do a more in-depth article about this soon, but here are just a few facts for you to have at hand if it comes up in conversation!
Asylum seekers are not allowed to claim any benefits as we know them.
Asylum seekers are not, on the whole, allowed to work while their claim is processed - which can take years.
When they arrive and claim asylum, the government has to provide food and shelter if they are considered ‘destitute’- usually in the form of disused army barracks or similar.
After that temporary stay, they will be moved on and sent anywhere in the country with no say in where they go. This is where they remain for the months/years until their claim is heard and concluded.
During this time, each person receives either £49.18 per week to include food, or £6.86 if the accommodation provides food!
£6.86 a week is deemed ‘sufficient’ to cover toiletries, clothes, non-prescription medication, household cleaning items, communications, travel, and the ability to access social, cultural and religious life……
Remember, they are also NOT ALLOWED to work.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think anyone is risking their lives to cross the channel in a small boat just so they can claim £6.86 a week!
Fees to enter the UK
Another counter to the narrative that immigrants ‘cost us money’ is that almost all immigrants coming to the UK not only have to pay fees of up to £3,250 per person for their visa, but they must pay an NHS surcharge upfront of £1,035 per adult (£776 per child or student) PER YEAR of their visa.
So to sum up, someone wanting to move to the UK could pay several thousand pounds for the visa, several thousand pounds for the NHS surcharge, and then several hundred pounds after 5 or 10 years to even become eligible for benefits.
Next time you see a news story about ‘foreigners’, ask yourself what that term means and who you know that fits into that category. That helps to rationalise the level of outrage you’re being asked to feel!
Here is a little glossary of terms to help look beyond the narrative:
Foreign national - anyone without British citizenship, but could have been living and working in the UK for decades.
Born outside the UK/Foreign-born - this can include British nationals born abroad
Immigrant - anyone who has moved to the UK from another country
Asylum Seeker - anyone in the process of claiming asylum in the UK - which is a legal right, no matter how they arrive
Illegal Immigrant - a term used incorrectly to describe asylum seekers. It can be used to describe someone who has outstayed their visa terms, or has arrived illegally and not tried to claim asylum (99% of those arriving on small boats claim asylum).
Refugee - someone who has had their asylum claim successfully granted and now has the right to live and work in the UK.
Ex-pat - a special term used for British people who have moved abroad so they don’t have to refer to themselves as immigrants! (Yes, that was a tongue-in-cheek addition, but do keep an eye out for its use in the press!)
And examples to help rationalise the terms:
Foreign nationals - Arsene Wenger, Mark Webber, Bruno Tonioli (and my Danish mum!)
Born outside the UK/Foreign-born - Bradley Wiggins, Boris Johnson and Joanna Lumley (and my Danish-born, very English sister!).
Refugee - Freddie Mercury, Mo Farah, Rita Ora, Sigmund Freud.
Asylum Seeker - Any of the above BEFORE their claims were successful
The term ‘foreigner’ shouldn’t be a negative thing, yet a section of the British press loves to paint it that way. When you see a headline using the term immigrant or foreigner, just pause and ask yourself what they mean and if their nationality or immigration status is really a problem…
And watch out for the way they use immigrant and asylum seeker interchangeably. Asylum seekers arriving in the UK account for around 10% of the immigration numbers, but by using the full immigration numbers in articles about ‘small boat crossings’ or ‘illegal immigrants’, they can create the illusion of a far bigger problem.
If you found this useful, please share it with others. It really helps!
If you feel like you’ve gained value from this work and are in a position to support me financially, feel free to upgrade your subscription to a paid version for £5 per month, or you can just buy me a coffee!
Ask my family; I do a little happy dance whenever a donation comes in!😊
Enjoyed that one!