MR McEldowney (November 12) continues to rely on research led by Professor Christian Dustmann and Dr Tommaso Frattini which, after criticism, has now seen its findings being revised and recently reissued. One finding of the earlier research, which was widely publicised and relied upon to flatter the contribution of recent EU migrants, was an estimated contribution of £25 billion between 2001 and 2011 which relied on unfounded assumptions about the assets of EU migrants when they came to the UK. This figure has been reduced in the revised report and the estimate for the same period and group of migrants is now £20 billion, best case scenario, but could be as low as £66 million or nothing.

The most glaring omission in the main body of Dustmann and Frattini’s earlier findings and in press comment, was the total, fiscal cost of £95 billion for all immigration between 2005 and 2011. Some believed the true cost to be even higher and so it has proved. The revised report, published November 5, now has a cost to British taxpayers of £114 billion, as a best case, with a worst case scenario of £159 billion for the total cost of all immigration, for the period 2005 to 2011. Yet again, however, most newspapers have failed to even mention this in their reporting of the revised research.

Interestingly, Professor Christian Dustmann, Mr McEldowney’s leading migration economist, has the dubious distinction of also being the lead researcher on whom the Labour Government relied for estimates of the annual number of migrants who were likely to arrive from Eastern Europe from 2004 onwards. That estimate was for between 5,000 and 13,000 a year, but more than one million workers arrived from Eastern Europe between 2004 and the end of 2009 – an average of around 200,000 a year, and they are still coming.

Mr McEldowney is apparently worried about the detrimental impact of what he sees as negative debate on the very many hard working immigrants yet does not acknowledge the detrimental impact on the poorest British workers who for some years have struggled to find a secure, full-time job, or to afford to rent or buy a home.
Very many have resorted to temporary and/or part-time work or zero-hour contracts.
For those in work wages have been held down and the poorest in society, the working poor and school-leavers, are really struggling.

It often seems that the only winners in mass migration into the UK are migrants themselves and employers. Meanwhile, politicians and trades unions have stood idly by whilst British workers have been denigrated and labelled as shirkers.
Marie Howard
Bromsgrove