Some 34,400 asylum seekers who invoked the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to stay in the U.K. just last year alone will leave a staggering £4.9 billion (US$6.4 billion) bill to be paid by the British taxpayer over the course of their lifetimes, the Home Office acknowledged.
The Daily Telegraph notes the revelation marks the first calculation of its time from the Home Office, which estimated a 141,100 pounds cost per migrant over their life time — a calculation that takes into account “the fact that they would pay taxes.”
About 34,400 migrants requested asylum by means of Article 8 of the ECHR, which grants the right to a “private and family life.” In sum, the British taxpayers will collectively have to pay a 4.9 billion pounds for the total net cost the education, welfare, and pensions granted to said migrants.
Per the Telegraph, researchers said that the already staggering amount is an “underestimate,” as it does not account for family members.
“It does not include the fiscal impact of dependents associated with the cohort. It should therefore not be interpreted as the total fiscal cost of all individuals linked to Article 8 grants in 2025,” a Home Office researcher reportedly said.
The ECHR has proven itself time and time again to be one of the biggest obstacles when it comes to carry out deportations of illegal migrants in the United Kingdom — yet, U.K. efforts to leave the Convention and fully regain sovereignty over its own borders have been met with threats from the Council of Europe, which warned that the Britain would be placed with the likes of Russia and Belarus if it decides to decouple itself from the ECHR.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage reacted to the shocking revelation and, in a brief social media video, warned that Britain is being “bankrupted by illegal migration.”
“The Home Office have just snuck out some figures they’d rather you didn’t see. What it shows you, in the last year, over 34,000 people were given asylum status in Britain on the basis of Article 8 of the ECHR, the right to a family life. Just on last year alone — and bear in mind, these are home office figures,” Farage said.
“The estimated cost of those 34,000 people over their lifetimes to the British taxpayer is 5 billion pounds. Can you believe it? Article 8, over the course of the last year alone, will cost the British taxpayer 5 billion pounds,” he added.
“I wonder if we go back five, ten, fifteen years and work out the total, we’d find something completely eye-watering. Allowing those boats to cross the Channel is bankrupting Britain,” he concluded.
As Breitbart News reported in April, the convention was invoked in recent years by Shah Rahman, an al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist who was convicted of plotting an attack on the London Stock Exchange in 2012 — allowing Rahman to remain in the U.K. and avoid deportation.
Similarly, other heinous criminals, such as foreign terrorists and pedophiles, have avoided deportation proceedings thanks to the ECHR.
As Breitbart News pointed out earlier this year, the left-wing Labour government — currently led by outgoing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer — has so far rejected calls to leave the ECHR, arguing that it would be more beneficial to remain within the Convention and reform it from the inside.
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