Illegal immigration is fuelling the ballooning black market economy in Britain, which now stands at over a quarter of a trillion pounds sterling per year, a report has found.
According to an upcoming report from the independent National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) organisation, the number of people involved in the black market economy has grown by 80 per cent since 2016. The report found that as many as one in ten adults in Britain are connected to the underground economy.
The Sun on Sunday newspaper reported that NatCen claimed that this has resulted in the black market expanding to a staggering £260 billion industry, enabling delinquent businesses to avoid around £2.2 billion in tax every year. The social research organisation specifically pointed to the illegal migrant crisis in recent years as a top contributor to the burgeoning black market.
Previously, French prosecutor Pascal Marconville claimed that people smuggling networks operating on both sides of the English Channel often trade passage to impoverished illegals in exchange for them signing up to work in the underground economy in Britain, such as in cannabis farms, laundrettes, or restaurants to pay the debt incurred for gaining access to their small boat network.
Illegal migration has also been tied to the fast fashion industry, with thousands of modern slaves working in sweatshops in multicultural cities like Leicester, according to a 2020 report from the Centre for Social Justice.
Though British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer campaigned in last year’s general election on a pledge to “smash” the people smuggling gangs behind the illegal boat migrant crisis, the number of illegals successfully reaching UK shores from the beaches of France have continued to grow, hitting a record high for this time of year of over 16,000 since Jannuary.
The report comes as the governing left-wing Labour Party has come under criticism after Treasury minister Darren Jones claimed that the majority of illegal migrants crossing the Channel are “children, babies and women”. This was contradicted by the government’s own figures, which found that last year over seven in ten illegal boat migrants were males, or 26,999 out of all 36,816 illicit arrivals.
Commenting on the report, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage told The Sun on Sunday: “The British people are being taken for fools again. We already know that our borders are in chaos. But, thanks to successive Labour and Tory governments, those arriving then go on to work illegally on the £260 billion black market economy.”
“And all the while we pay for their accommodation. Nearly 40,000 boat migrants have arrived since Labour came to power — and numbers are up 40 per cent on this time last year. How many of these already work on the black market without paying tax? Labour has long championed the mantra of British jobs for British workers. But brickies and builders are being undercut by illegal labour.
Britain is in social and economic decline. The social contract is stretched to its limits. People that pay their taxes and play by the rules increasingly feel shafted.Yes, these migrants may be victims of exploitation — but they are also part of the criminal economy. Unscrupulous bosses are laughing all the way to the bank while British workers get priced out again.”
Mr Farage said that the only means of solving the crisis would be to immediately deport anyone who enters the country illegally and to leave the deportation-blocking European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its associated court in Strasbourg, which Britain is still a member of despite Brexit as it is technically a separate institution from the EU.
The Reform boss remarked: “Keir Starmer’s soft touch is laughable. He promised to smash the gangs — but all he has smashed are illegal immigration records.”
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