An amnesty for illegal immigrants would overwhelm the United Kingdom's social housing stock, an anti immigration think tank has claimed.
Migration Watch UK claims that it would take 20 to 30 years to create the additional social housing needed following an amnesty, given the current rate development of new properties.
However, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) argues that allowing illegal immigrants to work legally in the UK would generate over Ł1 billion extra revenue for the Treasury, which in turn could then be used to build more social housing.
Migration Watch cites the Home Office estimates of illegal immigration, which place the number of illegal workers in the United Kingdom between 310,000 and 570,000.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migration Watch, claims this would make the amnesty impractical. Mr. Green said: The fair allocation of social housing is extremely difficult to achieve at the best of times.
When you add in the unprecedented rise in asylum seekers who have been granted permission to stay here in the last few years and then consider an amnesty against a background of low levels of construction, there is a real risk of harming social cohesion.
However, Jim Bennett, IPPR's head of social policy, told the BBC: There are already around 1.5 million people on council housing waiting lists in England alone, so any former illegal workers would be joining the back of a very long queue.
But as it stands at present people holding work permits do not have access to housing from local authorities and an amnesty would not change that.
Immigration minister Liam Byrne has refused to rule out suggestions of an amnesty, but claims that the government has no plans for one at the current time.
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