Charity Begins at Home

    Immigration is one of those topics that attracts a lot of noise and not much thinking. Every political party has a position on it—usually loud, often simplistic, and almost always detached from reality. If a party doesn’t have an immigration policy, you start to wonder whether they exist at all.

    The usual arguments come in two flavours. One side says we need more people - more workers, more growth, more “vibrancy” (whatever that means). The other warns that we’re being overrun, that we should slam the door shut before the place changes beyond recognition. Both sides talk with great confidence. Neither spends nearly enough time asking the obvious question: can we actually handle the number of people we’re arguing about?

Before we debate how many people should come in, we should look around and take stock of what’s already here.

    Start with housing. Not the abstract idea of housing - actual, physical homes that people can afford to live in. Are there enough of them? In many places, the answer is clearly no. Prices are high, rents are worse, and “affordable housing” has become one of those phrases people repeat as if saying it often enough will magically produce more of it. It won’t. If people already living here are struggling to find a place to live, bringing in large numbers of new arrivals without fixing supply isn’t compassionate or economically clever. It’s just adding pressure to a system that’s already creaking.

    Then look at healthcare. Not press releases - hospital beds, waiting times, staff availability. Can people get treated when they need it? Or are they sitting in emergency departments for hours, sometimes days, waiting for care? If the system is already stretched, increasing demand without increasing capacity is not a strategy. It’s wishful thinking dressed up as policy.

    Education is another one. Classrooms aren’t infinitely elastic. There is a point where adding more students stops being “diversity” and starts being overcrowding. Teachers can only do so much when they’re responsible for too many kids at once. If we care about outcomes - and we should - then class size and resources matter.

Only after we’ve answered these basic questions does it make sense to talk about immigration levels.

    Do we need more workers? Possibly. But “possibly” isn’t a plan. If unemployment is already low and there are genuine labour shortages, then yes, bringing in skilled migrants can make sense. If not, importing labour while locals struggle to find work is hard to justify, no matter how nicely it’s packaged.

    Do we have a moral responsibility to help people from less developed countries? Of course we do. But responsibility doesn’t mean ignoring consequences. If helping others comes at the cost of undermining the stability and prosperity of the country doing the helping, then in the long run, you help no one. A weakened system is less capable of generosity, not more.

    This is where the old idea that “charity begins at home” still holds up surprisingly well. It’s not a slogan for shutting the world out. It’s a reminder that a country needs to function properly if it’s going to be of any use to anyone - citizens or newcomers.

    Immigration isn’t inherently good or bad. It’s a tool. Like any tool, it works well when used with some thought and restraint, and badly when used as a substitute for thinking. Right now, too much of the conversation skips the hard questions and jumps straight to conclusions.

We can do better than that. Start with reality, not ideology. The numbers should follow from the facts - not the other way around.