Living in Britain is not a right that everyone in the world is entitled to, no matter how far they have travelled or what kind of hardships they had left behind. Being British involves having the heritage, the culture, and the values of the nation and its people—a passport or residence permit is insufficient.

Furthermore, countries facing hardships will never improve if their citizens have the right to simply desert their homelands rather than stay and improve them. The claim that skilled migrant workers will benefit Britain is dependant on stripping the migrants’ native homelands of their skills and labour.

Britain cannot accept the all 80–90% of the world’s population that live in worse-off conditions simply because they are worse off. If anything, Britain can help them externally in their own homelands rather than internally by importing excessive numbers of foreigners.

Additionally, the economic benefit gained from taking in immigrants is not a proportionate return. It is naïve to assume that people who have come from places with objectively inferior education and infrastructure can make superior contributions. The return on migration is a diminishing one, as the per capita contribution of the average migrant is very low. Therefore whilst the figure goes up nominally, the actual value goes down, and in fact puts a greater burden on the economy the more third-world migrants there are.

Even if migrant labour had a net positive effect on the economy, it does not negate the fact that Britain (or any nation) is not simply an economy, but a nation of people. Any economic model, capitalism or socialism, functions best when there is social cohesion, and the most successful form of social cohesion is with national unity that comes from being ethnically and culturally homogenous. It is founded in natural human instinct that extends as far back as hunter-gatherer tribalism. Tribes, communities and civilisations function because their respective members are incentivised, and thus are willing to contribute to one another. Without that logic, there is no difference in duty between your own family, and a stranger from half-way across the globe.