It's official: Britain's welfare system is no longer primarily for Britons. In July 2025, the Department for Work and Pensions revealed that 1.298 million foreign nationals are now claiming Universal Credit. That's nearly one in every five unemployed people in this country!
Let that sink in. While millions of British workers grind through the cost-of-living crisis, paying the taxes that keep this system afloat, almost 760,000 foreign nationals are on the dole, more than at any time in recorded history. And it's not just the jobless. Over half a million foreign nationals are in work but still drawing benefits, a sign of how Britain's open-door labour policy has flooded the economy with low-wage, low-skill jobs that can't sustain a living.
Three years ago, there were 927,837 migrant claimants. Now there are 370,000 more, a 40 per cent surge in just thirty-six months. Among them: 174,299 with refugee or humanitarian status, 770,213 with EU settled status, and 213,666 with indefinite leave to remain. Many have been in Britain only a short time, yet they already have full access to the welfare state built and funded by generations of British taxpayers.
This is the human cost of mass immigration, not just in culture, housing, or infrastructure, but in hard cash drained from the public purse. Robert Bates from the Centre for Migration Control didn't mince words:
"We were promised that mass migration would bring unbridled prosperity. Instead, the taxpayer is being expected to support 1.3 million foreign national claimants… The costs of this open-border experiment are becoming clearer every day."
And the political class? Labour says it will eventually double the residency requirement for settled status from five years to ten before benefits can be claimed. In other words: wait a decade for the tap to tighten slightly, while the flood continues right now.
Meanwhile, job vacancies are shrinking, competition for work is intensifying, and public finances are stretched to breaking point. Yet the benefits bill is being padded with hundreds of thousands of non-Britons, many of whom arrived under the promise of "bringing skills" but are instead relying on the taxpayer to prop up their existence.
This is not just unsustainable, it is a betrayal. The welfare state was built by Britons, for Britons. It is not the world's safety net. If a government cannot draw that line, cannot say clearly that benefits are for citizens, not for anyone who happens to arrive, then it is failing in its most basic duty: to protect its own people first.
The answer is not complicated. End welfare access for non-citizens. Prioritise British workers in the labour market. Close the loopholes that let recent arrivals tap into public funds. And stop treating the national budget like a global charity pot.
Britain cannot be a homeland and a handout at the same time. Sooner or later, we will have to choose. According to Dr Dutton's, article today, that choice is now starring us in the face.
https://www.gbnews.com/money/universal-credit-unemployed-claimants-non-uk-nationals-record-high