The lights outside a motorway hotel in Kent still flash Vacancy, though every room is taken. Inside, corridors built for weddings and weekenders now house asylum seekers. The Home Office pays about £145 per person per night (roughly $180), six times the cost of standard housing, costing taxpayers nearly £8 million ($10 million) each day. At its peak, more than 50,000 people were housed across 400 hotels nationwide. The National Audit Office calls the scheme “unsustainable”: contracts signed in 2019 for £4.5 billion (about $5.6 billion) will balloon to £15.3 billion ($19 billion). The three main contractors, Serco, Mears, and Clearsprings, booked roughly £383 million ($480 million) in profit between 2019 and 2024, while the Home Office recovered less than one per cent in penalties. Britain spent an estimated £3 billion ($3.8 billion) on asylum accommodation last year alone, triple its 2019 figure. What looks like charity has become one of the government’s costliest business models. (RELATED: The Crisis in England Is a Crisis for Civilization)
Across the Channel, the same arithmetic drives Western migration policy. The Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) carries a €9.9 billion budget — $11 billion — for 2021-27. Brussels calls it solidarity; accountants call it shared management. The Commission reimburses governments and “delivery partners” per head housed, trained, or “integrated.” There are no rewards for deterrence-only for activity. Every new arrival triggers another claim form: first by the state, then by councils, then by the constellation of NGOs orbiting the migration economy.
Ireland makes the incentives explicit. The government’s national AMIF programme totals €63.5 million ($70 million), with €53 million ($58 million) supplied by Brussels. Individual projects start at €495,000 ($550,000) and run for up to two years. A recent press release proudly announced €60 million ($66 million) in “inclusion funding.” For every new hotel lease or integration workshop, another reimbursement cheque follows. Dublin isn’t merely managing migration-it’s monetising it. (RELATED: The Outbreak of Migrant-Related Crime and Rape in the EU)
Europe’s border force, Frontex, commands more than €750 million ($825 million) a year — the EU’s largest agency budget. Much of it flows to private contractors for surveillance drones, charter flights, and data systems. A European Ombudsman inquiry revealed interpreters on Frontex missions earning under €3 an hour ($3.30) while intermediaries billed many times more. Profit, again, thrives in the gap between virtue and verification.
Faith-based organisations feed the same economy. Secours Islamique France, one of Europe’s largest aid groups, reported €27.8 million ($31 million) in public subsidies for 2023 — up from €16.8 million ($18 million) the year before. France’s development agency AFD lists a €765,000 ($840,000) project with the group in 2024. Islamic Relief also appears across Commission partner lists. None are accused of wrongdoing; they simply show how deeply public money underwrites the migration trade.
The same incentives now shape policy far beyond Europe. In Canada, federal and provincial governments have built a similar dependency. Ottawa spent about C$1.4 billion ($1 billion) in 2023 on temporary housing for asylum claimants, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, and reimburses provinces per claimant. Quebec alone requested C$470 million ($345 million) in federal compensation for asylum services. Canada’s Resettlement Assistance Program adds another C$300 million ($220 million) a year, funnelling per-person payments to NGOs that deliver housing and job support. Like Europe’s AMIF, it rewards process over resolution: the more arrivals, the larger the budget. (RELATED: Immigration, Islamism, and Antisemitism in Canada)
Western border regimes now behave like any other subsidy scheme: failure pays.
The machine is self-reinforcing. Ministries measure virtue by euros or dollars spent, not migrants integrated. NGOs depend on inflows to fund payrolls. When migration dips, budgets shrink; when it surges, the system thrives. Western border regimes now behave like any other subsidy scheme: failure pays.
Even the European Court of Auditors admits the metrics are meaningless. Many programmes, it notes, lack “sufficient performance indicators” — official code for nobody knows what this money achieves. Funds meant for security or returns are rebranded as “community cohesion” or “gender-responsive inclusion.” The vocabulary is moral; the accounting isn’t.
Governments are now financially trapped. Each centre closure cuts revenue; each new funding tranche plugs a deficit. Even Frontex’s record budget depends on perpetual crisis-peace would mean layoffs. The machinery of virtue has no off-switch.
None of this denies the humanitarian impulse. It simply reveals the cost. The West once saw borders as moral failures; now it treats them as revenue streams. The border isn’t broken; it’s booked. Each migrant is both a moral cause and a fiscal instrument; every extension of the emergency is another payment cycle.
Citizens sense the inversion. They’re not heartless; they’re tired of watching compassion become commerce. The liberal West has built a bureaucracy of benevolence that cannot afford to succeed.
The hotel sign in Kent still blinks Vacancy even though the rooms are full. Governments count the beds, Brussels releases the funds, NGOs file their reports, and the cycle renews itself. The West no longer has a migration policy; it has a migration economy. And as long as there’s profit in mercy, that sign will never go dark. The neon hotel sign still flickers Vacancy.
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