The Anglo-American Crisis: Spotlight on Demographic Transformation in Britain

This conversation continues America First Policy Institute’s Civilizational Allies Interview Series.

As Britain faces a historic demographic transformation, the rapid growth of the Muslim population, concentrated in key urban centers and driven by decades of mass migration, has introduced deep cultural, social, and political challenges that the British government has proven increasingly unwilling to confront. Understanding this phenomenon is critical not only for the United Kingdom but also for the United States, whose ‘special relationship’ with Britain has long been rooted in shared values, institutions, and a common civilizational heritage.

As the demographic and cultural landscape of Britain shifts, so too may the character of that alliance. This conversation with Emma Schubart, Data and Insights Manager at the Adam Smith Institute, offers a sobering look at what mass migration has wrought in the U.K.—from integration failures and criminality to the erosion of national identity—and what lessons the transatlantic community must draw to preserve the foundations of the West.

Kristen Zicarelli:

Welcome, Emma! We are kicking off this conversation in light of some recent troubling news out of London, where Hadush Kebatu, an Ethiopian national convicted of sexually assaulting a woman and 14-year-old girl, was accidentally released from prison. Kebatu was not recaptured by British police for three days, despite being recorded on CCTV as he appears to have wandered through London. After his release, he even tried to turn himself into British police but was ignored. Kebatu’s case is a high-profile and dangerous gaffe by authorities, given the mass protests sparked by his July arrest, but unfortunately, his case does not appear to be particularly unusual. Last year, nearly 270 prisoners were released in error.

To begin, please tell us about recent data on the growth of the foreign-born population in the UK, particularly the growth of the Muslim population over the past decades?

Emma Schubart:

On the foreign-born population, as of the last census, 16% of the UK population was born abroad. Current projections, while not official, suggest continued growth as well. Obviously, the UK is demographically transforming as we speak. And there's no reason to assume that migration will not continue to be a major driver of population change.

We know from the last U.K. census in 2021 that the Muslim population in England and Wales is growing very rapidly. Muslims accounted for 5% of the population in 2011, and, a decade later, they grew to be just under 7% of the population. For context, this growth in the Muslim population accounted for about 32%, so a third of the overall population growth in England and Wales during that decade. The rate of growth here is definitely key – the Muslim population is far outpacing the non-Muslim population, and it's not even close. In the last two decades, the Muslim population has grown an order of magnitude faster than the non-Muslim population.

Politicians in Washington should be acutely aware of this because it means that Britain very soon will not even resemble the Britain with which the U.S. forged its special relationship.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

What is least understood about the threat of Islamic migration in the U.K.? What do you think are the biggest blind spots are or even weaknesses in the current data sets on Islamic migration and integration and must we do to fill them?

Emma Schubart:

In the UK, it is incredibly difficult to talk about immigration and integration outcomes because there is basically no official data on it. The census captures religion, but besides that, there is no regular linkage of religion to any kind of integration outcome that you can think of like schooling, earnings, welfare, health, and crime outcomes. The U.K. Home Office (the British version of the Department of Homeland Security) doesn't even publish asylum by religion, and it doesn't collect religion for temporary visas. So, all this to say, there is no official data on migration flows by religion.

If you're trying to analyze this, you must use really imperfect proxies like ethnicity or country of birth. I and many others have repeatedly FOIA'd the Home Office and law enforcement in order to sort of piece together some kind of analysis, but these requests have been denied or evaded. So, we have to rely on data from foreign countries like Sweden and Denmark and the Netherlands.

One good case study came out of Denmark – it's particularly good because it collected multi-generational data. The background on that case is that in 1992, 321 Palestinians were granted asylum in Denmark. An interesting aside is that it was later found that around the same time as they were applying for asylum, almost all of those Palestinians were traveling back and forth between Denmark and the countries from which they were claiming asylum, namely Lebanon and Syria. I do think that detail is relevant because this behavior of asylum seekers repeatedly visiting the country from which they're claiming asylum is something that we observe in the U.K. constantly.

Flash forward from 1992 to 2019, nearly 30 years later, the Danish government looked at those 321 Palestinians and their 999 children to assess integration outcomes, and they found that 64% of those Palestinians who were granted asylum went on to commit criminal offenses in Denmark. Of those convictions, almost a quarter were sentenced to prison. Criminality was not the only issue, because they were also massively dependent on welfare. Of those 321 Palestinians, 54% were living off government assistance in 2019, mostly by claiming "early retirement" which is just a euphemism for "unemployable."

But just to return to that 64% number of criminal offenses – that's massive. It is well over a majority. These Palestinians in Denmark were actually granted asylum on really extraordinary grounds; they initially were denied asylum because the war that they were claiming to be escaping from was over and there was no significant danger posed in those countries. But there was huge public outcry in Denmark, so the Danish parliament pushed through an unprecedented piece of legislation named the Palestinian Act which granted all 321 Palestinians asylum. So, this is a group who should have been incredibly grateful to the Danish people.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

That’s extraordinary. Do you know if there has been a public outcry in Denmark following that sort of result of the Palestinian refugees?

Emma Schubart:

Yes, like I mentioned earlier, we also have access to the outcomes of the children of this Palestinian cohort. Of the Palestinians’ 999 children, a third had criminal convictions, over one in ten had prison sentences, and over a third had received government aid. And, as a result, Danish politicians have been very public about saying this was a mistake.

In Denmark they've been leveraging this kind of data to counteract such negative outcomes. They've implemented sort of anti-ghettoization laws to prevent parallel societies. They also have new citizenship requirements, and you can see them getting serious about integration. It's definitely not perfect, but they're at least using the data, and importantly, they're allowing it to be published, which is a big deal.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

Which parts of the U.K. have seen the highest concentration of Muslim immigrant populations and what factors you think are driving that clustering?

Emma Schubart:

So, the largest Muslim populations are in places like East London. The East London borough Tower Hamlets is 40% Muslim as of the last census.

It’s not necessarily safe to go there. Parts of Tower Hamlets are a parallel universe, basically. There are also clusters are in the north, such as Blackburn which is 35% Muslim. Birmingham, which is the UK's “second city,” is 30% Muslim. Bradford is a quarter. But then outside of those major regions you have poorer cities outside of London, like Luton, which is where Tommy Robinson is from, and that's a third Muslim. So, Muslim immigrants are going to these cities and setting up enclaves.

A major factor is just chain migration, which is having extreme political consequences already in the U.K. It got to the point in March where 20 U.K. MPs and peers openly campaigned for Pakistan’s prime minister to build an airport in Mirpur, Pakistan. They’re not even pretending anymore; they’re openly campaigning for foreign interests.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

Has the current government done anything substantive to sort of at least address this in public and acknowledge it's a problem?

Emma Schubart:

No, because they're afraid of losing seats, since these populations are becoming so powerful.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

How do you see this potentially playing out in the next decade or two if it doesn't get fixed?

Emma Schubart:

If nothing gets fixed and it just continues as is, then for example the Gaza independence that we have right now will not be as fringe, instead they will be pretty normal. I think Labor will be swallowed up; no Prime Minister has ever polled as badly as Keir Starmer is right now. A lot of this is a numbers game so if nothing is done to crack down on immigration, if nothing is done to remove Indefinite Leave to Remain [form of settlement in the UK and is a prerequisite for citizenship] then the numbers game is already up it's already over in my opinion.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

Do you get a sense of how many people would have to be removed and how fast in order to swiftly reverse this?

Emma Schubart:

Right now, Muslims are about 7% of the population of the U.K. If we're just going by that, then you basically have to like gut cities like Birmingham, removing entire neighborhoods, entire boroughs. That's not feasible in my mind. There are arguments that say, unlike the U.S., the U.K. Parliament actually has a lot of power, so they can basically do things overnight if they plan ahead. And that's true, but I don't think you can just deport 7% of the population.

What we can do is take a note out of Denmark's book, which would be making citizenship meaningful again. Right now, U.K. citizenship means nothing, and there’s a sort of shame around being British. It’s really sad considering their history. Britain has done so much for the world.

Across fields, the U.K. has been at the forefront of achievement, whether we're talking about science, literature, and even in terms of military might. There is a naive idea that the U.K. along with the U.S. defeated the Nazis simply because we were morally superior, but that's not true. The U.K. was at one point a leader in defense technology and the world is obviously a better place because of that.

I believe Keir Starmer actually really perfectly embodies this metastasis of anti-Britishness. He has sold out the U.K. to impress a few foreign interests that actually would love to see the U.K. decimated, and this ideology has captured British institutions.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

Thank you for sharing that. To pivot to what you've written lately, can I ask you to talk a bit about the debate over the pension crisis and mass migration in the U.K.

Emma Schubart:

Yes, of course. The U.K. is an aging population, which is a real crisis for the pension system. Contrary to what a many incorrectly think, in the U.K. over the course of your working life you're not paying into your own pension fund, you are paying for current retirees. So, the burden on fewer and fewer working people to continue to support more and more retirees will continue to grow until that system totally collapses. It's totally unsustainable and it is going to collapse.

A nearsighted solution is that we should embrace mass migration because then that will flood the country with working age people. This is wrong for a few reasons. First, migrants quickly adopt native fertility norms. So, for example, if you have a Somali woman come to the U.K., she’s coming from a country where the fertility rate is somewhere around six children per woman, but, by the second generation, her daughter is, on average, not going to have six kids. She will converge towards the U.K. fertility norm, which is under two children per woman, so that doesn’t pan out at all.

Secondly, we know that many migrants in the UK do not contribute much in terms of taxes and pension contributions. So, for example, of the skilled worker visa holders in the U.K., as of 2023, 72% of those people were making below the national average salary, which suggests that a majority of those skilled worker visa holders are expected to be net recipients rather than net contributors. This is pretty notable because just from the name alone, “skilled worker,” you would think that those are people who are coming over who could significantly contribute and not be a drain on the system. And that does not even factor in the dependents that they bring along with them who do not contribute anything.

So there is no way mass migration is the solution to the collapsing pension system. In the very short term, it may increase the working age population, but we know that it doesn't necessarily increase the number of people actually working and contributing, which supposedly is the whole point of bringing them in.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

Fascinating, thanks for explaining. Is this something the general public is beginning to understand?

Emma Schubart:

It’s a good question. I don't think the British public understands this now, especially from the feedback I’ve gotten when I talk about it. People think they have been paying into their own retirement. But when it hits someday, even though Brits don't tend to protest the way Americans do - I think there will be massive amounts of unrest because people do not see this coming.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

What trends do you see in the public attitudes towards immigration and Islam in the U.K. and then how do you think that they're corresponding with demographic realities?

Emma Schubart:

Over the summer, a YouGov poll showed that 51% of British citizens think Islam is not compatible with British values, which is huge. The Overton window on this is definitely shifting. And we know from other YouGov and Ipsos polling that particularly since Labour took power in July 2024, poll after poll shows that immigration is the top concern for the public.

But it's also important to note that this resistance to immigration in the U.K. is actually not new. In the last 50 years, the British public has voted repeatedly to reduce mass migration. Since 1974, every single election-winning manifesto pledged to reduce migration. Labour even pledged to reduce mass migration, but they have done the opposite, hence the public’s fatigue. This coincides with the fact that the country is visibly different and people feel much more unsafe in their daily lives.

It's like in U.S. 2024 Presidential election, when the Harris campaign tried telling Americans, “You’re not as poor as you think you are.” You can't lie to people about their own lives; it is not going to work. The British public have voted for reduced migration for a long time and successive governments keep lying about having achieved it.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

My impression is that it's just getting to be so bad that people are finally pushed to a point where it is compelling for them to speak out or join a march versus staying quiet because they literally cannot ignore it anymore.

One last question, because I think this is key to cover looking ahead, do you have any data on the radicalization of migrant communities?

Emma Schubart:

There definitely is a trend observed across Europe where the second generation can be much more radical because they are brought up in these parallel societies that become hotbeds for radicalization.

In the UK, as crazy as it sounds, there is no reliable official data on this because the state institutions are completely captured. The only official data on this is from the Home Office, and it's the record of referrals made via Prevent, which is the government's counterterrorism program to stop people from becoming terrorists. There are records of the numbers of people who were referred, but it's just referral data, not convictions.

The government’s own data indicates how nearly a majority of those referrals that went on to be adopted as cases were for “extreme right-wing concerns,” but less than a quarter were for Islamist concerns. So, it does not track at all with how we know radicalization is working in the U.K.

Finally, I’ll just say that as an American, especially as one who loves the U.K., I hope that the Trump administration and following administrations pay very close attention to what's happening here. Aside from everything we just spoke about, freedom of speech is very much under threat in this country, and it seems to me that a terrorist attack is imminent.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

Agreed – it’s a point of realism we all must be ready for. You’ve also recently written about this, particularly in the case of Kebatu, at The Critic.

To close, thank you again, Emma, for such a thoughtful and data-rich discussion. Your insights are key to understanding the policy issues and changes that are reshaping the U.K., and why this matters for all of us committed to preserving Western civilization. The patterns you’ve described, from the collapse of integration, the erosion of public safety, and the political paralysis of leadership, serve as a warning and a call to action. I deeply appreciate your work and the clarity you bring to this conversation. Thank you again for joining us and for your commitment to truth in such a difficult and important field.