Britain is setting an immigration record that the Tories could do without

Legal immigration to Britain rose to almost three-quarters of a million people in 2022, official statistics showed on Thursday, a new and unwelcome record for the country’s ruling Conservative Party after it vowed to use its post-Brexit powers to curb the number of arrivals.

The latest net migration figures were a fresh setback for the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, sparking anger within the party as he also struggles to stop asylum seekers from arriving in small boats on British shores to boost a slumbering economy to revive and deal with dismal polls. Numbers.

“At every election since 1992 we have promised to cut migration,” Neil O’Brien, a Conservative MP and Brexit supporter, said on social media, adding that Thursday’s “extraordinary figures” meant the Prime Minister “now must take immediate and massive action” to do this.

The figures, released by the Office for National Statistics, the country’s official statistical agency, revise net migration figures for the year ending December 2022 – previously estimated at 606,000, which is itself a record – upwards to 745,000.

The statistics released on Thursday relate to people being allowed to enter the country, mainly from outside Europe, and usually to work or study, and the trend is politically troublesome for Brexit supporters – including Mr Sunak – because that policy ended the automatic right for citizens of EU countries to settle in Britain.

Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union increases the government’s ability to determine immigration levels, and during the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign, those advocating departure pledged to take back control of the country’s borders .

But instead of immigration falling as many expected, the number of people entering the country legally has more than doubled since Brexit, even as Britons lost their automatic right to live and work elsewhere in Europe.

No longer able to freely recruit from their nearest neighbors, British employers have looked further afield, including to Asia, Africa and the Middle East, to fill gaps in the labor market, and there has been a big increase in foreign students from countries outside Europe.

While the UK economy remains sluggish, labor shortages emerged in sectors such as healthcare and hospitality as the coronavirus pandemic subsided. Net migration rates have been further driven by the admission of people through humanitarian routes, including those fleeing Ukraine and Hong Kong.

Some of these increases are likely to be temporary, with experts expecting the numbers to decline within a few years, but the increase has fueled tensions within the Conservative Party, which has been in power for 13 years and which began that period with the promise to limit economic growth. net migration to less than 100,000 people per year.

A Conservative MP, Jonathan Gullis, told Times Radio that the increase was “completely unacceptable and will be unacceptable to the majority of the British people.” He called on the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior to ‘take drastic measures now’ and ‘stop the boats’. Although it is a highly visible symbol of Britain’s inability to control its borders, the number of people crossing on small boats is far lower than those arriving legally; last year the total was about 46,000.

Provisional figures for the year ending June 2023 showed a slight decline from the recent peak, with around 968,000 non-European arrivals, 129,000 from the 27-nation European Union and around 84,000 British returns.

Just over half a million people emigrated in the same period, leaving net migration at 672,000, although this too is a provisional figure and subject to revision.

Earlier this year, Mr Sunak said the figures were “too high, plain and simple” and that he wanted to bring them down. But as labor shortages hamper economic growth, he also faces pressure from employers, including in health care and hospitality, who have pushed for visas to recruit foreign workers.

On Thursday, Downing Street reiterated its determination to drive down the numbers, saying current levels are too high and are putting unsustainable pressure on communities.

In the year to June 2023, the top five non-European nationalities for immigration flows to Britain were Indian (253,000), Nigerian (141,000), Chinese (89,000), Pakistani (55,000) and Ukrainian (35,000), the statistics office said. This underlined the striking change in the migration profile since Brexit and the decline in the flow of people from continental Europe.

In an effort to drive down the numbers, the government said earlier this year it would prevent the majority of international students from bringing relatives to the country.

Under the new measures, only postgraduate research students will be entitled to dependent visas, ending a system that allowed others, such as those studying for a master’s degree, to bring them in.

The government says the impact of those changes is still being felt. But migration has become an increasingly sensitive issue in recent months, partly because of the government’s faltering efforts to prevent asylum seekers from reaching Britain’s southern coast in small boats.

Last week, Britain’s High Court rejected government plans to deter people from making that journey by deporting some who came that way to Rwanda. Mr Sunak has since promised a new deal with Rwanda to address the court’s concerns, and new emergency legislation to push through the plan.