Immigration to Great Britain: These are just the numbers

In the United Kingdom, net immigration has increased significantly since 2021. It is calculated from the number of immigrants minus the number of new arrivals. According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, the UK population increased by 685,000 people last year, a figure that could rise as a temporary figure. In 2022, 764,000 people were added. These numbers represent legal immigrants. In other words, people with work or student visas or those who came through their family, as well as temporarily admitted Ukrainians. Asylum seekers and refugees are not included.

The big increase after 2021 is that freedom for EU citizens fell earlier this year, but at the same time visa facilitation for third countries came into effect. Because the UK needs workers, especially highly skilled ones. Since then, the exodus of people from the EU, which began with the adoption of the Brexit referendum in 2016, has continued to increase, while immigration from third countries has increased sharply.

The resulting population growth has created problems for the housing market, public services and the integration of newcomers in some parts of the country. To reduce immigration, the Conservative government under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (October 2022 to July 2024) tightened regulations on family, study and work visas until 2024. As a result, lower net migration is expected in the current year.

Statistics for the countries of origin of legal immigrants from non-EU countries are led by India and Nigeria, two former colonies of the United Kingdom. China is followed by other former British colonies Pakistan and Zimbabwe in third place. This creates a picture similar to that in France, where a large proportion of immigrants come from former colonies, particularly in Africa.

The average proportion of non-native residents in England is 14 per cent of the total population. By comparison: in Switzerland the figure is 31 percent. In France it is 13 percent and in Germany 17 percent.

The distribution of these people in the country varies greatly. As expected, economic centers and university towns have the highest proportion of foreign-born. For example, Slough, with the largest share at 43 percent, is second only to London as the headquarters of multinationals such as Amazon, Nintendo and Mars. Cambridge and Oxford are the main university cities of the country. Leicester has for decades been home to a large South Asian community, similar to Luton, and thus the cities attract newcomers from these regions.

Although so far we have talked about migrants arriving in the UK with valid visas, it is worth looking at the number of asylum seekers and refugees. Basically, these numbers are significantly lower than the numbers for regular migration. In 2022, the proportion of asylum seekers in the UK’s non-born population was four per cent. Their share in the total population is 0.6 percent. In 2023, people from Afghanistan were the largest group of asylum seekers in the UK, with 9,307, followed by 7,397 from Iran. This was followed by people from South Asia.

Asylum seeker accommodation is very unevenly distributed across the UK. Southern England has very few asylum seekers – except in London – compared to the total population, with significantly higher numbers in poorer areas in the north of England. Because of the housing shortage in London and South East England, most asylum seekers are sent to places where accommodation and housing are cheap and often of poor quality. On the one hand, London wants to save money, and on the other, it deters asylum seekers.

It is also accepted that by housing asylum seekers in economically disadvantaged areas, anti-immigrant sentiment will spread among the local population. This trend has been further reinforced by the authoritarian policies of Conservative governments since 2010, which have led to massive cuts to social services and health care, which hit poorer areas in the north harder than the relatively richer south of England.