Great Britain: Immigration rises to record high despite Brexit

Numbers at a record high
Despite Brexit: Britain is attracting more immigrants than ever before

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says UK immigration numbers are too high

© Ben Stansall/PA Wire / DPA

With Brexit, Great Britain also wanted to better manage immigration. But everything is going differently than planned: in 2022 more people immigrated than during the EU days.

Despite Brexit, the influx of people to Great Britain reached a record level last year. This means that the conservative government is increasingly in need of explanations. She had promised to significantly limit immigration. The numbers are “too high,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Thursday. Conservative hardliners are now likely to call for even stricter measures against migrants.

“Take back control” – the desire for more control over one’s own borders – was one of the most important slogans of the Brexit supporters. In fact, according to an estimate, a good 600,000 more people immigrated to Great Britain in 2022 than left the country, according to the statistics office ONS. That was 118,000 more than in 2021. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson had promised to reduce immigration to under 250,000 people a year.

Number of immigrants from non-EU countries is increasing

The new data confirms that the number of immigrant EU citizens has been falling steadily since Brexit, while the number of non-EU citizens has risen enormously. This is mainly because people from the EU will need a visa to live and work in the UK since 2021. In 2022, 151,000 EU citizens moved to the country, which was 13 percent of all newcomers and 45,000 fewer than in 2021. In 2018 they accounted for more than half (52 percent).

On the other hand, 925,000 non-EU citizens came. This was also due to the large number of refugees: 200,000 from Ukraine and 150,000 from Hong Kong. The proportion of vulnerable migrants in the total increased from 9 to 19 percent.

But above all it is a consequence of Brexit: Without the now missing EU citizens, the shortage of skilled workers has become even more obvious. In gastronomy, for example, there were many southern Europeans from Italy, Spain and Portugal. Eastern Europeans from Romania and Bulgaria worked in meat processing and agriculture, Poles in nursing and in hospitals.

More and more visa exceptions

They have left gaps that the British are unwilling or unable to fill. Therefore, hundreds of thousands were brought into the country from other parts of the world. Migration researcher Madeleine Sumption from the University of Oxford cites the introduction of long-term work visas for carers as an example. The largest groups come from Nigeria, India and Ghana. The industry is dependent on forces from poorer countries, criticize experts.

At the same time, the list of industries that are exempt from the strict visa rules is constantly growing. Fishermen have only recently been added – the promise that Brexit would help local fisheries has not yet been fulfilled. Since then, there have been obstacles to EU trade in fresh products.

Brexit hardliners, on the other hand, are calling for British people to fill vacancies. “2.5 million people are on long-term sick leave. Many disabled people who want to work cannot find work,” Tory MP John Hayes told BBC Radio 4. as long as they could get cheaper foreign workers. But the “high-wage, high-skill economy” promised by ex-Prime Minister Johnson – that is, an economy with well-paid and highly qualified workers – is not in sight.

Great Britain wants to reduce immigration

In order to reduce the influx, the government recently announced as a first step that it would stop issuing visas for relatives of Master’s students from 2024. In 2022, 136,000 visas for spouses or children of students were issued, more than eight times as many as in 2019. This should now be over. With a total of almost 1.5 million visas for work, study and family members, more were issued from April 2022 to the end of March 2023 than ever before.

London also wants to take tougher action against irregular entry via the English Channel. Last year about 45,000 people crossed the straits into the UK in small boats. With stricter asylum laws, they are to be denied access to protection in Great Britain in the future. The fact that the number of these migrants, who are not wanted by the British government, has recently increased is also due to Brexit: since then there have been no readmission agreements with the EU. According to the Ministry of the Interior, almost 175,000 people are waiting for a decision on their asylum application – that too is a record.

The tone has intensified. Interior Minister Suella Braverman described the arrival of irregular migrants as an “invasion”. Another time she reported on her “dream” of deporting these people as quickly as possible. Critics warn the rhetoric incites anti-immigrant hatred. “It is worth remembering that every single person living in Britain today is the descendant of an immigrant,” Peter Drechsler, of the International Chamber of Commerce in London, told the BBC.

tkr / Benedikt von Imhoff and Christoph Meyer
DPA

source site-3