Net migration to Britain fell to 171,000 last year, new official figures show, as 813,000 migrants arrived and 642,000 people left, including 246,000 British nationals. But asylum seeker numbers rose to 88,000, meaning around half of net migration is now asylum seekers. The Mail has more.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the figure – those coming to live here long-term minus those emigrating – nearly halved from the previous year’s 331,000.
Net migration peaked at 944,000 in 2023.
Last year 813,000 migrants came to live here long-term, down from a peak of nearly 1.5 million in 2023, with 77% coming from outside the European Union.
Meanwhile, 642,000 people – of all nationalities – emigrated from Britain, including 246,000 British nationals.
But the ONS said fewer Brits are returning to the UK than are leaving, with a net loss of 136,000 people last year.
It included 75,000 young people aged 16 to 34.
The ONS said the gap in that age group “has grown every year since 2022”, adding: “This may suggest young Brits who move abroad for work are staying for longer periods, or that students who study overseas are then staying for work.”
Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith said it was an “exodus” of young people fleeing Labour’s high-tax Britain.
“Huge numbers of Brits are leaving and not coming back,” the MP said.
“We are in an exodus of our brightest and best young people and Labour are trading them for lower-wage migrants.
“These are the young people, our future, fleeing high taxes and low growth.
“It’s 75,000 more than came back. That’s one 747 a day leaving fully loaded with our young people.”
The ONS also said the number of people who came to Britain to claim asylum during the year was 88,000, up slightly on the previous year.
The figures therefore suggest about half of net migration – 49% – was made up of asylum seekers.
However, the ONS suggested a better measure was taking asylum as a proportion of total immigration from outside the EU, which put it at 14%.
Experts at Oxford University’s Migration Observatory said net migration’s growing proportion of asylum seekers indicated the type of immigration to Britain was becoming “less favourable”.
Researcher Dr Ben Brindle said: “Migration is down now, but the economic impacts depend more on who is – or is no longer – migrating than how many.
“Today’s data illustrate a challenge the government faces, namely that the categories of migration it would most like to reduce are the ones least amenable to policy.
“As a result, migration of groups that make positive or broadly neutral economic impacts – such as skilled workers and partners of students – is down, while asylum related migration remains high.
“Since refugees have lower employment rates and often need a lot of support from the state, this means that the composition of recent migration has probably become less favourable from an economic perspective.”
New data from the ONS also showed the foreign-born population of Britain jumped by 1.6 million between 2022 and 2024, to 13.1 million.
The foreign-born now make up 19% of the population – or almost one in five – up from 16% or one in six, at the 2021 Census.
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
So much like America, pre-Trump. Let them all in. Disperse and hide them.
millions must go
The reduction is meaningless if sectarianism has already arrived.
Are young people emigrating from the UK just because it’s high tax and low growth or are some switched on enough to realise what’s happening re the slow the slow take over of Islamic, increasing wokeness etc and are getting out before things get even worse? I’m not young or one of the brightest and best but if I it was relatively easy for me to emigrate I’d be very tempted to do so.
A similar thing is happening in the US, people who are able to do so are moving from blue states such as California that have become woke shit holes to red states such as Texas. Who can blame them given the rampant crime, homeless encampments, drug use etc in the big cities, San Francisco is probably the worst but LA isn’t far behind.
I have no idea whether or not lots of young people are leaving for the reasons you describe. But I can’t think of many rich world countries that are not suffering from many of the same ills we have here. I’d be interested to try life in some parts of South America – maybe Uruguay, Argentina or Chile. Of course there are lots of 2nd and 3rd world countries where the technocratic control is nothing like what we have here, but I guess I am too used to comfort. Despite it all, England still has a lot going for it, especially if you’re English.
Before Javier Melie Argentina had numerous economically illiterate presidents and was plagued with high unemployment and very high inflation. At one point a survey showed that well over a third of young people were thinking of emigrating, the figure might of been as high as 50%. However good Melie is I doubt he’s had enough time to completely fix the mess he inherited.
Chile fairly recently elected a populist president who said he’d dig a massive trench along the northern border to stop illegal immigration, he obviously “gets it” so Chile would be a good bet.
A few years ago I read that a lot of Germans with strongly held right wing opinions were moving to Hungary. If the new president is that different to Orban Hungary would be a good bet.
Yes. Small sample size but all the Hungarians I have met have been sound and made Hungary sound appealing.
For once the experts from a university are spot on. Obviously their analysis is going to go down like a cup of cold sick with the woke mob. How long before they’re cancelled or admit, in order to save their academic career, that their analysis is flawed?
I remember one of the Bexit arguments was that we wouldn’t have to take all the low wage eastern Europeans and instead could attract and select lots of high value, highly skilled people.
Funny how that worked out.
I guess people hadn’t stopped to think who actually runs Britain. Not the elected officials but rather the permanent bureaucracy.
So is it so surprising that the highly crednetialled permanent bureaucracy would opt to bring in the lowest wage people they could find? People who pose no threat whatsoever to their own jobs nor compete for anything with them.
That said, I still think most people still don’t get who actually runs Britain. The democracy story is too deeply etched in people’s brains.
One of the many reasons I voted leave was immigration. I never expected it to fall because of Brexit – my only hope, which may be coming true to an extent, was that after Brexit when immigration didn’t fall, more people would realise that we had been lied to.
Correct headline: productive people flee the UK to be replaced by non-productive people.
So these figures are not great;
”The number of people in hotels is down – but the number in the care of the Home Office hasn’t fallen.
In June 2024 there were 100,995 asylum seekers in Home Office supported accommodation, as of March 2026 there are now 97,519. But Afghan resettlement is counted separately, even though it raises many of the same issues for local communities. In June 2024 there were 28,985 Afghans in Home Office accommodation, as of March 2026 there are now 38,617 (Reg_01).
So we had 129,980 Asylum seekers and Afghans in Summer 2024 and now have more – 136,136
While the use of hotels is down, people are just moving into dispersal accommodation and the numbers on the Afghan resettlement scheme continues to grow.
“Dispersal accommodation” is where the government pays various firms like Serco large sums of money, and they rent housing in suburban areas in which they house people.
So instead of having a few large visible sites, you end up with a much larger number of small sites. As part of this there is a flow from urban areas to the rest of the country. Here is the change in the total number… Read more »
”Fewer than one in six rejected asylum seekers were removed from the UK last year, leaving thousands in taxpayer-funded accommodation, according to a new analysis of official figures.
The research by the Conservative Party has revealed how a host of the 19 countries Britain has formal returns deals with are taking back as few as 4 per cent of failed asylum seekers.
The low rate of removals is leaving increasing numbers living in taxpayer-funded accommodation.
At the end of last year, 4,577 asylum seekers who had had all their claims and appeals rejected were still living in taxpayer-funded accommodation — including 340 in hotels — and were among the 107,003 total number of asylum seekers being housed by the state.
Failed asylum seekers can still claim accommodation in the UK if they are deemed “destitute”.
The largest cohort of failed asylum seekers in the UK are Pakistanis. Last year 10,853 people from Pakistan were refused asylum in the UK, but only 445 Pakistanis were returned to Islamabad in the same period. Britain and Pakistan agreed an asylum returns deal in 2022.”
https://archive.ph/mH4XN
150 just moved to Cosford airbase. And the rest all over the country. Millions must go.
417,000 more non British people
and 250,000 fewer British. Again.
Replacement in progress?