When people discuss the level of immigration into Britain, they almost invariably refer to the Office for National Statistics’ estimates of long-term international migration — that is, the number of people entering the country in a given year for a period of at least 12 months.
These figures clearly show the infamous Boriswave, where immigration rose massively from an already high level of 800,000 in mid 2021 to over 1.4 million by mid 2023. Immigration then assumed a downward trajectory, justifying the term ‘wave’. (It remains in the hundreds of thousands.)
There are two main reasons why discussion focusses so heavily on the long-term international migration figures. The first is obvious: these are the best measures of what people are actually discussing, namely immigration. A second reason is that they are published regularly (twice per year).
However, there are several problems with relying on the long-term international migration figures.
They are flows, rather than stocks, which many people find unintuitive. What you perceive as a member of the population is the stock of immigrants. You don’t really perceive the flow, unless you happen to work for Border Force.
What’s more, people concerned about immigration are not equally concerned about all types of immigration. Unsurprisingly, immigrants from countries like Canada, Australia and the US are far more popular than those from countries like Turkey, Nigeria and Pakistan. Hence immigration of 100,000 Australians would be far less concerning to most people than, say, immigration of 100,000
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As FerdIII points out, the data is hopelessly unreliable.
It seems to me almost all official data is from estimates rather than produced as a by-product of administrative systems. If visas were accurately recorded and Border Force (sic) was to carry out its job properly we could know every week how many had arrived or left and on what basis they had entered the country.
In business I have never sampled files in order to complete Financial Statements, management information or government returns but instead turned to the data: accounting, contract or policy records, staff payrolls. I did not go round counting warm chair seats at 5:30 to ascertain how many employees we had not did I count the footfall at the main entrance because the payroll data was up to date and accurate.
And now again to the Border Force but why must we call such a weak organisation by such a name even as the police have been downgraded to a service. Their systems should record each arrival through passport control and illegal entries identified should be added. Each departure should be recorded using the passport number and if they are non-Brits their reason for arrival should be… Read more »
The Government has no clue. No systems track entry or exit.
3 million visas issued per annum, 250K non-Visa holders entitled to stay 6 months.
Visa fraud and overstaying is unknown.
They don’t know how many invaders/immgrants enter this country + the obvious channel boats invasion.
Any reasonable assessment would say that 400 K leave this country, over a million enter – few of them white, 250K probably overstay their visa.
We could be viewing a 800K negative swing in this country’s demographic every year x 15 years – the Boriswave is a spike but hardly unique.
Real pop in the UK is 81 million. Not 67 million. That means the White pop is no more than 2/3.
You could probably get all the CCTV cameras to scan for whites v non whites and with a big enough sample size across the country the proportions would be fairly accurate