Immigration Hits Record 1.2 Million Arrivals in 2022 Driving Population Increase of 745,000
Rishi Sunak is under huge pressure to act on legal migration into the U.K. today after figures showed that a record 1.2 million people arrived in 2022, driving a net increase of almost three-quarters of a million people in a single year. The Mail has more.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) drastically revised its figure for the year to December up from 606,000 to 745,000, an increase of 139,000, almost the same as the population of Cambridge.
The figures for the year to June 2023 hit 672,000, up from 607,000 in the previous 12 months but slightly down on the revised December record, driven by a fall in humanitarian arrivals, including those from Ukraine and Hong Kong.
The ONS said immigration is now being driven by non-EU “migrants coming for work”.
Though the level has fallen thanks to the revision, it is likely to lead to renewed anger on the Tory Right and calls for a clampdown before the country heads to the polls – which could be as early as May.
The New Conservatives group on the Tory Right has called for ministers to close temporary visa schemes for care workers and cap the number of refugees resettling in the U.K. at 20,000 as part of an effort to slash net migration to 226,000 by the time of the election expected next year.
The 2019 Conservative manifesto promised the “overall numbers will come down” on migration.
Former Cabinet Minister Sir Simon Clarke said: “This level of legal immigration is unsustainable both economically and socially. There is no public mandate for it, it is beyond our public services’ capacity to support and it undercuts U.K. productivity and wages by substituting cheaper foreign labour.
“We need an urgent change of approach. The earnings threshold for visa applications needs to be raised significantly. The shortage occupations list needs to be radically descoped. As set out by the Chancellor, we need to ensure more Britons are supported into work.”
Net migration takes into account the number of people arriving in the U.K. on a long term basis minus those who leave. Most of the recent surge has been driven by arrivals from countries such as Ukraine and Hong Kong.
The ONS’s Jay Lindop said: “Net migration to the U.K. has been running at record levels, driven by a rise in people coming for work, increasing numbers of students and a series of world events.
“‘Before the pandemic, migration was relatively stable but patterns and behaviours have been shifting considerably since then.”
“Relatively stable” at 200,000-300,000 – still a long way from the oft-repeated but never-fulfilled Conservative pledge (first made by David Cameron when he came to power in 2010) to get net numbers down to under 100,000.
Given the number of times the Tories have made this or a similar pledge to a public desperate to cut the number of people arriving each year to manageable levels, and the shameful fact that when the Tories reformed the system they liberalised it to make it easier to come rather than harder, with the predictable (and predicted) results, they deserve to lose an election on this issue alone. Sunak wrongly decided that illegal immigration in the form of the small boats crisis was what the public really cared about, and has focused on that to the neglect of legal migration – though following last week’s Supreme Court ruling he has failed even to make headway on that tip of the iceberg.
In the end, the Conservatives came to power in 2010 with a mandate to bring immigration down to the tens of thousands and reduce taxes and shrink the state. Thirteen years later they have presided over record immigration and a tax burden at historic highs shovelling billions into an even more bloated state. The scale of the failure – and betrayal – is difficult to express. But many people will do so with their vote – whether for an insurgent party like Reform, for Labour out of desperation (though it will surely be worse) or by not voting at all.
Stop Press: Leading figures on the right of the Conservative Party have warned Rishi Sunak that he faces a ‘do or die’ moment. The Mail has more.
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How can the good folk at the DS continue to write this sort of nonsense without feeling a bit ridiculous?
If anything demonstrates that there is no democracy in Britain – and there are plenty others too – it’s this issue of immigration.
Why anyone would waste their time voting is really beyond me.
The best that could happen is that people en masse refuse to turn up to vote, to send the message that we all know it’s a game, not a very fun one, and we refuse to play any more.
Hear, hear.
Voting or not voting is the only real choice a so-called voter has as the broad outlines of public policy – more immigration, more wokery and more climate change actionism – are shared by all parties because they all compete for money from the same people.
I agree but not voting won’t make any difference either. See by-elections where hardly anyone shows up, the mp still gleefully gets the seat. I suppose not voting at least one hasn’t wasted ones own time, so there is that.
True, and those by elections had turnouts more or less in line with what happens with most local government elections. There still seem to be Councils of one sort or another, with the numerical majority not voting – but they still have to pay rates etc.
It’s still a rather symbolic action, but at least an impactful one: The system claims to be democractic because people keep showing up for these periodic box-ticking exercises. If, say, 80% of the people wouldn’t, the powers who’d like to remain would at least need to come up with a new justification. Even the obvious huge potential of votes for someone not worshipping the abovementioned unholy trinity might have a positive effect.
At least we’re not one of these:https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-with-mandatory-voting Sometimes with a form of proportional representation voting, e.g. Australia.
It seems to me protesting by not voting is about as effective as protesting by keeping silent. “Voter apathy is a dreadful sign of the times, but thank goodness 5% were committed enough to turn out and vote us in again.”
With 95% of the electorate not voting, whoever runs the government can certainly not claim to have a mandate by people. Every vote is a vote for the system. That’s obviously a pretty miserable situation. But – well – it is a pretty miserable situation.
Yes, all establishment parties compete for money from the same people /bodies but not the challenger parties.
True but I can assure you if elected neither Starmer or Sunak will care how many showed up, even if 1 person voted they’d be dEmOcRaTiCaLlY elected. The pretence of democracy, as that was all it ever was, is over.
This.
Your criticism of DS seems to be misplaced as not voiting was one of the optioins they referred to. Better, surely, to engage with the article and then vote Reform?
Not really. I think that the evidence is more than clear. The ballot box achieves nothing. And my point is that the system is very much built that way.
Look at how many millions voted for UKIP in that famous election. And how many MPs did they get for it? 1.
The system is completely rigged. Why would anyone take part in a rigged system?
Worse still, if by some pure miracle someone gets in who favours the voter’s wishes over the plans of the establishment, the establishment and the various powers that drive it make sure the elected person gets nowhere. Or just conspires to get rid of them (e.g. Partygate, or the Lizz Truss coup).
I realise that it’s a bitter pill to swallow to accept that our entire system is an elaborate lie and we don’t in fact live in anything resembling a democracy, but that’s just how it is.
Yes, there is no democracy in this country anymore -we have a uni party state, the establishment is rotten to its very core. Despite your argument which has much merit I am prepared to vote and be an activist with a challenger party that would work to rid us of the current crop of devious low life. What have I got to lose?
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/tax-cuts-what-not-to-like/
A taking apart of yesterday’s budget.
Unfortunately, the author misses the point behind our continued, grotesque public spending. Our national debt is being deliberately racked up so that when the bankers call time on the loans we will allegedly have no choice but to comply with their directions.
The United Kingdom has been locked into an HP deal which it can no longer service and to make matters worse we are borrowing more money just to service the repayments on the original deal. This is not fiscal madness this is national destruction.
To all intents and purposes the country is being sold lock, stock and barrel.
Brexit?
Oh no, not at all. Not until you repay your borrowings.
We can’t.
Well STFU.
Nut zero?
Just do as Klaus tells you.
Now F. O.
Bankers don’t have any power over the state. It’s the other way around. They are the prostitutes of the state.
“Bankers don’t have any power over the state.” No of course not. The central bankers are the folks that are behind all this nonsense – eco nuttery. The Bank for International Settlements created the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure, which represents the world’s mega-banks and $118 trillion of assets globally (that is 118 thousand billion dollars – a huge chunk of the assets of the entire world). Just one example. “Whistleblower George Hunt served as an official host at a key environmental meeting in Denver, Colorado in 1987, and states that David Rockefeller; Baron Edmund De Rothschild; US Secretary of State Baker; Maurice Strong, a UN official and an employee of the Rockefeller and Rothschild trusts; EPA administrator William Ruccleshaus; UN Secretary General in Geneva MacNeill, along with World Bank and IMF officials were at this meeting. Hunt was surprised to see all these rich elite bankers at the meeting and questioned what they were doing there at an environmental congress. In a video recording[4], Hunt later provided important evidence from the documents of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 3-14 June 1992. This conference was the well-known UN ’92 Earth Summit and was… Read more »
Before the pandemic is a euphemism. It should be before Brexit. UK politicians have now taken back control of the immigration system. And they’re exercising this control in the exact same way they promised they would to the people which crucially helped them to win this vote. That they also promised something else to a different group of people who also voted in their favor was always just a smokescreen. As somebody else put it: The demographic future is islamic. And hence, this must also become the ‘democratic’ future.
Non-EU immigration was always under the control of the UK government. There was no need to leave the EU in order to increase it.
Maybe. But stuff like no more queue jumping by EU citizens was explicitly promised as Brexit dividend to certain people (by Theresa May in this case, but she wasn’t the only one making noises about this).
So are we building cites the size of Cambridge every year to accommodate them? ,no?, so where will they go?
I agree with Stewart on this one, don’t vote!!
For anyone!
Where’s Geert when you need him?
Wilders?
“The people who know best were livid.”
F- cking Hell !!…….
Getting immigration to tens of thousands was on their manifesto….How’s that going you bunch of treasonous shills!
Ahhh, yes, but did the manifesto say over what time period?
Tens of thousands a week. And they’re on target.
WEF Employee of the Month awards all round.
“Ahhh, yes, but did the manifesto say over what time period?”
Over tens of thousands of weeks!
I shows that they don’t believe the guff they spout about a climate emergency.
A comparison between the chaos governments of the UK and Germany.
Conclusion:
Britain still leading the chaos and incompetence government ranking tables, ahead of Germany.
But mainly thanks to Scholz’ capacity to hypnotize himself, which Sunak seems to lack.
https://www.tichyseinblick.de/kolumnen/aus-aller-welt/chaos-regierung-sunak-scholz/
1.2 million that’s 23,014 a week- a small town every week no wonder the countryside is being filled by housing.