Net migration to Britain is reportedly on pace to breach 300,000 this year, increasing by more than a quarter over last year as a result of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit migration plan which opened the doors to millions to come to the United Kingdom.
Despite promises from the Conservative Party to reduce immigration and “take back control” of the nation’s borders following Brexit, net immigration will approach record highs this year, according to government data seen by The Telegraph newspaper projecting that 300,000 more people will have moved to the United Kingdom than left over the past year.
This will be an increase from 239,000 last year, and would rival net migration during the years leading up to the vote for Brexit — which millions of voters believed would result in a more manageable level of immigration.
The increase comes as the government issued a record 1.1 million visas to foreign nationals in the year leading up to June, compared to the pre-pandemic and pre-Brexit year of 2019 when approximately 720,000 visas were granted.
In the 2019 Conservative Party manifesto, Boris Johnson committed to cutting total immigration through the introduction of a points-based system supposedly crafted to resemble the Australian model. However, unlike the Australian system, Johnson’s placed no hard cap on the number of migrants allowed in per year, which some warned, apparently accurately, would in fact result in a drastic increase in immigration.
The chairman of Migration Watch UK, Alp Mehmet, said: “Given the removal of key controls, like a cap on work permits and the rule requiring employers to look locally first, the skyrocketing of immigration is no surprise.
“The answer has to be to restore control and invest much more in training, especially in the IT and health sectors.
“Employers could also raise wages and improve working conditions. The continued reliance on cheaper overseas labour is both self-serving and damaging to the UK labour force,” he argued.
The Tories previously promised to reduce the numbers of migrants “from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands”. Yet this pledge, made in their 2010, 2015, and 2017 election manifestos, has never been fulfilled.
In 2017, George Osborne, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and right-hand man to David Cameron, admitted that the party never had any intention of actually reducing migration, and that party leaders privately disagreed with the promise they had made to their supporters that they would do so.
Earlier this month, speaking at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman — a daughter of immigrants herself — said that she hoped to finally follow through on the pledge to get net migration down to the tens of thousands per year.
One area Braverman said she would target specifically would be the number of student visas issued, which rose by 71 per cent over 2019 to 486,868, with Indians and Chinese students making up the two biggest segments of the intake.
Braverman argued that failing universities were being falsely propped up by the foreign tuition cash of these students.
Yet Braverman’s tenure at the Home Office was short-lived, and she resigned earlier this week — a move that helped precipitate the downfall of the Liz Truss government — reportedly due to disputes over the outgoing Prime Minister’s desire to open up to even more immigration to supposedly spur economic growth.
“I have had serious concerns about this Government’s commitment to honouring manifesto commitments, such as reducing overall migration numbers and stopping illegal migration… even the brief time that I have been [at the Home Office], it has been very clear that there is much to do,” Braverman said in her resignation letter.
With the likely candidates to replace Truss being former prime minister Boris Johnson, his former right-hand man Rishi Sunak, and the Bill Gates-backed Penny Mordaunt, it is unlikely that the party will seek to fulfil the pledge anytime soon.
They may come to regret this, however, with figures such as Brexit’s Nigel Farage warning that aside from the political chaos, immigration could be the issue that sends the Tories back to the opposition.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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