By ByAlp Mehmet
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THERE has been a lot in the press recently saying that the migration crisis is history. The Telegraph: ‘Managed migration now under control, says former border tsar’; Fraser Nelson in the Times: ‘The prospect of net-zero immigration is good news for the PM’; UnHerd: ‘Falling numbers spell trouble for Reform’; the London Standard: ‘UK visa applications down by over 100,000 amid stricter immigration rules’.
Also, stories of deaths exceeding births and a shrinking population. And more talk of clampdowns and tough government action. Polling has been spun in a way that suggests there is little concern about immigration (our own Migration Watch polling tells a different story.)
There’s been so much of it that I smell a rat. Are we being softened up, as happened in 2019/20, when the public was conned into believing that immigration was done and dusted post-Brexit? The salience of the issue reduced, a weak points-based system was introduced and migrants flooded in.
Net immigration is down, for sure, but it is still massive. The most recent migration stats, for the 12 months ending June 2025, showed a fall in net immigration to 204,000 due to lower immigration and higher emigration, with 693,000 people leaving Britain, an increase of 40 per cent on 2022. Of those leaving, 230,000 were British nationals under 45 years of age. Additionally, we learned that there has been an undercount of British nationals leaving the UK since 2012. Total British net emigration in the period 2012 to 2021 was 790,000, more than double the previous estimate. Total net emigration 2012-2021 was 2.25million.
This exodus of the able young is very worrying. The problem is that the gaps they leave are filled by less able people who are less committed to Britain. They are then able to bring in others of the same ilk. Over time, they proceed to shape a Britain that bears little resemblance to the one that used to exist.
There is no big clampdown. Migration levels remain catastrophically high. The inflow is still massive (900,000 in the year ending June 2025). This is not going to reduce by much any time soon without radical policy changes, of which there are none in view. And you won’t find them in the White Paper announced by Sir Keir Starmer last May. Numbers are unlikely to fall because:
1 Universities will go on recruiting as many foreign students as they need to keep afloat. Of the nearly 2million who came in the years 2022-25 more than half will stay beyond the expiration of their visas, and many will switch to work visas or claim asylum, as increasing numbers are.
2 There is no limit to the number of skilled workers, or where a claimed shortage of workers exists, who can come. With no cap, foreign workers will simply keep coming.
3 Family visas will stay on an upward trajectory, not least as Boriswavers (the 4million or so who came after Johnson loosened controls) start to bring dependents, if they haven’t already. The impact of higher income and other thresholds will prove limited and temporary, as has happened with previous increases.
Let’s also keep an eye on Iran: how many migrants will the current turmoil there push in our direction?
As for emigration, we don’t expect many migrants here for temporary stays to return willingly to, say, South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East or Ukraine for that matter.
Deaths (mainly of native Brits) are now exceeding births (more than a third are to non-UK born mothers). This all means is that we are still heading relentlessly towards ever greater demographic change, when the native British majority becomes a minority. Indeed, it has already happened in many areas, and even more widely in classrooms around the country.
