determining factors for the increase

LONDON. The number of people moving to Britain in 2022 reached a record 600,000, government figures showed on Thursday.

Net migration – the difference between the number of people arriving and leaving – was 606,000 people that year, according to the Office for National Statistics. A total of 1.2 million people settled in Britain in 2022, while 557,000 left.

The net number was an increase from nearly 500,000 in 2021.

The office attributed the record data to “an unprecedented series of global events during 2022 and the lifting of restrictions following the coronavirus pandemic.”

The total included both those arriving to work in Britain as well as tens of thousands of international students and almost 200,000 people arriving as part of special programs for individuals fleeing the war in Ukraine and Chinese repression in Hong Kong.

The record data would revive the debate on Britain’s departure from the European Union, due in part to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people from other European countries in the years before the Brexit referendum in 2016.

Brexit supporters said leaving the EU – which gives citizens of its member states the right to live and work in the other member states – would allow Britain to regain control of its borders. Many of those who voted for Brexit believed that immigration would be reduced, but the opposite has happened.

Although arrivals from EU countries fell to 151,000 in 2022, the number of people moving from outside the bloc was 925,000.