LONDON – Legal immigration has reached record levels in Great Britain: according to official data released today by the National Statistics Office (ONS), the population increased by 606,000 people last year, 164,000 more than in 2021.
“These numbers are too high,” said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has pledged to introduce new measures to curb immigration. Sunak stressed that arrivals have increased due to extraordinary circumstances such as the war in Ukraine and the granting of special visas to Hong Kong citizens fleeing the Chinese authorities’ crackdown on the territory.
According to the Ons, 114,000 war refugees have arrived from Ukraine and 52,000 people from Hong Kong. Arrivals from the European Union collapsed after Brexit and are now 151,000. The figure, although expected, is causing controversy. The Sunak government has focused on tackling illegal immigration, but for every one of the refugees who crossed the Channel last year, 25 people moved to Britain legitimately.
“Take back control of the borders” was one of the key promises of Brexit, yet in 2015, the year before the referendum on leaving the European Union, the number of immigrants was 329,000.
In recent years, several Conservative prime ministers have promised to reduce the number of immigrants without success. In 2010 it was David Cameron who pledged to limit arrivals to “a few tens of thousands” a year, a promise later reiterated by Theresa May. His successor, Boris Johnson, had declared in 2019 that “the number of immigrants will drop from the current level”, which was then 245,000 a year.