The Office for National Statistics (ONS) recently released immigration and emigration figures for the year ending December 2024. The ONS estimates that 948,000 people entered the UK, with 517,000 leaving, resulting in a net-migration figure of 431,000. Since Labour entered office, they haven’t made any changes to visas, salary thresholds or other criteria that would […]
With a few strokes of the Whitehall pen and some primary legislation, the Government could drastically reduce immigration into the UK, make it much harder for migrants to settle and even have net-emigration for years to come, if they truly wanted to.
Few would argue that the UK should become some type of ethnostate. But the speed and scale at which this is occurring, and the lack of any democratic approval for such a rapid transformation, deserves further analysis and debate.
If they had implemented these restrictions in late 2022, a reduction in net migration would have been observed much sooner. It’s conceivable that Rishi Sunak could have then gone into a general election in late 2024, having presided over substantial cuts to immigration.