The government has a big problem with immigration, particularly non-EU immigration. The ONS put out an update on what it calls international migration last week which revised the record 606,000 figure for 2022 up to an incredible 745,000. All of these figures are net (after taking into account emigration) and are only estimates since nobody actually records who stays and who leaves after coming into this country. We do know the government issued about 1.2 million work or student visas, so the vast majority were perfectly legal.
Also, in 2022 about 51,000 EU citizens returned home. Without that, we would have been nudging 800,000.
The problem is a microcosm of Brexit but actually precedes it. Tories have been pledging to cut immigration since 2010 although they have consistently failed to make any progress. The 2019 Conservative manifesto didn't give any figures but promised that “overall numbers will come down,” something that could only be done by a “strong Conservative Government that can get Brexit done.” In fact, the numbers have tripled.
So, after suggesting the only way to control immigration was to leave the EU, it's clear the government has completely lost control. We know there was tension in the cabinet over the amount of legal migration but all the focus has been on the tiny fraction of illegal migrants, particularly the 40-50,000 who cross the Channel in small boats.
We have always been able to control non-EU migration and to a degree we did, but now the numbers have shot up as noted by the FT's Jim Pickard:
it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit pic.twitter.com/fqd3rML7vS
— Jim Pickard 🐋 (@PickardJE) November 23, 2023
Stunning isn't it?
Therefore you have to unfortunately agree with Matt Goodwin, the hard-right wing academic, who has an article in The Mail: Obsessing over illegal migrants in small boats is a bit like worrying about an unlocked first-floor window when the front door is wide open
"The number of small-boat illegal immigrants — 104,000 people in the five years since 2018 — is dwarfed by the number of legal immigrants who are low-wage, low-skill and may offer little to the British economy," he writes.
The first part is true, but the second is certainly not. They are often highly paid and highly skilled and needed in the NHS and elsewhere. Goodwin says, "...becalmed in the economic doldrums and with almost a million job vacancies, Britain is suffering an acute labour shortage."
As far as I know, we always had a lot of unfilled jobs. The ONS publish figures from the Labour Force Survey which shows since 2007 the number of vacancies has varied between 400,000 and 800,000 and is now at 957,000. The number reached a record high of 1.3 million in Q2 2022 but has fallen every month since.
The problem is the record 2.6 million people claiming long-term sickness benefits. Some are suffering long Covid no doubt but the issue isn't helped by stigmatising immigrant workers. Nor is Jeremy Hunt's proposal to cut the benefits altogether from people who refuse to take up a job offer. No employer wants to recruit workers who don't want to be there. There must be a better way.
We shouldn't forget also that by ending Freedom of Movement (FoM) for workers from Europe, who were always likely to return home if they didn't have a job, we are now having to recruit workers from Asia who are much less likely to return if or when their contract ends. Also, I am sure that ending FoM has reduced the number of Britons going to live and work in Europe, which has made the problem even worse.
Recruiting from EU and non-EU countries is now more bureaucratic, costly, and takes longer as well
Hence, just like Brexit itself, we have had leaders identifying non-problems, promising to resolve them with a few simple slogans (Stop the Boats), offering terrible and often unworkable solutions, and then failing badly.
The government is pushing for economic growth and the OBR uses government estimates of the working population to produce their forecasts. If Sunak were to really clamp down on immigration, what little growth the OBR expects - 1.6% in the medium term - will disappear and we will be in recession.
In March, the OBR used a figure of 245,000 as what it called the "steady-state migration levels" but I note in the November Economic and Fiscal Outlook they assume approximately the same level in future, and without that would certainly be forecasting a recession.
The OBR:
"Weak economic growth despite higher levels of net migration, that reached 606,000 in 2022, means that real GDP per person is expected to continue to fall in the second half of 2023. It then recovers as GDP growth picks up while net migration falls back towards its assumed long-run level of 245,000 by 2026-27. The decline in migration is partly due to the tighter restrictions on international students bringing dependants and increases in immigration fees announced since March."
In short, the government expects a quarter of a million immigrants every year going forward.
So, we have the bizarre situation of ministers railing against the only thing that is keeping us going economically. They have totally lost the plot.
