Returning to spouses/children of people coming here to study.
It is a recent problem.
In 2019 spouses/kids numbered 16,000. In 2022-136,000.
While the Govt was too busy swapping PMs and Home Secretaries to notice/act.
I think it has gone up to 159,000 this year. Clearly a problem. Although one that should be easy to solve. If you stopped dependants, and didnt include students the figures would be seen in a completely different light.
Stopping dependants is impossible. Although reducing them to previous levels should not be.
Have to include students. Simply because they are migrating to this country. If course, it should not matter overmuch if 98% were indeed leaving at the end of their studies. But that figure is not true. If it was, people leaving this country every year would be much higher.
I watched Trevor Phillips on Sophie Ridge this morning. It is a complete **** up. The focus is on the 606,000 net total. The Government says the total has to come down. Yet they have told Universities to target 600,000 overseas students. As you have rightly said, there have been the couple of hundred thousand that have arrived from Ukraine, and Hong Kong, that will be unlikely to be repeated on an annual basis. Then there are the dependants of the students, which we discussed earlier. 8% of the total are Brits returning home. 50% of the work visas which totals 100,000, were in respect of those that are working in the NHS/Social Care.
So where would you cut down? Those from Ukraine will probably return home. Those from Hong Kong may not. Although neither are likely to be a regular thing. The students put money into the economy, and the vast majority return home at the end of their studies. So looking at the number of students in the longer term wouldnt affect the net figure, as you would have roughly the same number arriving as there were returning home annually. The number of dependants wouldnt really matter, as long as they returned home with the students. You could cut down on work visas, but where would that leave the NHS/Social Care? You could stop Brits coming home, but that is unlikely to make them very happy. They are now offering teachers a £10k payment. Teachers are likely to bring dependants. It doesnt seem very joined up.
This wasnt the pitch from the leave campaign, when we were taking back control.
Returning to spouses/children of people coming here to study.
It is a recent problem.
In 2019 spouses/kids numbered 16,000. In 2022-136,000.
While the Govt was too busy swapping PMs and Home Secretaries to notice/act.
I think it has gone up to 159,000 this year. Clearly a problem. Although one that should be easy to solve. If you stopped dependants, and didnt include students the figures would be seen in a completely different light.
Stopping dependants is impossible. Although reducing them to previous levels should not be.
Have to include students. Simply because they are migrating to this country. If course, it should not matter overmuch if 98% were indeed leaving at the end of their studies. But that figure is not true. If it was, people leaving this country every year would be much higher.
I watched Trevor Phillips on Sophie Ridge this morning. It is a complete **** up. The focus is on the 606,000 net total. The Government says the total has to come down. Yet they have told Universities to target 600,000 overseas students. As you have rightly said, there have been the couple of hundred thousand that have arrived from Ukraine, and Hong Kong, that will be unlikely to be repeated on an annual basis. Then there are the dependants of the students, which we discussed earlier. 8% of the total are Brits returning home. 50% of the work visas which totals 100,000, were in respect of those that are working in the NHS/Social Care.
So where would you cut down? Those from Ukraine will probably return home. Those from Hong Kong may not. Although neither are likely to be a regular thing. The students put money into the economy, and the vast majority return home at the end of their studies. So looking at the number of students in the longer term wouldnt affect the net figure, as you would have roughly the same number arriving as there were returning home annually. The number of dependants wouldnt really matter, as long as they returned home with the students. You could cut down on work visas, but where would that leave the NHS/Social Care? You could stop Brits coming home, but that is unlikely to make them very happy. They are now offering teachers a £10k payment. Teachers are likely to bring dependants. It doesnt seem very joined up.
This wasnt the pitch from the leave campaign, when we were taking back control.
The "promise" to reduce net immigration currently only extends to so-called "illegal" migration. The 50,000 or so coming in on boats-rather than the 950,000 or so coming in perfectly legally.
How to reduce net migration in the short term? The steps this Government are taking are these:-
1. Wait for temporary Ukraine/Hong Kong numbers subside, and hope nothing replaces them 2. Plug some numbers associated with legal migration-reduce dependants, stop people applying for work visas while on student visas (a large number which mask the true figures of students staying) 3. Force a load of people to go to Rwanda
Whereas any morally responsible Government would be reducing numbers by:-
1. Processing the massive amounts of people here in limbo, keeping the ones we want/are duty bound to keep, and rejecting the rest 2. Same as 2 above 3. Concentrate on increasing the numbers out, rather than solely looking at numbers in 4. Look long and hard at which students are coming in. Who is staying/leaving? What economic benefits are the UK receiving (as opposed to the Universities). What benefits are derived from foreign students being educated here (as opposed to UK ones), in terms of meeting skills shortages.
Migrants threatened with loss of rights if they refuse to share hotel rooms
Ministers have warned asylum seekers refusing to share hotel rooms to accept the “generous” offer or lose their right to public funding for housing, food or money.
Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, is understood to have ordered officials to take a tough approach and not back down in the face of demands for single rooms by the asylum seekers.
Migrant smugglers exploit weekend heatwave to risk 950 more lives and make a mockery of the government's plan to crack down on illegal Channel crossings
Traffickers used the heatwave, low wind and calm seas to ferry up to 950 migrants from France, suggesting their key obstacle in the criminal trade is bad weather. A north wind in May and early June brought their criminal trade to a near halt, prompting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to say this month that his curbs on the boats was 'starting to work'.
Over 1.2 million people migrated to the UK last year. More than 600,000 more than left this country. A record number. More than 100,000 more than the previous record of just over 500,000. Which was the year before.
Of those 1.2 million, less than 5% came by small boat. The total number of asylum applications was 76,000. Just over 6% of the total.
5% of the total gets 95% of the coverage.
If you are so desperate to come here to flee persecution, and pay £20k to a crook, you are vilified.
Whereas if you are wealthy, and pay £20k for a UK course, in you come. Rich, and promise to set up a Company? In you come. Russian oligarch seeking non dom status? Welcome.
In short-desperate, poor people hated. Middle class/rich are welcome.
Over 1.2 million people migrated to the UK last year. More than 600,000 more than left this country. A record number. More than 100,000 more than the previous record of just over 500,000. Which was the year before.
Of those 1.2 million, less than 5% came by small boat. The total number of asylum applications was 76,000. Just over 6% of the total.
5% of the total gets 95% of the coverage.
If you are so desperate to come here to flee persecution, and pay £20k to a crook, you are vilified.
Whereas if you are wealthy, and pay £20k for a UK course, in you come. Rich, and promise to set up a Company? In you come. Russian oligarch seeking non dom status? Welcome.
In short-desperate, poor people hated. Middle class/rich are welcome.
Over 1.2 million people migrated to the UK last year. More than 600,000 more than left this country. A record number. More than 100,000 more than the previous record of just over 500,000. Which was the year before.
Of those 1.2 million, less than 5% came by small boat. The total number of asylum applications was 76,000. Just over 6% of the total.
5% of the total gets 95% of the coverage.
If you are so desperate to come here to flee persecution, and pay £20k to a crook, you are vilified.
Whereas if you are wealthy, and pay £20k for a UK course, in you come. Rich, and promise to set up a Company? In you come. Russian oligarch seeking non dom status? Welcome.
In short-desperate, poor people hated. Middle class/rich are welcome.
Desperately wrong.
I think that the net migration figure is of limited value. Firstly, we include students. They contribute to profits of Universities, and put money into the economy. Secondly, we include those that have arrived on work visas. Why would we be concerned about those that are arriving to fill vacancies, that we are unable to otherwise fill. Not sure where the NHS, or Care Homes, would be without them.
If we were a little cleverer, we might introduce some training programmes to fill the vacancies ourselves in the longer term. Although I am not sure we will ever get Brits to fill the vacancies in Social Care. The Social Care vacancies will increase as we get more oldies. I dont think Brits will ever be keen on fruit picking, or any of the tougher, lowly paid jobs.
I am not against immigration. I was a Remainer, and quite happy with Freedom of Movement. I sympathise with those fleeing persecution, and wars etc. However I think that not being in control of the numbers is foolish. We are currently at the mercy of people traffickers, and the number they decide to send. The 950 that arrived at the weekend, will just increase the cost of hotel bills, and benefits that we pay out. Just the cost of hotel bills apparently costs £6 or 7 million per day. This is hard to justify in a cost of living crisis.
We must surely create some genuine legal routes, and accept our fair share of those that are genuine asylum seekers.
I cant see any sense in the way we deal with the small boat arrivals. You can argue that they are a small minority, but how much would the daily hotel bills have to reach before you would consider drawing a line? There are probably a million things that could benefit from the ever increasing daily expenditure.
In my view there is only one way to stop the boats, and to take control. That is to return all arrivals back to France. This would immediately stop the boats. Who would pay thousands of pounds to a people trafficker, if they knew they would definitely be returned? Nobody.
I am not sure of the reasons behind the determination of those that arrive in the UK. I would guess that in some cases it is because they have family in the UK, while in others it may be because they think we are a soft touch. All of them will have travelled through a number of safe countries, before arriving.
The whole thing is a shambles, that surely cant continue. A backlog of 170,000 is ridiculous, and didnt happen overnight. One aspect of Brexit was the control of our borders. How is that going?
We are a strange bunch in the UK. We have to build more houses, but nobody seems to want them built near them. We sympathise with asylum seekers, as long as they are not housed near them.
Over 1.2 million people migrated to the UK last year. More than 600,000 more than left this country. A record number. More than 100,000 more than the previous record of just over 500,000. Which was the year before.
Of those 1.2 million, less than 5% came by small boat. The total number of asylum applications was 76,000. Just over 6% of the total.
5% of the total gets 95% of the coverage.
If you are so desperate to come here to flee persecution, and pay £20k to a crook, you are vilified.
Whereas if you are wealthy, and pay £20k for a UK course, in you come. Rich, and promise to set up a Company? In you come. Russian oligarch seeking non dom status? Welcome.
In short-desperate, poor people hated. Middle class/rich are welcome.
Love (NOT) the way these floating accommodation units are always described as "barges". Suits the narrative I guess.
I think that as they are under pressure to reduce the hotel bills, the barges seemed like a good idea. Although I am not sure how many voters would agree.
I agree with a lot of that. So I will just concentrate on the bits where I don't.
"I think that the net migration figure is of limited value. Firstly, we include students. They contribute to profits of Universities, and put money into the economy. Secondly, we include those that have arrived on work visas. Why would we be concerned about those that are arriving to fill vacancies, that we are unable to otherwise fill. Not sure where the NHS, or Care Homes, would be without them."
We include students for the simple reason that they are migrants. And it is clear that many of them never leave. Because if you get a Nursing degree, a Marriage, etc, you don't ever leave.
Universities.? As I have mentioned before, we are the only major country in the World that does not own its own Universities. No-one knows who owns them. No-one knows where the £billions of extra revenue via tuition fees/foreign fees goes. It certainly does not go to the staff-whose jobs, wages and pensions have all been drastically reduced.
Work visas? Difficult to square all this with the scare stories of thousands of Doctors/Nurses going abroad for better salaries.
"In my view there is only one way to stop the boats, and to take control. That is to return all arrivals back to France."
In what basis? That would be illegal. The EU had a theoretical agreement about returning refugees to first port of call. But it was never carried out in practice, because it was a logistical and legal nightmare. And-I hate to break it to you. You may have missed it. We're not in the EU any more
On a side issue, I'm no conspiracy theorist. But here is something that has happened locally to me that I find amusing.
I live in Harwich. There had been a suggestion that one of the "barges" was to be moored here. Our local MP, Bernard Jenkin, has been outraged. He now assures us that the Government recognises that, due to the importance of the Port of Harwich, that is off the table.
Simultaneously, and I am sure entirely coincidentally, Bernard Jenkin used to be a vociferous supporter of Brexit and Boris. But he was on the Privileges Committee, and part of the Tory Majority that decided to end (at least for now) the career of Boris. Funny, that.
Over 1.2 million people migrated to the UK last year. More than 600,000 more than left this country. A record number. More than 100,000 more than the previous record of just over 500,000. Which was the year before.
Of those 1.2 million, less than 5% came by small boat. The total number of asylum applications was 76,000. Just over 6% of the total.
5% of the total gets 95% of the coverage.
If you are so desperate to come here to flee persecution, and pay £20k to a crook, you are vilified.
Whereas if you are wealthy, and pay £20k for a UK course, in you come. Rich, and promise to set up a Company? In you come. Russian oligarch seeking non dom status? Welcome.
In short-desperate, poor people hated. Middle class/rich are welcome.
That's a tremendous Post. All this hoohah about 5% of the total, & all it does is add grist to the racists mill.
I dont think that the fact that it is 5% has any relevance at all. It is 5% of an inflated figure. There were over 91,000 people applying for asylum for the year to March 2023.
Visas issued more than double
The combined total of 1,472,162 visas in the year to March 2023 is up 53% from 960,133 in 2021/22 and is the seventh successive record high for a 12-month period since current figures began in 2005.
Labour Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “These extraordinary figures, including doubling the number of work visas since the pandemic, show the Conservatives have no plan and no grip on immigration."
She added: "The Conservatives’ chaotic approach means that work visas are up 119%, net migration is more than twice the level ministers were aiming for, and the asylum backlog is at a record high despite Rishi Sunak promising to clear it this year.”
Some 487,771 work visas were granted, along with 632,006 study visas and 65,642 family visas, plus 5,046 visas for dependants joining or accompanying others, according to Home Office figures.
In addition, 198,358 were issued under the Ukraine visa schemes, 47,227 were granted to British National (Overseas) status holders from Hong Kong, 31,550 were under the EU Settlement Scheme, and 4,562 were under other settlement schemes.
Comments
It is a complete **** up.
The focus is on the 606,000 net total.
The Government says the total has to come down.
Yet they have told Universities to target 600,000 overseas students.
As you have rightly said, there have been the couple of hundred thousand that have arrived from Ukraine, and Hong Kong, that will be unlikely to be repeated on an annual basis.
Then there are the dependants of the students, which we discussed earlier.
8% of the total are Brits returning home.
50% of the work visas which totals 100,000, were in respect of those that are working in the NHS/Social Care.
So where would you cut down?
Those from Ukraine will probably return home.
Those from Hong Kong may not.
Although neither are likely to be a regular thing.
The students put money into the economy, and the vast majority return home at the end of their studies.
So looking at the number of students in the longer term wouldnt affect the net figure, as you would have roughly the same number arriving as there were returning home annually.
The number of dependants wouldnt really matter, as long as they returned home with the students.
You could cut down on work visas, but where would that leave the NHS/Social Care?
You could stop Brits coming home, but that is unlikely to make them very happy.
They are now offering teachers a £10k payment.
Teachers are likely to bring dependants.
It doesnt seem very joined up.
This wasnt the pitch from the leave campaign, when we were taking back control.
How to reduce net migration in the short term? The steps this Government are taking are these:-
1. Wait for temporary Ukraine/Hong Kong numbers subside, and hope nothing replaces them
2. Plug some numbers associated with legal migration-reduce dependants, stop people applying for work visas while on student visas (a large number which mask the true figures of students staying)
3. Force a load of people to go to Rwanda
Whereas any morally responsible Government would be reducing numbers by:-
1. Processing the massive amounts of people here in limbo, keeping the ones we want/are duty bound to keep, and rejecting the rest
2. Same as 2 above
3. Concentrate on increasing the numbers out, rather than solely looking at numbers in
4. Look long and hard at which students are coming in. Who is staying/leaving? What economic benefits are the UK receiving (as opposed to the Universities). What benefits are derived from foreign students being educated here (as opposed to UK ones), in terms of meeting skills shortages.
Ministers have warned asylum seekers refusing to share hotel rooms to accept the “generous” offer or lose their right to public funding for housing, food or money.
Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, is understood to have ordered officials to take a tough approach and not back down in the face of demands for single rooms by the asylum seekers.
https://uk.yahoo.com/style/migrants-threatened-loss-rights-refuse-182106787.html
Traffickers used the heatwave, low wind and calm seas to ferry up to 950 migrants from France, suggesting their key obstacle in the criminal trade is bad weather. A north wind in May and early June brought their criminal trade to a near halt, prompting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to say this month that his curbs on the boats was 'starting to work'.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12183663/Channel-people-traffickers-exploit-weekend-heatwave-risk-950-lives.html
Of those 1.2 million, less than 5% came by small boat. The total number of asylum applications was 76,000. Just over 6% of the total.
5% of the total gets 95% of the coverage.
If you are so desperate to come here to flee persecution, and pay £20k to a crook, you are vilified.
Whereas if you are wealthy, and pay £20k for a UK course, in you come. Rich, and promise to set up a Company? In you come. Russian oligarch seeking non dom status? Welcome.
In short-desperate, poor people hated. Middle class/rich are welcome.
Desperately wrong.
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/plans-house-asylum-seekers-barge-27094962
Permission for asylum seeker barge in London rejected, confirms Royal Docks
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/permission-for-asylum-seeker-barge-in-london-rejected-confirms-royal-docks/ar-AA1citqP
@Essexphil
That's a tremendous Post. All this hoohah about 5% of the total, & all it does is add grist to the racists mill.
Love (NOT) the way these floating accommodation units are always described as "barges". Suits the narrative I guess.
Firstly, we include students.
They contribute to profits of Universities, and put money into the economy.
Secondly, we include those that have arrived on work visas.
Why would we be concerned about those that are arriving to fill vacancies, that we are unable to otherwise fill.
Not sure where the NHS, or Care Homes, would be without them.
If we were a little cleverer, we might introduce some training programmes to fill the vacancies ourselves in the longer term.
Although I am not sure we will ever get Brits to fill the vacancies in Social Care.
The Social Care vacancies will increase as we get more oldies.
I dont think Brits will ever be keen on fruit picking, or any of the tougher, lowly paid jobs.
I am not against immigration.
I was a Remainer, and quite happy with Freedom of Movement.
I sympathise with those fleeing persecution, and wars etc.
However I think that not being in control of the numbers is foolish.
We are currently at the mercy of people traffickers, and the number they decide to send.
The 950 that arrived at the weekend, will just increase the cost of hotel bills, and benefits that we pay out.
Just the cost of hotel bills apparently costs £6 or 7 million per day.
This is hard to justify in a cost of living crisis.
We must surely create some genuine legal routes, and accept our fair share of those that are genuine asylum seekers.
I cant see any sense in the way we deal with the small boat arrivals.
You can argue that they are a small minority, but how much would the daily hotel bills have to reach before you would consider drawing a line?
There are probably a million things that could benefit from the ever increasing daily expenditure.
In my view there is only one way to stop the boats, and to take control.
That is to return all arrivals back to France.
This would immediately stop the boats.
Who would pay thousands of pounds to a people trafficker, if they knew they would definitely be returned?
Nobody.
I am not sure of the reasons behind the determination of those that arrive in the UK.
I would guess that in some cases it is because they have family in the UK, while in others it may be because they think we are a soft touch.
All of them will have travelled through a number of safe countries, before arriving.
The whole thing is a shambles, that surely cant continue.
A backlog of 170,000 is ridiculous, and didnt happen overnight.
One aspect of Brexit was the control of our borders.
How is that going?
We are a strange bunch in the UK.
We have to build more houses, but nobody seems to want them built near them.
We sympathise with asylum seekers, as long as they are not housed near them.
Although I am not sure how many voters would agree.
"I think that the net migration figure is of limited value.
Firstly, we include students.
They contribute to profits of Universities, and put money into the economy.
Secondly, we include those that have arrived on work visas.
Why would we be concerned about those that are arriving to fill vacancies, that we are unable to otherwise fill.
Not sure where the NHS, or Care Homes, would be without them."
We include students for the simple reason that they are migrants. And it is clear that many of them never leave. Because if you get a Nursing degree, a Marriage, etc, you don't ever leave.
Universities.? As I have mentioned before, we are the only major country in the World that does not own its own Universities. No-one knows who owns them. No-one knows where the £billions of extra revenue via tuition fees/foreign fees goes. It certainly does not go to the staff-whose jobs, wages and pensions have all been drastically reduced.
Work visas? Difficult to square all this with the scare stories of thousands of Doctors/Nurses going abroad for better salaries.
"In my view there is only one way to stop the boats, and to take control.
That is to return all arrivals back to France."
In what basis? That would be illegal. The EU had a theoretical agreement about returning refugees to first port of call. But it was never carried out in practice, because it was a logistical and legal nightmare. And-I hate to break it to you. You may have missed it. We're not in the EU any more
On a side issue, I'm no conspiracy theorist. But here is something that has happened locally to me that I find amusing.
I live in Harwich. There had been a suggestion that one of the "barges" was to be moored here. Our local MP, Bernard Jenkin, has been outraged. He now assures us that the Government recognises that, due to the importance of the Port of Harwich, that is off the table.
Simultaneously, and I am sure entirely coincidentally, Bernard Jenkin used to be a vociferous supporter of Brexit and Boris. But he was on the Privileges Committee, and part of the Tory Majority that decided to end (at least for now) the career of Boris. Funny, that.
It is 5% of an inflated figure.
There were over 91,000 people applying for asylum for the year to March 2023.
Visas issued more than double
The combined total of 1,472,162 visas in the year to March 2023 is up 53% from 960,133 in 2021/22 and is the seventh successive record high for a 12-month period since current figures began in 2005.
Labour Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “These extraordinary figures, including doubling the number of work visas since the pandemic, show the Conservatives have no plan and no grip on immigration."
She added: "The Conservatives’ chaotic approach means that work visas are up 119%, net migration is more than twice the level ministers were aiming for, and the asylum backlog is at a record high despite Rishi Sunak promising to clear it this year.”
Some 487,771 work visas were granted, along with 632,006 study visas and 65,642 family visas, plus 5,046 visas for dependants joining or accompanying others, according to Home Office figures.
In addition, 198,358 were issued under the Ukraine visa schemes, 47,227 were granted to British National (Overseas) status holders from Hong Kong, 31,550 were under the EU Settlement Scheme, and 4,562 were under other settlement schemes.
https://www.itv.com/news/2023-05-25/all-the-numbers-behind-the-uks-new-net-migration-record
@Essexphil
Re; Universities, "No-one knows who owns them"
Really? That's an odd thing, isn't it?