The debate over migration figures released today seems to be whether or not we’ve reached a new ‘record high’. The Office for National Statistics reports net migration rose 672,000 in the year to June. This would have been a record high if the ONS hadn’t also revised last year’s figures up by a staggering 140,000 to 745,000.
This seems, to me, to be a technicality. Either way, the figure is hovering around its highest point in recent history. Net migration has more than doubled since June 2016, when the UK voted to leave the European Union. The numbers really took off after Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit reforms, which created pathways for graduates to work in the UK and for non-EU migrants to more easily make their way here. There’s no real point in quibbling over when the record was hit: let’s simply agree that, yes, the numbers are very high.
The debate, then, should be whether these levels of net migration have merit.
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