Net migration is bogus. Gross migration is what affects communities

Just over half a million people migrated to the UK in the year to June. And half a million the year before – actually, it was 517,000, but let’s not quibble. A million, then, in two years…that’s quite something. But you wouldn’t have known from the news about the new immigration stats from the Home Office, which focussed instead on a rise in net migration to 182,000 (ie the number of people arriving, less the number of Brits leaving). Now, for all the noise about Bulgarians and Romanians coming to Britain, about half the new immigrants were from outside the EU – 242,000, down from 282,000 the previous year. You’d never think it though, to judge by the PM’s obsessive focus on EU migration – which plainly is an important issue, but not the only one.