Official figures reveal immigration to Britain from the EU has fallen to its lowest level in five years
According to official government figures released by the Office for National Statistics, the UK has for the 37th time in a row missed its target of reducing net migration to tens of thousands of persons. The last official migration figures released under Theresa May’s premiership reveal that 258,000 more people moved to the UK than left in 2018, with 602,000 arriving and 343,000 people emigrating. Long-term EU immigration has fallen since 2016 and is at its lowest since 2013, with 201,000 people from EU nations arriving and 127,000 leaving.
Net migration from the eight eastern European states that joined the EU in 2004 has been negative in the four consecutive quarterly statistical bulletins. In the latest period, 10,000 more nationals from the so-called ‘EU8’ states which include the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, departed than arrived. The statistics show that non-EU net migration has gradually increased over the last five years, with 232,000 more non-EU citizens arriving in the UK than leaving last year similar levels seen in 2011. There was a statistically significant rise in net migration from the Middle East and Central Asia, rising from 18,000 in 2017 to 30,000 last year.
The figures call into question one of the main tenets of the pro-Brexit movement that by exiting the union the UK would take back control of migration by ending freedom of movement because most of growth in net migration now appears to be from non-EU jurisdictions which the UK is already able to control. Brexit does appear to have been successful in making the UK less attractive to EU citizens over the past few years whether because of the lower value of the pound Sterling or the uncertainty around the entire Brexit process.
