>> Feel free to think it's a non issue. I find people make up their own
>> minds about what is important or not.
I don't think it's a non-issue. With 165,000 (most recent figure I've heard) unprocessed asylum seekers, it's obviously something that needs dealing with. Yet when Jenrick was challenged with this a couple of months ago he said "we don't want an efficient system for dealing with them because the delay is part of the deterrence" (I paraphrase). That makes a kind of sense but it's not really a plan. Incidentally this is where the £8m a day (£3 billion a year) accommodation costs come from.
Of course it's a problem.
42,000 boaties is a lot. Unfortunately they (asylum seekers) get conflated with the 700,000 or so net 'immigrants'.
Yet there's usually little mention of exactly who those people were. Didn't we lose about 300,000 EU workers through Brexit? Isn't there a labour shortage? Presumably some of last year's intake were replacements?
www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-june-2023/summary-of-latest-statistics
"The UK offered protection to 175,142 people in the year ending June 2023. 20,888 (12%) people were granted refugee status or other protection following an asylum application and 154,254 (88%) were offered a safe and legal (humanitarian) route to the UK."
Presumably the latter were mainly Ukraine with some Afghanistan/Hong Kong.
"In the year ending June 2023, there were 498,626 sponsored study visas issued to main applicants, 23% more than in the year ending June 2022.
There were 142,848 grants to Indian nationals, an increase of 49,883 (+54%) compared to year ending June 2022. Chinese nationals were the second most common nationality granted sponsored study visas in the year ending June 2023, with 107,670 visas granted."
One assumes that most of these students are supposed to go home at some point. It did occur to me that some might decide they want to stay after their studies because with this week's knee-jerk increase of the qualifying earnings to £38,700 they might never get back in again should they want to thereafter. Unintended consequences perhaps.
"There were 321,101 grants to main applicants on work visas, 45% higher than in the year ending June 2022, largely due to increases in the ‘Skilled Worker’ visas.
‘Skilled Worker’ visa grants have increased by 34% (+17,610) in the past year to 69,421. ‘Skilled Worker – Health and Care’ visa grants have increased over two and a half times (+157% or +74,096) to 121,290 compared with the previous year
The latest increase is in part due to the expansion in late 2021 for ‘Care Workers and Home Carers’ and ‘Senior Care Workers’. In the year ending June 2023, ‘Care Workers and Home Carers’ comprised around 50% of visas granted under the ‘Health and Care’ visa category.
Indian nationals were the highest nationality granted on both these routes."
The truth is that the vast majority of immigrants are legal and coming with permission. They are needed, or at least wanted. The big mistake that keeps being repeated is to conspire in the idea that immigration is always unwanted and to promise that it will be much lower, just before it goes up.
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