The truth about migration figures

People have always moved for many different reasons, whether it’s for work, to study, to be with loved ones, to find safety, or simply for a better life. The number of people moving will always fluctuate, which could be due to crises overseas, like the war in Ukraine or brutal repression in Hong Kong, or simply because the Government is counting the figures differently. People moving across borders is not a problem to be solved. We must ensure people are able to travel to the UK safely, access secure employment and housing once they arrive, and settle if they decide to do so.

We have seen how people all over the UK have welcomed Ukrainian refugees with open arms, into their homes and into part of the community.

Migrants have always been an essential part of our story, and we should celebrate the fact that so many people want to make the UK their home. They enrich our society, make our country a better place, and are a vital part of our workforce and our communities.

The numbers aren’t the problem – the way our system treats people is

This Government’s hostile immigration policies are designed to make the migration process and living in the UK as difficult as possible as an attempt to stop people from coming to the UK. People seeking safety have no choice but to wait for a decision from the Home Office. Asylum seekers are denied the right to work, expected to live off just £45 a week, and are housed in dehumanising accommodation which is isolated away from their local communities. This is making it harder for people who are fleeing war torn countries and people who have lost everything to integrate and make a new life. 

Even people with the right to stay are treated with this level of cruelty. Too many visas come with no option to put down roots in the UK, and others include a long and expensive 10-year path to settlement. That means people must jump through complex legal hoops and pay extortionate amounts to renew their visa every few years for a decade before they can get stable status. This long route traps people in a cycle of poverty and precarity. It damages people’s physical and mental health, and too often causes people to fall out of status and become undocumented.

The Government wants us to believe that migration is the problem, but it’s not. We’re all facing very real issues, including a cost-of-living crisis, huge NHS waiting times, workers being forced to take strike action to demand better pay and more people than ever relying on food banks to meet their basic needs. Meanwhile, we’re the sixth-largest economy in the world, and there are over 250,000 empty homes across the UK. The Government should act to tackle these issues with the resources available instead of creating division and anti-immigration narratives!

The government will use figures as an opportunity to stir up hate towards people seeking refuge, but the reality is, they only make up a fraction of people who move to the UK. [PUT IN A SKEWED FIGURE AS AN EXAMPLE] To begin with, you have to be on UK soil to be able to apply for asylum in the UK but there is currently no way for people to travel safely to the UK in order to claim asylum here, or to claim asylum from abroad. That means that to seek sanctuary here, people must risk their lives such as with dangerous travelling in small boats across the Channel. Most people will not survive this journey and will never get to experience a better life. 

The best way to prevent channel crossings is to create safe routes to asylum in the UK so people can apply for travel documents, rejoin family, and rebuild their lives in our communities in as little time as possible, with minimal risk and with minimal stress.

The Government makes a lot of claims about providing ‘safe and legal routes,’ but the figures don’t lie – the UK resettles a very small number of people each year, and the limited number of schemes remaining are not fit for purpose. Refugee resettlement fell by 77% in the last year[1].

The backlog is caused by slow processing, not more asylum applications

While the number of people claiming asylum in the UK has gone up, it is not the cause of the huge backlog of people waiting for a decision from the Home Office. The UK receives far fewer asylum applications than other countries, for instance, we receive 8.4 asylum applications per 10,000 population, compared to 13.8 for Spain and 23 for Germany.[2] 

Although fewer people apply for asylum here than in those countries, our backlog is much higher. This is because the Home Office hasn’t been processing applications efficiently, and staff turnover is at a record high. At the moment, people are waiting an average of 18 months to hear back from the Home Office. During this time, they’re not allowed to work, and many are placed in detention-style temporary accommodation. Everyone seeking safety should have access to a fair hearing with quick and effective decision-making, no matter how they travelled to the UK.

Everyone deserves safe conditions, decent pay and protection if employers try to take advantage of them. But hostile immigration policies have put migrant workers’ rights under attack and created borders throughout our workplaces. They make work less safe for everyone and pit workers against workers. To make matters worse, they prohibit migrant workers from accessing the support the rest of us can access, trapping them in a cycle of poverty.

This Government continues treating migrants as economic commodities by issuing more and more short-term work visas to try and plug job shortages in sectors like care, farming and hospitality. But temporary work visas are not the solution, and there is clear evidence that they push workers into mistreatment, exploitation, and can make people undocumented. Remember these are many of the same people the government called “heroes” and clapped for throughout the pandemic. 

Everyone who comes to the UK to work should be able to change jobs with ease without losing the right to live here.

Instead of actually solving the problem - by creating an immigration system that works for everyone - the government wants to push through legislation that would effectively end refugee protection in this country and see children and survivors of trafficking locked up. The new Immigration Bill is going to make things worse.

People who travel here by small boat - because there is no other way for them to get here safely - would never be able to get status, the right to work, or the ability to rebuild their lives here in their new communities. Instead, thousands more people will be made undocumented and vulnerable to hostile immigration policies.

The truth is, no matter how difficult you make it, people will always move - whether that’s by force or by choice. Building ever higher walls does not stop people from needing to cross them, it just makes it more dangerous and damaging for those who do. We must ensure migrants can come to the UK safely and be cared for kindly when they get here.

Stand with migrants

[1] How many people do we grant protection to? - GOV.UK

[2] Asylum backlog | Institute for Government