, Columnist
The UK Can’t Cut Immigration Without Suffering the Consequences
Global Britain has arrived, though it’s not what Brexiteers imagined.
Rishi Sunak speaks.
Photographer: BEN STANSALL/AFPThis article is for subscribers only.
The UK government spent much of this week trying to blunt the impact of new immigration numbers released Thursday morning. As expected, the numbers are up. Net migration is now at a record high of 606,000, up from a half-million in the year to June 2022.
More striking than the numbers is the composition: Only 151,000 of those arriving to the UK in 2022 were from Europe, while 925,000 were non-EU nationals. EU migrants accounted for 13% of total immigration in 2022, down from the pre-pandemic levels of 52% and 42% in 2018 and 2019, according to the Office for National Statistics.