Sir John Hayes, former home secretary at the Home Office and chairman of the Common Sense parliamentary group, said increased immigration was putting pressure on housing and public services, which was being used as a way of avoiding upskilling UK workers and making it harder for the United Kingdom. students to enter the university. “We promised in the last election to regain control of our borders. This includes tackling illegal immigration, which plagues wounds that never seem to heal, but also stemming the tide of legal migrants entering the country,” said Sir John.
“Absence of immigration control”
Alp Mehmet, chairman of the Migration Watch UK think tank, said it showed an “absence of immigration control”.
“A record 1.1 million visas to come and live in the UK make it increasingly clear that the government had no intention of keeping its promise to control and reduce immigration,” he said.
The figures show that while EU immigration has collapsed with the end of free movement, it has been offset by a sharp increase in work and study visas for third-country nationals and their families.
It has also been fueled by the dramatic increase in ‘other visas’ due to global events, including the arrival of Ukrainians, Hong Kongers and relatives of EU citizens living in the UK. Their number has more than doubled from 95,264 to 250,258 in one year.
Asylum spending rose by £756m or 56 per cent to £2.1bn in a year, as officials have warned they are “unable to keep up” with rising numbers of asylum applications, fueled in part by illegal crossings by small of English Channel vessels.
Officials revealed that a 100-fold increase in Albanians in a year helped boost the number of Channel migrants, accounting for 6,000 of the 24,000 this year.
Immigration Secretary Kevin Foster said: “The Government has kept its promise to the British people to take back control of our immigration system and bring in the brightest and most skilled workers to grow our economy.
“Unemployment is at record lows and it is vital that we continue to deliver excellent key workers that the UK needs, including thousands of NHS doctors and nurses through the health and care visa.
“We’ve also helped more than 330,000 people through our generous safe and legal routes, including those fleeing Putin’s war in Ukraine, refugees from Afghanistan and our BN(O) route in Hong Kong.”
