Latest statistics on the UK migration

According to the latest report of the Office of National Statistics (ONS), the overall net migration has slightly raised in the last 12 months reaching 270,000 compared to 242,000 last year. Net migration is the difference between the number of immigrants coming to live in the UK and the number of emigrants leaving the country. At the same time, net migration to the UK from the EU countries has reached a six-year minimum and dropped to 87,000 people as per March 2018 statistics, which means that the rise in the overall net migration can be explained by the growing number of immigrants from non EU countries.

According to an independent study of the labour market, there were 2,280,000 EU citizens working in the UK between April and June 2018, which is 86,000 less than in the same period in 2017.

According to Madeleine Sumption, the director of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University: "The UK has clearly become a less attractive country for EU migrants since the referendum. The lower value of the pound means that workers coming here for higher wages are getting less than they were in the past, and economic conditions in many of the key EU countries of origin have improved a lot over the past few years. Uncertainty about the implications of Brexit may have played a role”.

In 2018, the number of EU citizens applying for naturalization significantly increased. Over the first two quarters of 2018 more than 22,000 people applied for British citizenship, which is the highest rate since 2016.

The number of asylum seekers in the UK declined to a historic low level of 34,000 applications in 2017. This is 15% less than in 2016. Syrians are the most common nationality to be granted with the asylum in last years.

The number of immigrants detained in the Immigration Detention Centres has also recently fallen. In the second quarter of 2018, there were 2,200 migrants in detention centres, which is the lowest figure since 2010. In the second quarter of 2018 5,300 immigrants were expelled from the country, which is also the lowest rate since 2014, when this procedure was introduced.