Legal migration to UK drops by fifth following student family clampdown

Office for National Statistics says net migration remains high by historic standards but is beginning to fall

Coventry University. A visa ban on most relatives of students in the UK is reflected in the immigration numbers. AFP

Legal migration to the UK dropped by a fifth to 728,000 in the 12 months to June, official figures showed on Thursday, following a clampdown on international students bringing dependants to the UK.

The Office for National Statistics said that while net migration remains high by historic standards, it is now “beginning to fall”. Its data showed a 20 per cent fall in the updated 906,000 posted for the previous year. That figure was revised upwards by 166,000 from the initial estimate of 740,000 after more complete data became available, the ONS said.

It made a similar change to the estimate for net migration in the year to December last year, which was initially thought to be 685,000, and is now believed to be 866,000 – representing an increase of 181,000.

Data showed that there was an 84 per cent fall in the number of visas issued to dependents of students compared to the same period last year.

“The recent fall was driven primarily by a decrease in immigration following visa restrictions under the previous Conservative government – including a ban on most family members of students and care workers, as well as higher salary thresholds for private sector jobs,” said the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford on Thursday.

The full impact of the policy changes is not yet visible in the data, it said. “The most recent year of data – year ending June 2024 – covers the first few months of the restrictions but also the second half of 2023, when visa grants remained unusually high. Home Office visa data suggest a relatively sharp downward trend in grants, with a decline of 32 per cent in total visas granted between the summer (July-September) of 2023 and 2024 (excluding visit/transit visas).”

Figures from Ucas released this month showed a significant decrease in international students from countries that previously sent significant numbers to study in the UK. Nigeria recorded the largest decline in applications with 25,897, representing a fall of 44.6 per cent, followed by Bangladesh with a 41.2 per cent drop. Other countries with significant reductions in applications include Sri Lanka (down 23.7 per cent), India (down 20.4 per cent), and Malaysia (down 12.7 per cent).

Overall there were 392,969 sponsored study visas granted to foreign students in the year ending September 2024, 19 per cent fewer than the previous year, but 46 per cent higher than 2019. Almost two thirds were for masters courses.

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ONS director Mary Gregory said that since 2021, long-term international migration to the UK has been at unprecedented levels. “This has been driven by a variety of factors, including the war in Ukraine and the effects of the post-Brexit immigration system. Pent-up demand for study-related immigration because of travel restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic also had an impact,” she said.

“While remaining high by historic standards, net migration is now beginning to fall and is provisionally down 20 per cent in the 12 months to June 2024.”

Over the first six months of 2024, the UK has also seen decreases in the number of people arriving for work-related reasons, partly related to policy changes earlier this year, said the ONS. The fall in net migration has also been driven by a rise in long-term emigration – people leaving the UK – particularly of those who came to the country on study-related visas.

The figures, covering the previous Conservative government's administration before the general election, come as new Tory leader Kemi Badenoch admitted her party had failed on migration.

In a speech on Wednesday, she said there had been a “collective failure of political leaders from all parties over decades” to grasp migration, adding: “On behalf of the Conservative Party, it is right that I as the new leader accept responsibility, and say truthfully we got this wrong. I more than understand the public anger on this issue. I share it.”

The Conservatives won a landslide victory in the 2019 election under the leadership of Boris Johnson, largely on a promise to bring net migration numbers down. The party repeatedly promised that leaving the EU, which ended the free movement of people from member states, would allow the UK to “take back control” of its borders. But regular migration has soared since Britain formally left the EU in January 2020. In 2021, net migration was 488,000.

Migration was a major issue at the general election in July, when Keir Starmer's Labour Party ousted the Conservatives. The Tories' support was badly hit by their failure to deliver on their migration promises, with many voters defecting to the anti-immigration Reform UK party.

Labour said the latest migration figures showed the government had started the “hard graft” of tackling the issue, and was “cleaning up the Conservatives' mess”.

“In their own words, the Tories broke the immigration system. On their watch, net migration quadrupled in four years to a record high of nearly one million, despite saying they'd lower it to 100,000,” said a Labour spokesperson.

“Over the summer, the government started the hard graft. We hired more caseworkers to tackle the asylum backlog and we're now interviewing 10,000 people per month, compared to 2,000 under the Tories, so we can get people out of asylum hotels and save the taxpayers billions.

“We've also ramped up the removal of those with no right to be in the UK by a fifth. Without this action, thousands more would remain in the UK illegally.”

Meanwhile, the number of undocumented migrants arriving in the UK after crossing the Channel on dangerous rudimentary vessels stands at more than 33,500, up around 18 per cent on the same period in 2023. The numbers are down on 2022.