The UKʼs migration story took an un-expected turn when numbers hit 906‚000 (way more than first thought) in mid-2023. Its interesting that this figure got fixed-up from earlier counts which shows how hard it is to track people movement
Healthcare and social-care needs brought lots of folks from India Nigeria and Pakistan to fill job gaps; while EU migration went down after Brexit The numbers dropped to 728‚000 by mid-2024 because of new-rules that made it harder for students to bring their families
The current situation looks very different from pre-Brexit days — back then migration was just 321‚000 yearly. Seema Malhotra from the Labour party points at previous leadership saying: “net migration went up four times in just four years“ But she didnt say what number they want to reach
- Housing problems got bigger
- Public services felt more pressure
- Healthcare cant work without foreign staff
Both the old and new governments tried to fix this: they made strict rules about family visas and promised to train more local workers (but results are still unclear) The population — now around 68-million — keeps watching how this plays out