While of course any projections for such an extended period of time are highly speculative, the immediate projection for the next 10 to 30 years are instructive: should migration continue on the trajectory of recent years, Britain’s population is set to explode to 70 million by 2033.

This is a possibility about which Migration Watch has warned since the late-2000s. Indeed, in 2008, we pointed out that “It is quite clear that the [Points-Based System] in its present form will not, of itself, be remotely enough to keep the population of the UK below 70 million.” Likewise, in 2010, we argued that “currently projected levels of immigration will cause the population of the UK to reach 70 million shortly after 2031 and then go on growing.”

This paper analyses the key findings, with particular attention to what the data reveals about the role of migration in future population change, and what the headline figures conceal.

Download the full report here.

Key Findings

i) The UK’s natural population is already in decline

ii) The three scenarios diverge immediately and never converge

iii) The “High” migration scenario is conservative relative to recent reality

iv) Net zero migration produces accelerating population loss

v) The term “net migration” underplays the true scale of population churn because it does not take into account the difficulty of integrating new arrivals, or the children born to migrants.

ONS POPULATION PROJECTIONS WARN OF RAMPANT GROWTH

The ONS published its 2024-based National Population Projections this week, confirming what Migration Watch has warned for nearly two decades: without a change in policy, the UK’s population will surge past 70 million by the mid 2030s, driven entirely by migration. From mid-2026, deaths are projected to exceed births every year, meaning Britain’s natural population is already in decline. All future growth is attributable to immigration. The projections also expose how the headline “net migration” figure obscures the true scale of demographic change, with millions of individual movements occurring each year beneath a single residual number.

Read our analysis here:
Migration Watch Analysis of ONS Population Projection Report

Key stats:

• 70 million UK residents within 7 years: Under the ONS “High Migration” scenario (which actually falls below recent experience) the UK population reaches 70 million within seven years and approaches 92 million by 2124.
• The British-born population is in decline: From mid-2026, deaths will exceed births every year under all scenarios. The ONS projects Britain’s population growth will come entirely from migration.
• “Net migration” masks massive churn: Under the High scenario, 1.4 million people arrive and 928,000 leave annually, or over 2.3 million individual movements per year. This will place huge strain on infrastructure and make it harder to integrate new arrivals.

These projections from the Office for National Statistics are astonishing. Do share our report on social media, and with friends and family.

SOMALI KNIFEMAN ARRESTED AFTER STABBINGS IN GOLDERS GREEN

A 45-year-old Somali-born British passport holder named Essa Suleiman was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after allegedly stabbing two Jewish men in Golders Green on Wednesday. According to reports, the suspect, who was quickly apprehended by police, has a history of violent behaviour and reportedly may also be linked to a knife incident in Southwark the same morning. The attack follows a string of antisemitic incidents. The Home Secretary has said that antisemitism in Britain is “out of control”.

This comes after an incident last week
involving a Somali immigrant admitting to murdering a pensioner at a Remembrance Sunday memorial service.

PROSPERITY INSTITUTE PUBLISHES DRAFT BILL FOR ECHR WITHDRAWAL

The Prosperity Institute has published a detailed report and suggested draft Bill setting out how the UK could practically withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and repeal the Human Rights Act 1998. The report is endorsed by Danny Kruger MP and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg. The proposals include provisions for dealing with Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement, pending court cases, and preserving law enforcement cooperation with the EU.

Migration Watch has long argued that withdrawal from the ECHR is essential to allow the UK to introduce legislation an measures to secure our borders and remove those without a right to be here. This cannot happen soon enough.

This is a preview of Migration Watch’s free weekly newsletter. Please consider signing up to the newsletter directly, you can do so here and will receive an email copy of the newsletter every week as soon as it is released.

For decades, there were activists, academics and politicians on the Continent who looked at Britain, rolled their eyes and tutted. The thought us insular –  well, we are an island. We were too attached to our own history and identity, we banged on about the Second World War, defeating Hitler and Nazism; the Great War and defeating the Kaiser and before him, Napoleon, and seeing off the Spaniards in 1588.  OK, I admit that’s stretching it a bit. As for the Industrial Revolution, Parliament, the Judiciary, the great universities….. Big deal, they said. Boring, they added.

In1997 came New Labour. Cool Britannia was born. Britain was going to be more diverse (and stronger because of this), and truly multicultural. Andrew Neather, formerly a government advisor, later revealed that the idea was to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity”. Multiculti, as the Germans later dubbed it, would pave the way to a brave, new, “post-national” world.

There was a deep irony in this. The same people who found British identity faintly embarrassing believed Britain was nonetheless exceptional, a pioneer that could lead Europe in building a new social model where nationality and identity were obliterated. We would show the Continent how it was done! Peter Mandelson was a regular visitor to Gerhardt Schroeder’s Berlin to enlighten the Germans on the ‘Third Way’. It was never particularly clear that the Germans went along with this vague social engineering plan, or even if they understood it.

At the heart of the Third Way lay the mass migration experiment. The disastrous effects of mass immigration probably didn’t fully sink in on the Continent until, in 2015, Frau Merkel thought Germany and the EU could manage (wir schaffen das) a million migrants in one fell swoop.

In Britain, looking at every measure that matters to ordinary people – housing, public services, education the work place, social trust – the consequences have been devastating. In just a few short decades, Britain went from pioneer to cautionary tale.

And of course, the world has noticed. This week, Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, visited Downing Street and acknowledged that concerns about mass migration, voiced repeatedly by the British public, must be taken seriously. He conceded that European conversations on immigration had remained in a “comfortable” space for too long. A political declaration recognising nations’ “undeniable sovereign right” to manage their borders is reportedly 95% agreed and expected to be finalised at a Council of Europe summit in Chișinău next month.

On the same day as Berset’s visit, new research from the Centre for Research and Analysis on Migration revealed that the EU’s foreign-born population has reached a record 64.2 million, up from around 40 million in 2010, a rise of over 60% in just fifteen years. Germany alone now hosts nearly 18 million foreign-born residents. These are staggering figures.

Public opinion is shifting accordingly. New polling by IFOP for the Printemps Républicain found that 60% of French adults believe France is undergoing a “profound demographic transformation” driven by the growing presence of non-European populations. Of those who hold that view, two-thirds regard the change as entirely negative.

Public and political pressure is, finally, feeding through into action. Last month, the European Parliament voted 389 to 206 to approve legislation enabling the creation of “return hubs” outside EU territory: offshore processing centres to which rejected asylum seekers can be removed. Sound familiar? This is along the lines of Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda scheme, which Sir Keir Starmer dumped on the day he took office, and which our own political establishment fought tooth and nail to stop and then to destroy. Europe is now adopting the very approach it once condemned us for pursuing.

The argument for mass, uncontrolled migration has been lost by those who insisted that immigration was an unalloyed good, that concerns were simply prejudice, and that any questioning of whether demographic change was desirable or even workable were beyond the pale. Even the most ideologically committed advocates of open borders can no longer ignore the reality in front of them.

At Migration Watch UK, we take no pleasure in saying we warned the government over many years this would happen. Nevertheless, the numbers, and with them tensions, continue to grow, along with the pressures in areas I’ve already mentioned. We must get a grip, quickly, or suffer the consequences.

REFORM UK PLEDGES TO REVIEW AND REVOKE 5 YEARS OF ASYLUM GRANTS

This week, Reform UK announced plans to review all asylum grants made in the past five years should the party win the next general election. Around 400,000 people who entered illegally, overstayed visas, or came from countries now deemed safe would be stripped of their status and deported.

We applaud Reform’s ambition. But, we do wonder if this is the way to begin. The time, effort and staff numbers required for the task, not to mention the enforcement teams needed to identify, detain and make removal arrangements, will be enormous. Then there will be the courts with activist lawyers working round the clock to stymie the government at every turn.

The last thing we need is for a future government, one that wants to tackle the serious risks of uncontrolled mass immigration, to fail to achieve its goals. Yes, put an end to illegal immigration and bogus asylum claims; remove those without permission to be here and deport criminals as a matter of course. However, more pressing, and where future policy must focus, is the mind-boggling inflows of nearly a million a year (ten times more than illegal immigration), of whom less than 20% come for work, while population growth is driven almost entirely by immigration. What this means is that the White British proportion of the population continues to shrink and heads remorselessly towards becoming a minority in its own country. What is required is an immigration system that allows in the sustainable numbers and skills we need and excludes those who will contribute little. The British public and taxpayer are not a limitless resource for those looking for a better life.

CARE WORKER ILR COMPLAINTS CONFUSE CAUSE AND EFFECT

Reuters reports that proposed reforms making immigrant care workers wait up to 15 years for permanent residency risk a staffing crisis. But the pro-migration lobby has the cause and effect precisely backwards. Granting ILR to hundreds of thousands of low-paid care workers doesn’t keep them in the sector, it frees them to leave for better-paid work or to access Britain’s generous benefits system. The only long-term fix for the social care sector is to reduce its dependency on immigration altogether.

UK PAYS FRANCE £660 MILLION FOR MORE OF THE SAME ON CHANNEL CROSSINGS

Sir Keir Starmer has agreed to pay France another £660 million over three years to curb Channel crossings. The previous £478 million deal expired in March, having manifestly failed to stop the boats; over 6,000 have arrived already this year. Some £160 million is supposedly contingent on results, but no targets have been set. While the French government strings Sir Keir along, there is growing public and political pressure across Europe for a more sensible stance on mass migration. Here’s what our Chairman, Alp Mehmet, has to say about it.

This is a preview of Migration Watch’s free weekly newsletter. Please consider signing up to the newsletter directly, you can do so here and will receive an email copy of the newsletter every week as soon as it is released.

We are already seeing the Parliamentary Labour Party rallying to oppose Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s earned settlement reforms, which would double the qualifying period for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) from five to ten years. The reforms target the so-called “Boriswave”: the millions who arrived between 2020 and 2024, the vast majority on non-work visas and the rest in typically low-paid roles.

Last week, Dame Emily Thornberry MP (who, as readers may recall, was forced to resign from Labour’s Shadow Cabinet after sneering at a home flying English flags) decided to go even further, posting a video arguing that preventing the Boriswave accessing benefits would be “cruel”. She drew on an Institute for Public Policy Research report which found that 46 per cent of children in migrant families live in relative poverty, compared to 25 per cent for British-born children.

Strip away the emotive language and what Ms Thornberry and the IPPR are actually admitting is that the Boriswave is made up primarily of low earners who were never going to be a fiscal benefit to Britain. The IPPR itself acknowledges that low wages are a major cause of migrant poverty. Nearly 900,000 recent migrants earn less than the median wage. Our government has imported hundreds of thousands of people who, far from paying our pensions, will always be a net cost if they are allowed to claim benefits and use free NHS care.

These costs are already becoming apparent in government data. The Department for Work and Pensions published stats showing the number of people with ILR status claiming Universal Credit surged from 95,612 in April 2022 to 222,076 by January 2026 – a 132 per cent increase. All this while tax thresholds for working British people have been frozen since 2021, and are set to remain so into the 2030s.

Yet the conclusion the IPPR and Labour backbenchers draw is not that we should reverse the error, but that we should give the Boriswave benefits so they are not in poverty any more. The IPPR proposes that migrant families be exempt from ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’ rules, given 30 hours of free childcare a week, and provided with better housing. Unsurprisingly, there is not a single reference in the report to the impact on the British taxpayer of such boundless generosity.

And this, of course, does not even touch on the wage compression caused by flooding Britain’s labour market with poorly paid migrants. The economics are simple and predictable; if you increase labour supply, the price of labour will fall. The Bank of England confirmed as much, finding that immigration has a negative impact on wages in semi-skilled and unskilled service occupations, precisely the sectors most affected by the Boriswave.

For pro-migration zealots, the prescription is always the same: more welfare, more spending, more obligation on the British taxpayer to pick up the tab for a social engineering experiment they have repeatedly rejected at the ballot box. Far from leaving us better off and enriching our culture and society, uncontrolled migration has propelled demographic change (a minority White British population looms ever larger on the horizon), made us poorer, undermined our culture and stoked tensions and division in our society.  

The only way out of this mess is to abandon the obsessive focus on the rights of those who choose to come to the United Kingdom. Elevating their rights above those of British citizens is both wrong and profoundly unfair. If Labour MPs, human rights lawyers, and progressive liberals cannot even accept modest, sensible changes to the routine granting of Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR), what hope is there for the radical reforms to the immigration system that the country desperately needs, and has called for in every election over the past 20 years?

The official forecast is that, in the absence of major policy changes, we will reach this point in 20 years time with nearly all the increase in England.

To avoid the UK population hitting 70 million – nine million more than today – net migration needs to be reduced from 237,000 (the 2007 figure) to 50,000, and held there. This is a 75% reduction.

To stabilise our population at 65 million we need a 100% reduction so that immigration is equal to emigration.

Under Labour’s policies, immigration would fall by 8% – a fall of just 20,000 to 217,000. This is their own claim based on what would have happened if their so – called “tough” Points Based System been in place last year.

Under Conservative policies, immigration would fall by 27% – from 237,000 to 172,000.

This is despite the fact that

– the Immigration Minister has pledged “This Government isn’t going to allow the population to go up to 70 million” (The Times, 18th October 2008)

– the Conservative Leader saying he wants net migration to be reduced to “the sort of figure it was in the 80s and 90s” (BBC Radio 5 Live, 15th February 2009). Overall net immigration in the 1980s averaged about 17,000 a year. The average for 1990-97 was 45,000.

Commenting on the research, Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migrationwatch UK, said:

‘The main parties talk tough on immigration, but they are trying to ‘con’ the British public. According to Government figures, we can expect almost another 10 million people in England in 20 years time of which seven million will be due to immigration – equivalent to seven cities the size of Birmingham. Current Labour policy won’t begin to address this. The Conservatives are barely better: despite their rhetoric, they have a lightweight policy that sounds tough but won’t deliver.

‘Until the main parties decide to be honest about an issue crucial to the future of our society and until they get real about the measures needed, extremist groups will continue to have a ball,’ he said.

“At last we have a political party that acknowledges the gravity of the situation. Immigration is now the sole driver of our massive and rapid population growth. It simply must be checked if serious tensions are to be averted.

The huge Boriswave, illegal immigration and the scale of extensions of stay must all be tackled, and soon.”

At last we have a political party that acknowledges the gravity of the situation. Immigration is now the sole driver of our massive and rapid population growth. It simply must be checked if serious tensions are to be averted.

The huge Boriswave, illegal immigration and the scale of extensions of stay must all be tackled, and soon. 

For further comments, please contact admin@migrationwatchuk.org. 

Notes to editor:

• Migration hit a record 906,000 in the year ending June 2023.
• This is a consequence of the loosening of immigration restrictions under then Prime Minister Boris Johnson (the so-called “Boriswave”).
• Over 2,000,000 people emigrated to Britain in the period January 2021 to June 2024.
• The Centre for Policy Studies has estimated some 800,000 will eventually claim Indefinite Leave to Remain (Here To Stay? Estimating the Scale and Cost of Long-Term Migration – The Centre for Policy Studies)
• The CPS has clarified their central estimate of a lifetime cost of this cohort of £234 billion was based on OBR assumptions which have been rescinded; however, they stand by their estimates of ILR claimant numbers and that the lifetime cost will run into many billions

Hardly. In fact, the press release buries the real story – that the vast majority of these returns are voluntary.

Returns for the year ending June 2025

Table: Migration WatchSource: Home OfficeGet the dataEmbed Download imageCreated with Datawrapper

The government wants you to think it’s being tough.
“The message to the criminal people-smugglers is clear: we will end your vile trade,” it reads. But if the bulk of those returning are voluntary, are these people really arriving via smuggling? Are they so desperate to spend £2,500 to cross the Channel only to then hold their hands up, admit to being caught, and then willingly turn back?

Returns for the year ending June 2025

Voluntary

Enforced

Foreign

national offenders

Voluntary
65.02%

Enforced
22.11%

Foreign national
offenders
12.88%

Chart: Migration WatchSource: Home OfficeGet the dataEmbed Download imageCreated with Datawrapper

This is not a new development; for a long time, voluntary returns have outpaced enforced returns (since 2007), which is itself an indictment of our border security, but has taken on a particularly alarming dimension when you remember that the small boats crisis has seen over 180,000 arrivals in seven years.

Time series of returns 2004 – 2024, voluntary and enforced

2004200620082010201220142016201820202022202405,00010,00015,00020,00025,00030,00019,37213,87415,13411,7412,78831,76231,69428,474Enforced20223,806Enforced20223,806

Enforced

9,072

Voluntary

26,761

Chart: Migration WatchSource: Home OfficeGet the dataEmbed Download imageCreated with Datawrapper

Time series of returns 2004 – 2024, voluntary and enforced

2004200520062007200820092010201120122013201420152016201720182019202020212022202320242025

Enforced
21,425

Voluntary
3,566

Chart: Migration WatchSource: Home OfficeGet the dataEmbed Download imageCreated with Datawrapper

And what about the Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) that the government is proud of returning?

Time series of returns 2010 – 2024, foreign national offenders

20102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202401,0002,0003,0004,0005,0006,000

Foreign national offenders, total

5,097

Chart: Migration WatchSource: Home OfficeGet the dataEmbed Download imageCreated with Datawrapper

Not only is the government failing to return to the pre-Covid levels of over 6,000 FNOs deported each year, it is failing to put a dent into the actual FNO prison population.

Time series of FNO population (2015 – 2024), in prison and returned

201520162017201820192020202120222023202402,0004,0006,0008,00010,00010,14310,0929,3589,3279,52410,0859,99310,6706,4376,2925,5185,1282,9442,7063,0644,0386,024FNOs deported20223,064FNOs deported20223,064

FNOs in prison

10,860

FNOs deported

5,097

Chart: Migration WatchSource: Home OfficeGet the dataEmbed Download imageCreated with Datawrapper

Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch, says:

The government can boast all it likes but two-thirds of removals, by their own admission are voluntary. The reality is, as the record numbers crossing the Channel in recent days have shown, Keir Starmer’s policies are attracting not deterring. Thousands will continue coming knowing that once they are here, it is highly unlikely they will ever be deported. Get a grip Sir Keir.

So, when the government’s press release asks the question, ‘What is the government doing to tackle illegal immigration?’ – the answer speaks for itself. Not enough.