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This week, the Home Office released its regular updates on asylum and immigration statistics. As expected, there’s no improvement; as feared, things are even worse than they were just twelve months ago.
Those with strong stomachs can read the whole thing here. But we can give you a summary of the grisly details, with a little context to underline how crazy these numbers are.
In the last year, a whopping 853,000 non-visitor visas were issued to foreign nationals. That would be a city larger than Leeds. Imagine the infrastructure needed to support a city as big as Leeds: the hospitals, the cancer wards, the police stations, the prisons, the schools, the support for children with complex educational needs. Has that infrastructure been built? Have those services been provided? Or, once again, will this city-sized mass of people have their needs met by stripping away support for the vulnerable people here already?
In the last year, a record 111,000 people claimed asylum in the UK – the highest number ever recorded, and a 14% increase on July 2023-24 period. Presumably, the closure of the Rwandan scheme and Sir Keir’s farcical so-called returns deal with France, which only returns about 1 in every 17 people who attempt to cross the Channel, has backfired and emboldened people smugglers and economic migrants.
102,000 asylum seekers are currently housed in hotels or other taxpayer funded accommodation – costing an average of £41,000 head/year. This means the total bill could approach £4.2 BILLION over a single year. For context, the NHS spent £18 billion on maternity and childbirth care in 2024, to deliver 590,000 babies. We’re spending more per head to put up immigrants in hotels than we are on newborn British babies!
This only scratches the surface. If you’re as angry about this as we are, we recommend writing to your local MP – details below!
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.