Immigration to Britain has halved in a year - why?

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Immigration into Britain has halved in a year. So, what's happening and is it a good thing? Net migration is the number of people coming to the UK minus the number leaving. In 2025, it was about 170,000.

[00:00:11]That's half as many as 2024 and massively down compared to nearly 900,000 people [music] who came in 2022.

[00:00:18]So, why have the numbers dropped so fast? Conservative Boris Johnson presided [music] over that record high peak of immigration after Brexit and COVID. But, under Rishi Sunak, the Tories introduced new rules that make it harder to get a visa. Those rules have been bringing down net migration for a couple of years and the Labour government has kept them in place. Another reason for the drop is the [music] immigration boom in 2022 was largely driven by students. By 2025, most of those young people had finished their degrees and left the country. So, it's not just that fewer people are coming now, it's also that more people who are already here are leaving.

[00:00:52]Politicians from a range of parties will consider this drop in net migration a good thing and one poll says about 70% of Brits think immigration has been too high in recent years. But, the fall in migration has its downsides, too. The social care sector, which looks after elderly people and younger adults with physical and mental health needs, relies on workers from abroad. And universities are suffering from a lack of international students who pay much more for tuition than Brits. Either way, experts from Oxford University say this drop in immigration [music] is likely to be short-lived. So, it seems it will remain a political football for years to come.