Finally some news that allows the severely battered British Labor government to breathe a sigh of relief – at least supposedly: The Net immigrationi.e. the number of immigrants minus those who emigrated fell by 69 percent compared to the previous year. Specifically, they are from June 2024 until June 2025 bottom line 204,000 people came into the country.
This is a sharp contrast to the 649,000 net immigrants in the previous year. The so-called „Boris-Welle“, According to the British media, it seems to have completely subsided. Under the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson scraped the 2023 immigration numbers almost at the million mark.
It is a success that the Labor government gladly on their own flags want to staple. “It’s about that,” explained Migrations-Minister Mike Tapp„Order and control and ensure that legal migration is not an open door as we saw under the last administration.”
But actually the decline is largely one attributable to the greatly reduced influx of non-EU citizens. And it opens Measures back, the the conservative previous government has set off. The Tories had Salary limits for nursing staff introduced and them, just like iinternational students forbidden, relatives to Great Britain pick up.
“Brain Drain”
In addition, probably still due to Brexit, a minus of 70,000 EU citizens: 155,000 Europeans left the island last year, but only 85,000 moved to the UK.
At the same time also have 252,000 Britons left their countryonly 143,000 have returned.
The tabloid Daily Mail fears one „Brain Drain“ and for the conservative Telegraph The figures are confirmation that “Rachel Reeves’ record tax rises are making Britain unattractive to young and aspiring people have done.” Because with 87,000 people were the majority of British emigrants between 16 and 34 years old.
Mostly young British drew it by the way down under. They were the fastest growing nationality among holders of Working holiday visas for Australia in 2024-25, with an increase of 80 percent over the previous year.
Maximum number of asylum applications
The reduced net migration is driving this Focus once again on the hot topic of asylum. Every second person who immigrated came as an asylum seeker. With 110.051 there was one from September 2024 to September 2025 new record number of asylum applications and also those Number of asylum seekers in hotels is 29,000 during the Labor government grown to 36,000.
“It seems,” concludes Ben Brindle from the Migration Observatory at Oxford University together, “that the Composition of migration worsened from an economic point of view “Fewer people are receiving a skilled worker visa while the proportion of refugees, who often need a lot of support, has increased.
The British Home Office recently tried to do so strict measuresto regain control – over illegal immigration but also the national discussion. But that one Telegraph revealed just last week that the Interior Ministry had lost the residence information of 53,298 asylum seekers.
The Labor government is unlikely to expect much positive wind from the new figures.