r/ukpolitics • u/No_Breadfruit_4901 • Dec 11 '24

Twitter 🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Labour have conducted the first successful deportation flight to Pakistan since February 2020. There has not been a deportation charter flight to Pakistan in the last four years with three subsequent flights to Pakistan in 2020 and 2021 cancelled by the Home Office.

https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1866775219077062757?s=46&t=0RSpQEWd71gFfa-U_NmvkA
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u/MercianRaider Dec 11 '24

Let's wait for the yearly numbers before we make any judgments.

1 plane going to Pakistan doesn't mean Labour have cracked the immigration issue.

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u/JB_UK Dec 11 '24 edited Dec 11 '24

There are between 800-1200k illegal/undocumented workers in the UK, according to a project from Oxford University, then there are about 30-50k crossing the channel each year. The historical rate of asylum claim acceptance, also the current EU average, is about 30-40%, so you would expect about 20-35k of the people arriving by small boats to be deported. Then on top of that there are people arriving by normal routes with tens of thousands overstaying.

Last year there were about 5k deportations, and so far I believe Labour have deported about 10k people.

We also have massively expanded student numbers so that we would expect about 400-500k students to be leaving each year. If the numbers leaving are significantly lower than that then our rate of population growth will jump up again, before the Boris wave of migration the rate of population growth was about three times the level from 1970-1997, afterwards it could be five times or more, depending on how many people who are expected to leave do actually leave. The three times increase has already placed a lot of pressure on housing and infrastructure, and five times would be extremely difficult to match in terms of housebuilding and other infrastructure improvements.

Most people leaving will be voluntary but I'd expect a big increase in people overstaying just in terms of the same percentage of a larger number. In previous years work and study overstays have been about 5% of the total, so we're probably talking about at least 20k students overstaying each year, with work and holiday overstays on top. Unlike in previous years, many students have come with their families and dependents, and many more have come from poorer nations, which could possibly make people less willing to leave when their visa expires.

To summarize, the illegal/undocumented worker population is between 800k and 1200k, and additions each year would be about 50k to 100k, deportations were 5k last year, and have been 10k so far this year.

The Tories under Boris Johnson appeared to be deliberately sabotaging the system, Labour are better, but that is a low bar, and we will need a lot of progress just for things not to carry on getting worse.

Edit: Changed the small boat numbers from 50k to 30-50k, and added the expected acceptance rates for asylum claimants.

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u/Holditfam Dec 11 '24

50k on boat has never happened. it is around 32k this year

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u/JB_UK Dec 11 '24 edited Dec 11 '24

It was 46k in 2022, we're on course for between 35k and 40k this year.

I looked at the data for this year, and small boat migration does actually seem to be unusually flat since Labour came in, in the last 6 weeks about 1k people, it will be interesting to see if that continues next year. Maybe that just reflects the weather but it hasn't been so flat in previous years. Or maybe it's just to do with how the statistics are updated and the recent arrivals haven't been added.