by Ranjit Sidhu
On the Today programme this morning, Nigel Farage demonstrated that he did not understand his own immigration policy. He talked about targeting annual net migration in the range 20-50,000 while describing measures that would mean net migration under Ukip would actually be over 200,000.
Here’s why Nigel Farage got it so badly wrong.
Last Thursday the latest immigration statistics from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) broke down the figures into the general categories of the reason for coming into: a. work b. formal study c. to join a relative.
When we look at these figures, we see the overwhelming reason for net migration of 298,000 is not those searching for work, but rather those coming to this country to study at our universities (57%). As Nigel Farage has said, Ukip would not stop genuine international students from coming to the UK to study.
Further, this is the group with the most significant difference between inflow and outflow, with 192,000 in the year ending September 2014 coming to the UK to study, with only 22,000 of our own leaving the UK to be educated abroad. This is a long term trend with those coming to the UK for formal study accounting for an average 66% of net migration. In fact, in 2011 the balance of those coming to the UK for formal study was actually larger at 213,000 than the total net migration of 205,000.
How can that be?
