Last year the United Kingdom had recorded a record migration balance of 764,000 people in the year to December 2022.
The migration balance is the difference between the number of people who immigrated to the United Kingdom (1.2 million people) minus the number of people who leave the country (532 thousand) in 2023.
“Although it is too early to say whether this is the start of a new downward trend, emigration increased in 2023, while new data from the Ministry of the Interior shows that visa applications have decreased in recent months”, says the ONS.
The British Government has claimed that this decline is a result of recent changes to immigration rules, namely the limitation on the entry of family members of international students and an increase in the salary threshold for a “skilled worker” visa.
On Wednesday, the Home Office published its latest visa statistics, which reveal a 79% decline in the number of student dependents and a 58% drop in the number of family members of healthcare workers and social assistance.
According to the ONS, almost half of the people who immigrated to work in this sector come from India or Nigeria.
China, Pakistan and Zimbabwe are other main countries from which migrants originate.
Since 2021, when the free movement of European Union citizens ended as a result of the United Kingdom’s departure from the bloc, extra-EU immigration has exceeded immigration of European citizens, currently reduced to 10%.
Last year, 4,414 Portuguese people immigrated to the United Kingdom, according to British Social Security statistics published by the Ministry of Labor.
In the first quarter of this year, the figure stood at 754, less than half of the 1,567 in the same quarter of 2022.
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