In a surprise to almost no one, official figures confirmed that net immigration levels into the UK reached a

Net migration to Britain hit a record high in 2022, despite years of failed Tory pledges to reduce it. What exactly is driving the increase – and why do successive governments persist with simplistic and misleading ideas that migration can be purged from

As our big story explores, perhaps the main talking point is not so much why the numbers are so high but why, when migration is a dynamic and enduring reality of the modern world, successive Conservative governments have perpetuated a simplistic notion that UK immigration could easily be reduced.

Home affairs editor Rajeev Syal breaks down the figures, while South Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen finds out why Indians studying abroad are so keen on British universities. Finally, Daniel Trilling outlines how the UK’s controversial policy to stop small migrant boats crossing the Channel is partly inspired by Greece’s hardline crackdown, one area in which post-Brexit Britain seems happy to emulate its European neighbours.

Immigration has long been a highly charged debate in UK politics, but with the end of free movement after Brexit, the ruling Conservative party’s hope was that the argument on formal migration would be largely settled, with debate focusing on people arriving via unofficial routes such as small boats.

Successive Conservative prime ministers have aimed to reduce net migration but they never seem to get there. In 2010, David Cameron pledged to bring net migration – the difference between the numbers who arrive in the UK and the numbers leaving – down to “tens of thousands”. He missed every year.

Theresa May, the longest serving home secretary for 60 years with a hardline reputation, said she would hit the target while prime minister – she did not. And in 2019, Boris Johnson promised “overall numbers would come down” as he aimed to “take back control” of UK borders in line with the campaign to leave the European Union that he led to victory. Instead, the numbers ballooned.

Now, net migration and the backlog of asylum claims have reached record highs. Last Thursday the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, was accused of abandoning control of UK borders amid a backlash from Conservative MPs, after figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that overall migration into the UK for 2022 was 606,000, which represents a 24% increase on the previous high of 488,000 last year.

Sunak, the child of Indian parents who moved to the UK from east Africa, remains caught between promises to his party to curb immigration and demands from the economy and the public sector to allow more.

What is going on? The short answer is that this is the result of unexpected one-off factors and long-term choices. In the first column comes one obvious bulge: the arrival of refugees from Ukraine and from Hong Kong. Similarly, Covid has skewed figures, with more shorter-term arrivals such as students coming after the pandemic, given very few arrived during 2020 and 2021.

Total long-term immigration was estimated at about 1.2 million in 2022, and emigration was 557,000, the ONS said. The increase had been largely fuelled by people from outside the EU entering the UK to study, work or escape conflict or oppression.

But more significant is the effect of government policy, not least the fact it became easier for many non-EU nationals to come to the UK to work after Brexit, with restrictions on skills and minimum salaries lowered.

According to the ONS data, the nonEU arrivals included 361,000 students and their families, 235,000 people coming for work-related reasons, 172,000 coming on humanitarian schemes from countries including Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan, and 76,000 people claiming asylum.

In the longer term, there has been an official willingness to rely on overseas staff to fill gaps in industries facing shortages, notably health and social care, rather than tackle wage and working condition issues that might make the roles more appealing to British staff.

And, at least until now, there has been a tolerance for universities targeting new overseas markets for students, who pay high fees but, when studying for masters or doctorate qualifications, can be in their 30s with dependants.

Ministers had been braced for the net migration figure for several weeks, and had managed expectations by briefing to media organisations that the figure could be as much as 1 million. The figure is more than double the level recorded in 2019, when the Conservative party pledged

606k The overall migration number into the UK for 2022, according to the Office for National Statistics

in its election manifesto to reduce immigration.

But it is particularly embarrassing for the arch-Brexiters Sunak and the home secretary, Suella Braverman, who argued that leaving the EU would allow them to take control of UK borders.

The pre-Brexit average of net migration was between 200,000 and 250,000 people a year. Braverman last year said she aimed to reduce overall migration to “tens of thousands”, and Sunak has previously stuck to the former prime minster Boris Johnson’s 2019 pledge to bring down the overall figures to below 245,000. Last week he declined to give a specific target.

Despite Sunak’s promise to reduce the asylum backlog this year, the number of people waiting for an initial decision went up to 172,758 from 166,261, Home Office statistics show. The number waiting more than six months has increased by about 10,000 to 128,812. The number of foreign criminals and people refused asylum removed in 2022 was 38,000, the lowest number on record other than during the years of the pandemic, the Home Office figures showed.

Immigration, via regular routes such as visa schemes and irregular routes such as crossing the Channel in small boats, will be a significant political battleground at the general election expected next year. But how should Sunak explain the enormous boom in visas handed out to workers – particularly after Braverman pledged she would repeat Cameron’s goal of cutting net migration to tens of thousands of people?

Part of the answer lies in Johnson’s decision to introduce a points-based system allowing employers to recruit overseas workers with some language skills and earning potential of £25,600 ($31,500). If employers want to employ staff on lower salaries and with fewer skills, they can lobby the government to make it easier for their particular sector to fill gaps in the labour market.

This has led to a change in the workforce coming to the UK. PostBrexit, Indians account for more than a third of those coming to the UK on long-term visas. Many of the Polish workers who arrived in the early 2000s have left.

The Resolution Foundation has pointed out that the net migration increase has been entirely driven by non-EU workers, whose numbers are up by 220,000. Migration patterns have also shifted away from London, the thinktank has found. The West Midlands saw the biggest fall in the share of UK-born workers, down 5%, as well as the biggest increase in non-EU born workers, up 3%.

Tight labour market conditions are a factor in the UK’s high inflation, and big business demands that skilled workers be allowed to enter the UK. Last year, care workers were added to the shortage occupation list, allowing care homes to recruit overseas workers on £10.75 an hour, just over the minimum wage. The number of overseas workers arriving to work in the health and care sector more than doubled last year.

Sunak’s dilemma of balancing political and economic demands remain fraught and were illustrated last week. Under pressure from Braverman, the government announced the tightening of rules for students’ family members, a move that may curb more than 130,000 dependants who arrive every year. On the same day, the government relaxed visa rules for fishers because of a labour shortage.

Migration will be a big political battlefield at the next election