Comment on Let's say hypothetically I wanted to leave the US permanently;
BigTwerp@feddit.uk 4 weeks agoThere’s several factors:
It’s hard to tell from your link whether people from EU countries that applied for citizenship because Brexit changed their status counts in those figures. That would be a lot of people in 2021, 22 and 23 which iirc was the window to do that.
Similarly a lot of skilled workers from the EU left in that period and were replaced with non-eu workers. The EU leavers might not be counted in net migration.
Students sometimes are counted in migration figures and sometimes not. We have a lot of overseas students and obviously post COVID the figures surged.
A large proportion is healthcare, either in the NHS directly or in care homes for the elderly. Because of our ageing population the health system is expanding beyond the ability to train new care staff.
So… Many factors but definitely not “just letting anyone in”.
BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
It definitely looks like policy was loosened.
AFAIK UE has draconian requirements on work immigration from outside. Yet the amount of migration to UK not only replaced those who left after Brexit but resulted in big net increase of immigrants.
BigTwerp@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
You are correct in the sense that rules for non EU nationals were relaxed under the last government but you still need to be in the occupational shortlist to get in, find a sponsor etc. You also have to remember that being in the EU meant zero barrier to movement or working so in a sense we have replaced no rules for rules.
The current government has closed a lot of loopholes that made it easy to bring spouse or family members on the same visa and are clamping down on student visas generally (because they are being abused) and student visa overstay (because they kind of turned a blind eye to it if former students found a job that would sponsor a visa eventually, even if it took years).
…I also forgot to mention the circa 150000 Hong Kong born British Citizens who had to flee Hong Kong after the purges in 2022 who have settled here.