EU immigration to UK falls as business calls for open door

The number of EU immigrants coming to Britain fell to a five-year low in 2017, as fewer people arrived without a firm job offer during the first full calendar year since June 2016’s Brexit vote, official data showed on Monday.

Concern about high rates of immigration was a major reason Britons voted to leave the EU, and Prime Minister Theresa May has vowed to end unrestricted free movement of EU citizens to Britain after the country leaves the bloc in March 2019.

Businesses, however, want easy immigration rules to help fill job vacancies at a time of low unemployment, and almost all economists say Britain benefits financially from immigration.

Monday’s data showed that overall net long-term immigration to Britain rose to 282,000 in 2017 from 249,000 in 2016, but well below the record of 332,000 recorded in 2015.

But net immigration of EU citizens decreased to 101,000 in 2017 from 133,000 in 2016, and was almost half the number who had moved to Britain in the 12 months running up to the Brexit vote, Britain’s Office for National Statistics said.

“The estimated number of EU citizens coming to the UK ‘looking for work’ continued to decrease over the last year and the number coming to the UK for a definite job has remained stable,” the statistics agency said.

Madeleine Sumption, director of Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, said the fall probably reflected lower unemployment in the EU, the weaker pound and Brexit concerns.

“The data suggest that the UK is still an attractive country, but its allure for EU migrants has declined considerably over the past couple of years,” she said.

“It’s not all about Brexit: EU net migration was unusually high just before the referendum, and it’s likely that some of the decline would have happened anyway even if the UK had not voted to leave,” she added.

Last week the government said in a paper setting out its Brexit negotiating aims that it wanted to control the number of EU immigrants after Brexit to tackle public concern about pressure on public services and on wages for low-paid workers.

Britain’s Institute of Directors said businesses were suffering from skills shortages and urged May to keep the door open for immigration.