Surge in number of EU migrants rushing to secure British status
Requests for permanent residency double after Brexit vote: Home Office faces backlog of 100,000
THE NUMBER of European Union migrants seeking permanent residency in the UK has more than doubled in the past year to nearly 250,000 amid doubts over their status after Brexit.
The Home Office is facing a backlog of nearly 100,000 cases after a rush of EU migrants applying to stay in the UK following the referendum vote.
It came as separate figures revealed that net migration by EU citizens to the UK exceeded migration from all other countries combined for the first time.
While the overall level of EU migration fell to 165,000 in the year to September, the level of net migration by those from outside the EU fell to 164,000 after a significant decline in the number of foreign students.
The figures also showed that the number of migrants from Romania and Bulgaria rose by 19,000 to a record 74,000 in the year to September 2016.
However, overall net migration – the difference between the numbers of people arriving and leaving the country – fell 49,000 to 273,000, the lowest level for two years.
Lord Green of Deddington, the head of Migration Watch UK, said yesterday that Britain needed to become “selfsufficient” and had nothing to fear from an exodus of low-skilled EU migrant workers.
He said: “We have one and a half million people who are unemployed and we have over a million part-time workers who are looking for full-time work, so it’s not as if the barrel is empty.
“I’m not suggesting ‘British jobs for British workers’, what I’m suggesting is that in reaching a new immigration regime with Europe, we set it up in such a way as to minimise the flow of lowskilled EU migrants, whose contribution to our economy is obviously much less than the highly skilled.”
Home Office figures disclosed yesterday that the number of people applying for documents to prove that they are permanent residents had risen from 94,857 last year to 240,000. The figures showed that the number of those who have been successful has trebled from 18,000 in 2015 to 65,000 in 2016.
However, there are concerns in Whitehall that the Home Office is struggling to cope with the number of applications. The number of outstanding applications has risen from 33,298 in December 2015 to 85,242 in December of last year.
The Migration Observatory, an Oxford-based think tank, has previously forecast that the Home Office might have to process the equivalent of 140 years of residence applications in just 12 months after Brexit negotiations are triggered.
Theresa May has promised to secure the rights of EU citizens living in the UK and Britons living abroad as soon as possible.
It came amid a cross-party effort by Tory rebels, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and cross-benchers in the Lords to guarantee the rights of EU citizens.
Labour is increasingly confident that it can defeat the Government over the issue in the Lords, but any amendments are likely to be overturned by the Commons.
A Home Office spokesman said: “European citizens resident in the UK make a vital contribution both to our economy and our society.
“That’s why we will be making securing their status, as well as that of British nationals in the EU, a priority as soon as we trigger Article 50 and the negotiations begin.
“EEA nationals are not required to apply to the Home Office for documentation confirming their status or their right to be here, and these rights remain unchanged while we are a member of the European Union.”
Britain will need a new immigration system after Brexit. David Cameron failed to deliver on his promise to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands – and it is still not obvious how Theresa May will get any closer to the target. If anything, the latest migration figures show that things are moving in the wrong direction.
The Office for National Statistics stresses that an apparent fall in net long-term international migration in the year to September was not “statistically significant”. The figure remained high, at 273,000. There has been a notable decrease in EU8 citizens and non-EU citizens from Africa, the Americas and Oceania, some of which appears to be explained by a fall in foreign students. At the same time, the numbers arriving from Romania and Bulgaria jumped – by 19,000.
It looks as if, overall, Britain took slightly fewer high-skilled migrants and slightly more lowskilled. Some 104,000 migrants arrived in the country without a job to go to. Assuming that this is not what the voters want, what will the Government do to correct it? Presumably a new visa system is the answer. Who will administer it? Will there be a preference for attracting PhDs over manual labourers? Will quotas be determined by politically motivated targets or business need? Will domestic workers be up-skilled to fill gaps?
These are not questions that need to wait until the end of the two-year EU negotiation for an answer: the Government can start work now. Two considerations are vital. First, that any new system is properly enforced. Secondly, that competitiveness must not be allowed to suffer. Brexit is about establishing control over immigration – not driving away talent and ability.