Immigration ‘won’t fall’
THERESA May has no chance of hitting her target of reducing immigration to 1990s levels after Brexit, a think-tank said yesterday.
The rate of net migration will be barely changed, Migration Watch UK said.
It published estimates based on the prospect that under future immigration rules, skilled workers will be allowed to come and live in Britain if their earnings are £30,000 a year or more. If that happens, immigration will add 270,000 people a year to the population. Mrs May’s objective remains to reduce net migration to below 100,000 a year.
If the think-tank estimate is correct, the population of England will hit 60million in ten years. That is also the level predicted by the Office for National Statistics last week.
Using the Government’s post-Brexit immigration plans it said: ‘While the end of free movement for EU workers will have some effect, a new work permit system for skilled workers will be wide open to the global labour pool.’