Claim: Asked by a BBC listener what proportion of UK immigrants come from the EU, Boris Johnson declared “from memory the total net migration proportions are about 50-50” before adding “but I may be wrong about that.”
InFact: 219,000 more non-EU citizens moved to the UK than left in the year ending March 2019, according to the Office of National Statistics. By contrast, net migration of EU citizens was only 59,000. That’s nearly four non-EU immigrants for every EU citizen. Given how the Tories are weaponising migration as the main reason for quitting the EU, one would have thought the Prime Minister would know the basic numbers.
Since Johnson made his remarks, the ONS has released the data for the year to end-June. Non-EU migration has gone up to 229,000 net and EU migration has fallen to 48,000. As a result non-EU migration is now almost five times as big.
He probably doesn’t know either that European citizens* contribute more to the public purse than migrants from elsewhere or indeed native Brits. So Johnson’s policy of squeezing EU migration and increasing non-EU migration is bad for the public finances too.
* Citizens of the EU plus Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland
The paragraph on the end-June data was added on December 1
The headline and excerpt were updated on December 4