| Ignorance about immigration 12:19 - Aug 8 with 310 views | DJR |
I have been away for a few days and was surprised no one had picked up on this.
"Support for hard-line anti-immigration policies linked to ignorance about migration figures, poll suggests
YouGov has released detailed polling on attitudes to immigration that shows a clear link between having hard-line anti-immigrant views and being ignorant about the level of illegal immigration into the UK.
YouGov’s Matthew Smith says:
"Almost half of Britons (47%) think there are more migrants staying in the UK illegally rather than legally … [and] crucially, this view is held by 72% of those who want to see mass removals. However, these perceptions appear to be wide of the mark.
Estimates of the population of illegal migrants living in the UK range from 120,000 to 1.3 million, with Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf recently putting the figure at 1.2 million.
Regardless of which figure from this range is chosen, it does not come close to the number of migrants living in the UK legally, with 2021/2022 census data putting the entire foreign-born population of the UK at 10.7 million."
It is well known that many people massively over-estimate the extent to which irregular migration contributes to the overall net migration figures, which reached a record high of 900,000 in the year ending June 2023.
The confusion is partly explained by the huge media and political attention given to people arriving in the UK on small boats. But the annual small boat arrival figure has never been higher than the 46,000 total it reached in 2022 – although it is on course to pass that this year.
The YouGov polling suggests that, while cutting migration numbers significantly but still allowing some migrants into the country is the policy with most support (very broadly, this is also what Labour and the Tories advocate), almost half of voters either strongly (26%) or somewhat (19%) support “admitting no more new migrants and requiring large numbers of migrants who came to the UK in recent years to leave”.
YouGov describes this as “extraordinary”. Advocating for migrants who settled in the UK for years to leave is a policy that has not been supported by anyone in mainstream politics for decade, and even now it is a cause that is principally being championed by people who are unashamedly racist.
But the YouGov polling also found that almost half of respondents thought there were more immigrants staying in the UK illegally than legally, and that only 19% said that there was “much more” legal than illegal immigration (which is almost certainly the correct answer, even allowing for the very highest estimates of the level of unauthorised migration).
And YouGov established that people saying, wrongly, that there is “much more” illegal migration than legal migration are much more likely to be in the group saying large numbers of recent migrants should be returned. [Post edited 8 Aug 12:24]
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| Ignorance about immigration on 15:57 - Aug 8 with 45 views | Freddies_Ears |
The last govt allowed around 750k migrants in each year, which utterly dwarfs the (less than) 50k on small boats. Even of that 50k, around half are allowed to remain (proven refugee status). It didn't help that the last govt virtually stopped processing asylum claims so a huge backlog grew. It didn't help that the much-trumpeted Rwanda scheme was an utter failure. It doesn't help that UK still has no national ID system, making it really easy to work illegally (and, hence, making UK a relatively attractive place to come to). |  | | |
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