Official reports have revealed that in 2018, more than 600,000 migrants arrived in the United Kingdom in 2018 – twice as many as the number of people who migrated to France and nearly the entire population Northern Ireland’s capital city Belfast.

The data, which was released via the Office for National Statistics (ONS), stated that over a quarter of a million more people arrived with the intention of staying at least a year then left in 2018.

All in all – over the past 12 months – 602,000 newcomers migrated to the UK, while 343,000 emigrated – demonstrating a clearly significant trend toward overall net migration, amounting to 258,000 individuals.

Additionally, the British government granted asylum, resettlement, or alternative forms of leave to 17,304 people in the year ending in March 2019 – marking an increase from the previous year.

The Office for National Statistics reported that “Since 2016, the pattern of migration to the UK for work has been changing. Long-term immigration to the UK for work has fallen, mainly driven by the decline in EU arrivals. Despite this, 99,000 EU citizens still came to the UK long-term to work in 2018, a level similar to 2012. We are also seeing the number of skilled work visas for non-EU citizens increasing, although overall non-EU work-related immigration has remained broadly stable.”

Regarding the ONS report, the vice chairmen of the group Migration Watch UK, Alp Mehmet, had this to say: “Overall net migration remains at more than a quarter of a million — still unacceptably high. And despite the uncertainty during 2018, nearly 75,000 more EU arrived than left, as well as 232,000 non-EU nationals.”

“The clear message in these figures for the next Prime Minister is that they must make it a priority to deliver on the government’s pledge to reduce immigration levels by a lot, in line with the public’s wishes,” he added.

Last Christmas, the Home Office released a report which outlined their plans concerning migration in the year ahead which involved more work visas. At the time, Migration Watch UK declared “there are, literally, no measures to reduce net migration, now running at 270,000 a year”, while adding that it “seems certain that these proposals would allow a massive increase in the number of people entering the UK for work, and [it is] inevitable that many of these would find ways to stay long-term. This is not control. It is an illusion of control.”

Interestingly enough, this comes despite the Conservative party – whose manifesto pledges that in three successive elections that overall net migration would be decreased from ‘from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands’ – has been in power for nearly a decade now.

In a speech given in 2010 by then Home Secretary Theresa May, she denounced the previous Labor government’s track record, saying “over Labor’s time in office net migration totaled more than 2.2 million people – more than double the population of Birmingham. We can’t go on like this.”

But the Conservative government never took any action whatsoever to decrease the number of migrants coming into the country, and as a result, hundreds of thousands of people have flowed into Britain in each successive year.

In what has become an infamous article in the Evening Standard, former Conservative Chancellor George Osborne wrote that the leadership in the Conservative party never actually had any intention of staying true to their manifesto’s pledge to reduce net migration to tens of thousands.

“None of [the Cabinet’s] senior members support the pledge in private and all would be glad to see the back of something that has caused the Conservative Party such public grief,” Mr. Osborne revealed.