How much does the UK rely on legal migration?

"Stop the boats", "smash the gangs", "one in, one out".

In recent years, the most headline grabbing political promises on migration have involved people arriving in the country illegally, often on small boats.

Shabana Mahmood, the new home secretary, has said the UK could suspend visas from countries that do not "play ball" and agree to returns deals for migrants.

But 95% of immigration doesn't fit in this category.

Almost a million people moved to the UK legally in 2024. That compares with the near 44,000 who arrived "irregularly" - the Home Office term for people who arrive (or are found) in the UK without correct documentation.

Immigration has made up 98% of recent population growth in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

These are not the people living in detention centres or asylum hotels, but those who work, often in social care and the NHS, or study at British universities.

Legal migration has also experienced some of the biggest changes in recent years - not just in terms of the raw numbers but who makes up those numbers.

Through the 2010s, an average of 750,000 people moved to the UK each year. That grew by 75% within three years of Britain leaving the EU in 2020.

One reason for the sudden growth - particularly from countries outside the EU like India, Pakistan and Nigeria - was the decision to introduce specialist health and care worker visas, and the fact that people coming for work or study could bring dependants with them.

Both the health and care worker visa and the dependant rule have since been removed, which led to the immigration numbers falling back in 2024. The 2024 figure - 948,000 - is still 26% higher than the average from 2012-2019.

In the 2010s, more than half of the people moving to the UK were from EU countries, while an additional 10% were Britons returning home.

A third of people moving to Britain came from outside of the EU.

As of 2024, eight in ten people moving to the country were from outside the EU.

Other European countries have also experienced high levels of immigration in recent years. Almost two million people moved to Germany in 2022, falling to 1.3 million in 2023, the most recent year for which Eurostat provides data.

More than a million people moved to Spain in both of those years as well, while the numbers for Italy and France have remained below 500,000 throughout the past 10 years.

Pull factors: Why are people coming to the UK?

Other than a period in 2023 when work was briefly the most popular reason, the opportunity to study at British universities has been the most common factor attracting people from outside of the EU to move to the UK over the past few years.

The number of people coming for both of those reasons has fallen since people with work or study visas were no longer allowed to bring dependantsi with them, following a policy change introduced in March 2024 under Rishi Sunak’s premiership.

The number of people coming for humanitarian reasons is down by more than two thirds compared with 2021 and 2022, when the war in Ukraine and the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan led to many people needing to flee their countries at short notice.

The number claiming asylum has more than doubled since 2019, however.

It’s easy to see the impact of the changes to visa rules regarding dependants. The number of people moving to the UK because they were the dependant of someone studying fell by 86% between 2023 and 2024, from 123,000 to 17,000.

The number of people on work dependant visas fell by a third over the same period. Work visa dependants are still allowed for people in a highly skilled role.

The most common nationality of people emigrating to the UK from outside of the EU in 2024 was Indian (157,000), followed by Pakistani (76,000), Chinese (70,000), Nigerian (52,000) and Ukrainian (22,000).

Three quarters of Chinese people who moved to the UK were on study visas. That was also the most popular reason among Indians. Among Nigerians and Pakistanis there were more people coming for work than study.

The data around which EU countries people move to the UK from, or the reasons why they move to Britain, is not as detailed as it is for those from further afield, although the ONS is working on improving this in the coming months.

A third of EU nationals have their reason for moving to the UK listed as “other”. That could mean they did not respond when asked why they were moving to the UK or that their response was non-specific - for example just saying “emigrating” or “immigrating”.

Among those we do have detail on, more people come for work than to study.

How much do universities rely on foreign students?

Foreign students paid almost £12bn in tuition fees in the 2023-24 academic year, representing 47% of all fees received by British universities that year.

Tuition fees make up 52% of the total income received by British universities, with the remainder coming from research grants, funding bodies, investments income, donations and other sources.

Some major universities, for example the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews in Scotland, as well as University College London, the London School of Economics, and Imperial College (also in London), received upwards of three quarters of their tuition fee income from foreign students.

Around two-thirds of tuition fees paid to Oxford and Cambridge, as well as the universities of Manchester, Warwick and Southampton, came from students who were not based in the UK before they started their course of study.

See how your academic institution compares with this lookup:

The public generally has a positive attitude towards people coming to the UK for study, or those staying in the UK because they got a graduate job after their course has finished.

A majority of people also support people coming for either high-skilled jobs, or low-skilled jobs where there is a shortage of British workers in the sector - for example agricultural workers or carers.

Seven in 10 people still think that overall immigration numbers have been too high in recent years, however, including a majority of supporters of all the main political parties other than the Greens. Even among the Greens it's the most popular opinion.

There are concerns that some people are abusing the student visa system by either telling UK immigration officials that they are coming to study but actually not having any intention of doing so, or overstaying their legal visa after their course has finished.

Read more: How many people are coming to Britain on student visas?

What industries do workers move to the UK for?

Agriculture is the industry that attracts the most temporary workers, averaging 24,000 visa applications a year since 2021.

But health and social care attracts the most applications for permanent visas - nearly 9,000 in the year to June 2025, despite falling almost 95% since 2023.

In the year to June 2023, 383,000 people were granted a visa under the Health and Care Worker scheme, more than 220,000 of which were dependants of health and care workers.

The Health and Care Worker visa was introduced by Boris Johnson’s government to create a fast-track route for would-be NHS employees and social care workers, to fill vacancies in the sector.

It was cancelled in May this year as part of a general crackdown on visas for lower-skilled workers.

That decision was described at the time as "a crushing blow to an already fragile sector" by Professor Martin Green, chief executive of Care England.

"Vacancies still remain sky-high, and many providers are on the brink of collapse," he added. "Who do ministers think is going to care for people tomorrow, next week, or next month?"

Then home secretary Yvette Cooper said: "It's about preventing this chaotic system where we had overseas recruitment soar while training in the UK was cut, and we saw low-skilled migration in particular hugely go up at the same time as UK residents in work or in training fell. That is a broken system. So that is what we need to change."

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

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