It is not clear which nationalities are most likely to overstay their visas as the Home Office has not published statistics on exit checks since 2020, due to a review into the accuracy of the figures., external
Many exits from the UK can go unrecorded, meaning those without a departure record were not necessarily still in the country.
Prof Jonathan Portes, a senior fellow at the academic think tank UK in a Changing Europe, said the impact that restricting visas would have on the number of asylum applications was “likely to be quite small”.
“I think the impact here is not designed primarily to be about numbers overall, it’s designed to be about reducing asylum claims which are perceived to be abusive,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“When you have someone who comes here ostensibly as a student and then switches quickly to the asylum route… that is an abuse of the system – the government is trying to reduce that.”
Latest Home Office figures, external show that more than 108,000 people claimed asylum in the UK last year – the highest level since records began in 1979.
In total, 10,542 Pakistani nationals claimed asylum – the most of any nationality. Some 2,862 Sri Lankan nationals and 2,841 Nigerian nationals claimed asylum in the same period.
Latest figures for 2023/24 also show there were 732,285 international students in the UK, with most coming from India (107,480) and China (98,400).
The number of UK work and study visas dropped in 2024, compared to the year before.
Since becoming prime minister last year, Sir Keir Starmer has promised to reduce both illegal and legal migration – but has previously declined to offer a net migration target, saying an “arbitrary cap” has had no impact in the past.
Labour’s plans to reduce migration include making it a criminal offence to endanger the lives of others at sea, to target small boat crossings, and cutting demand for overseas hires by developing training plans for sectors that are currently reliant on migrant workers.
Sir Keir has criticised the previous Conservative government, saying it failed to deliver lower net migration numbers “by design, not accident”.
Net migration – the number of people coming to the UK, minus the number leaving – hit a record 906,000 in the year to June 2023, and then fell to 728,000 in the year to June 2024.
New rules introduced by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in a bid to reduce migration levels appear to have contributed to the fall.
The previous Conservative government increased the minimum salary for skilled overseas workers wanting to come to the UK from £26,200 to £38,700 and banned care workers from bringing family dependants to the UK.
