E-petition: Suspending legal and illegal migration

The e-petition Close the borders! Suspend ALL immigration for 5 years! is being debated in Westminster Hall on 10 March 2025. The petition states that “our country is facing serious challenges both from legal and illegal migration” and the petitioners say “the only way to deal with this is to suspend all immigration temporarily for 5 years.”

The petition is open until 26 May 2025 and had received over 218,000 signatures by February 2025.

In its response to the petition, given on 17 January 2025, the government stated that it is:

taking the tough action required to reduce both illegal immigration and overall net migration, without the economic damage that would come from suspending immigration entirely.

How many people come to the UK each year, and why?

In the year ending June 2024, an estimated 1.2 million people migrated to the UK and 479,000 emigrated from it, leaving net migration (the balance of immigration minus emigration) of 728,000.

This figure was high by historical standards but lower than the recent peak, where net migration was estimated to have reached 906,000 in the year ending June 2023.

Over the past two years, the two main reasons for immigration have been work and study. Recent years have also seen a much higher number of people arriving for humanitarian reasons than in the past, notably via the Ukraine schemes, the Afghan resettlement schemes, and as British National Overseas (BNO) status holders from Hong Kong.

Migration is currently a source of population growth and migrants tends to be younger on average than the general population. According to the Office for National Statistics, net migration is projected to be the only source of population growth in the UK over the next 25 years. Migration projections are highly uncertain and based entirely on past trends.

The Library’s briefing paper on migration statistics contains a longer term summary of the UK’s migration figures.

Economic impact of immigration

There is limited research on the impact on the economy of suspending all immigration. This debate pack provides a short review of research on the effects of immigration on the economy and the number of non-UK nationals in the UK labour market.

Public finances and GDP

The impact of immigration on public finances and the broader economy will be determined by migrants’ characteristics such as skills and earnings.

In March 2024, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) published analysis of the economic impact of different net migration scenarios. It found that lower net migration led to lower GDP, although the size of this effect is less clear.

The impact of lower migration on GDP per person is less clear and depends on the characteristics of migrants, particularly the productivity level or migrants compared with the existing population.

Labour market

The Office for National Statistics publishes statistics on employment by country of birth and nationality.

In October to December 2024, there were 4.70 million people working in the UK who were not UK nationals, 13.9% of all people in employment. This included:

• 14 million people who were nationals of the 27 EU countries (6.3%)
• 57 million people who were nationals of countries outside the EU (7.6%)

The number of non-UK nationals in employment is greater than the 3.5 million people aged 16 to 64 (UK and non-UK nationals) who were out of work in October to December 2024 but who wanted to work. Of these, 1.5 million were unemployed, meaning they were actively looking for a job, while 2.0 million were economically inactive, meaning they were not able to work.

This means that a suspension of immigration for five years would likely lead to labour shortages across the UK’s labour market.

The transportation and storage, hospitality and IT sectors were all more likely to have workers who were born outside the UK, and therefore these sectors could be particularly impacted by such a suspension.