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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 14h

It’s 16% across July to September. More than 16% fall in students as lots of applications get rejected or withdrawn.

James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 21h

Work visa dependant holder numbers are really drifting down though, just very slowly. Well until the new family policy comes in, then it will probably be a big drop for health and care dependants.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 21h

Eg in Q2 a lot of welders were recruited from Trinidad and Tobago, a country very few workers traditionally came from but it's a country where people speak English.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 21h

They've fallen a lot since July, but now it just seems to be seasonal fluctuations (June and July are highest because of financial services recruitment and doctors starting training). The further drop when the tougher English test came in seems to have reversed with changing recruitment patterns.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

He means they should have to abandon their spouse and children if they want to work here.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

As soon as care workers were banned from having dependants, they stopped coming. Funny that.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

No dependants means no workers. People don’t just abandon their families for a new job. Every time a job bans dependants the number of workers coming to do those jobs falls dramatically. Unless it’s a short term job paying well. But definitely care workers wouldn’t come for the low pay on offer.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The list will be even smaller from July 2028. But to be honest I’m not convinced all the construction roles last that long. Not many visas are granted and there’s a high rate of exploitation. Carpenters most likely to stay on the list though.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Their wish list (high wage visas only and smaller temporary shortage list) seems to be everything the government is doing anyway.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I’ve seen them on X. They seem to quote improbably high numbers for visa sponsorship in 2025. I think I know the FOI request they come from. The numbers appear to be the number of sponsored workers currently working for each company as of the end of 2025, but it’s not entirely clear.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

If we have a mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants who’ve followed all the rules as Shabana Mahmood proposes yes the population will shrink.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

There aren’t 170,000 extra people a year anymore. 2025 predates many immigration restrictions. We could easily have negative net migration in 2026, 2027 and 2028 even if Earned Settlement doesn’t apply retrospectively. If it does then the population will collapse.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Certainly not to the racists still moaning about immigration despite there being potentially negative net migration. If that was your concern then it's already been addressed (and overshot significantly given people claimed to want net migration below 100,000).

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Why would you need to lobby over welders? Just apply for a skilled worker visa, they're already eligible.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

While rejoining the EU would significantly increase net migration, there's no way it would increase it by anything like 200,000, unless countries like Ukraine, Albania and Moldova join the EU. We'd see far fewer people come from countries like Poland and Romania now. www.msn.com/en-gb/news/o...

msn.com

MSN

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Especially if they claim we still have it. Almost every category of immigration has been dramatically. The global talent visa is about the only exception and numbers there are relatively low anyway and have stayed roughly the same despite the rules for qualifying being liberalised.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It’s clear people who think it’s too high don’t know what it is. Immigration is very low now. I don’t see how potentially negative net migration in 2026 is too high.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Yes, especially once the EU expands again and we start to get a lot of immigration from a new set of countries.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Yes I’d hate that argument, much more than the stay out side even. Mainly for the racism but also because it’s a blatant lie, EU nationals in the UK are very diverse.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Yes while this hostility to immigration continues. Rejoining the EU would increase immigration and also increase immigration of people that aren’t white. Neither is a bad thing, but it means you can’t make an honest pro-EU case without also making a pro-immigration case.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Yes. It would probably lose my vote too. Though mixed feelings as cutting long-term non-EU immigration even further as EU members wouldn’t be possible. It’s already been cut to the bare bones. Plus some of the nastier policies would have to be reversed, eg Earned Settlement would break EU rules.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

It’s one of those things that’s both deeply racist and would backfire both ways as it’s also a lie. Rejoining the EU would increase overall immigration. Also we’d see a lot of immigration of Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nigerians and Ghanaians who are EU nationals or family of EU nationals.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Unless the EU expands of course. We would get a significant number of immigrants from Albania, Ukraine and Moldova (but probably not many from Montenegro).

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Demand from Central and European Europeans would be much lower now than when we were in the EU before. Where demand from the EU continued to increase right up until Brexit (and would likely be even higher now) was EU nationals who were born outside the EU, not white and/or bringing non-EU family.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

There is still a nasty element to the Japanese proposals where only higher earners can get permanent residency now. But yes we were pretty unique on fees until the Americans went crazy.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Treaties they repeatedly broke. They had a mass deportation to Oklahoma of the tribes that they were actually allied to, never mind the tribes they fought against.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The same thing happened in Germany. Slightly faster fall in the U.K. initially but the overall trend was the same of a huge collapse in net migration from the EU to there.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

When I was a student I knew someone from Singapore and he kept complaining about how many Asian people there were in Birmingham haha.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This has been by far the quietest September since 2020 for small boat crossings. It's become increasingly clear that numbers really are down and it's not the weather or seasonal trends. Looking like about 25,000 people crossing this year which would be less than 2021 even.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Not true. People have gradually left over a prolonged period of time. There was no sudden mass exodus of EU nationals with Brexit.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I found that one out the hard way. I went on a winter holiday to Greece and thought it would be nice to visit Bulgaria too as it’s nearby.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Yes. I’d also like to see how they react to meeting eg Portuguese people in Leicester, Dutch people in Birmingham or Italian or Spanish people in Manchester. They’re just as much Europeans as other EU nationals but I just don’t think they'll see it that way.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Okay if Europeans are as much more culturally compatible than non-Europeans as you claim, can you list me five cultural similarities that British people share with Bulgarians but not with Jamaicans.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I’d like to see them list ten cultural similarities that the U.K. shares with say Bulgaria but not with say Jamaica. If Europeans really are as much more culturally compatible with British people than non-Europeans as they claim then it must be easy for them to do so.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

More work visas for people coming from abroad go to EU nationals than to South Asians and Africans combined. Plus inside the EU we’d have the Blue Card scheme for high skilled workers with similar eligibility requirements to our current skilled worker visa.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The other big issue I think is sponsor license revocations. People don’t have as much time to find a new sponsor now the government are quicker to start the 60 days until curtailment period. Care workers can stay longer with the regional hubs but will have to leave if they don’t find a new sponsor.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

It’s likely that the actual number of immigrants living in places like this will drop (not just the level of immigration). Because the students that have already arrived will either move to find a job that will sponsor them or emigrate when their graduate visa expires, but fewer new students come.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The flip side of course is university areas saw a big increase in immigration post Brexit, sometimes areas that didn’t have much immigration before. Not just obvious university cities but also places like Middlesbrough, Sunderland, Hull, Dundee, Aberdeen, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Lincoln

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

A lot of areas had very high immigration from the EU but have had much less since, even when net migration was at its peak. Boston, South Holland, Kings Lynn, East Staffordshire places like that. Generally EU immigration is more permanent than claimed by Burnham, but less so in agricultural areas.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

We really don’t allow a lot of long-term non-EU immigration nowadays and most of what we do have would continue in the EU (family, asylum, blue card for high skilled workers). We currently grant more work visas for entry to EU nationals than South Asians and Africans combined.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The majority would be white but not an overwhelming majority. Rejoining the EU would mean increasing immigration of people originating in countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Ghana via ties to Spain, Portugal and Italy. Not a bad thing, but contradicts this common argument.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

1/64 is a hemidemisemiquaver in English. Good effort on not repeating prefixes for half.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

No. EU nationals and non-EU nationals that arrived between 2010 and 2020 were equally likely to stay long term.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This is such a stupid thing to say. If EU nationals lived here only for a few years then there wouldn’t be many left, but in fact most are still here. There aren’t many EU nationals in their mid to late twenties either. It’s people in their thirties and forties and their children.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It’s also not accurate for Priti Patel if he’s forgotten her. She brought in the BNO visa scheme for people in a similar situation to her parents.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

You can get rough ideas of relative change from payroll data, NI registrations, schools data and births data but definitely not as good as the census. It’s just obvious this time that 2021 data no longer reflects the reality as we had a few years of high immigration.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It's a really stupid thing to say as rejoining the EU would clearly mean more immigration than the very low levels we currently have. You can't make a pro-EU case with an anti-immigration message, it's just an obvious contradiction.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It’s the same principle though. Mass deportation of legal immigrants who are already here and have followed all the rules.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I’ve heard people try to lie and say EU nationals coming to the UK aren’t really immigrants so people can be pro-EU and anti-immigrant. It’s ridiculous. Yes they are immigrants, and that’s not a bad thing.

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James Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Wetherspoons haven't sponsored chefs (or at least very few if they have). But some other chains have and hotels.

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