India tops charts in sending immigrants to UK in 2023, most go with job, study visa

Indians have topped the charts as the largest group of people to migrate to the UK in 2023. The UK saw 250,000 Indians move to the country last year, mostly for jobs and education. This comes even as net immigration to the UK dropped by 10% in 2023 as against 2022.

Of the 250,000 Indians who migrated to the UK last year, 127,000 went for work, 115,000 for studies and 9,000 for other reasons.

Nigerians, with 141,000 immigrants, came next to Indians, as per the figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The Chinese came at number three and Pakistanis in fourth spot in sending immigrants to the UK.

Net migration to the UK dropped by 10% in 2023 to 685,000 after hitting a high in 2022 of 764,000, the ONS data shows.

HOW MANY WORK, GRADUATE VISAS DID UK ISSUE IN 2023?

As for work visas, 337,240 work visas were granted in 2023 and 146,477 were for heath and care visas. About 114,409 graduate visas were granted there, allowing students to work after they graduate. 50,503 of these were Indians number Indians were also the highest number to receive study visas, according to Home Office Immigration Statistics in the UK.

But it is still too early to say if this was the start of a new downward trend.

Around 85% of the people who migrated to the UK were from outside the European Union.

Chinese, Pakistani and Zimbabwean people make the remaining up of the top five. An analysis indicated people from Nigeria, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan workers also brought dependants on them. Around 50% of the dependants were around 17.

DROP IN INDIAN STUDENTS TO UK UNIVERSITIES

The end of the Covid-19 pandemic increased the numbers of non-EU immigrants

People also migrated to the UK for humanitarian reasons in 2023. Migrants from Ukraine and Hong Kong were 50,000 in number in 2023.

As for Indians, recent data also shows how the number of study visas issued to Indians has dropped. Around 21,800 fewer Indian students went to the UK this year, according to a media report.

The British Universities’ International Liaison Association looked at the data from 75 universities and found that 90% of them had seen a fall in applications from international students. There was a 27% fall in total applications by international students for postgraduate courses in 2023 compared to 2022.