Overview of the immigration system
Published 27 February 2020
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-statistics-year-ending-december-2019/overview-of-the-immigration-system
Back to ‘Immigration statistics, year ending December 2019’ content page.
This is not the latest release. View latest release.
The Home Office ‘Immigration statistics’ series forms part of a larger cross-Government Statistical Service Transformation plan to meet changing user needs, and which will begin to put administrative data at the core of evidence on migration.
‘Immigration statistics, year ending December 2019’ provides the latest figures on persons who are subject to United Kingdom (UK) immigration controls. All data in this release relate to the year ending December 2019 (1 January 2019 to 31 December 2019) and all comparisons are with the year ending December 2018 (1 January 2018 to 31 December 2018), unless stated otherwise. Due to European Union (EU) freedom of movement principles, the majority of UK immigration controls relate to non-European Economic Area (EEA) nationals. Unless otherwise stated, data in this release relate to non-EEA nationals.
The August edition of ‘Immigration statistics’ each year provides a more detailed summary of the statistics.
The Immigration statistics release provides information on the Home Office’s operation of immigration control and related processes, including the work of UK Border Force, UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI), and Immigration Enforcement.
Figures on performance against service standards and processing times are published as part of the Home Office ‘Migration transparency data’.
The Home Office publishes a range of other research on migration, available at the ‘Migration research and analysis’ page on GOV.UK. Details on the developments and future plans for Home Office Immigration statistics can be found in ‘Developments in migration statistics’. For details of other migration outputs published across government, see the ‘About this release’ section.
Figure 1 provides a high-level overview of UK immigration control for non-EEA nationals. It does not include reference to all aspects of immigration as highlighted in the chart notes.
Figure 1: Summary of UK immigration system1,2
Chart notes:
- The chart excludes references to appeals.
- Non-visa nationals seeking to enter the UK in a visa category for longer than 6 months require a visa, whereas those seeking to enter the UK for 6 months or less do not.
Other statistical releases
At the same time as this release, the following statistical releases were also published:
- ‘Grenfell Immigration Policy Statistics’, Home Office – statistics on the number of survivors and relatives considered under the Grenfell immigration policies
- ‘Migration Statistics Quarterly Report’, Office for National Statistics (ONS) – a summary of the latest official long-term international migration statistics (including net migration, immigration and emigration trends)
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See section 7 of the ‘About this release’ section for more details.