Migration Watch UK (sometimes styled MigrationWatch UK or Migrationwatch UK) is a British think-tank and campaign group which argues for lower immigration into the United Kingdom. Founded in 2001, the group believes that international migration places undue demand on limited resources and that the current level of immigration is not sustainable.

The group has been praised for what is seen as improving the quality of debate around immigration while others have suggested that the group is anti-immigration and have criticised what they say are faults in the group's studies.

Lord Green of Deddington, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, is the founder and president of the group. Alp Mehmet, former ambassador to Iceland, is its current chairman. David Coleman, Professor of Demography at Oxford University, is an honorary consultant.

History Migration Watch UK was founded in December 2001 by Sir Andrew Green, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia. In an article in The Independent, Deborah Orr writes that the organisation came into being when, "after reading some of his anti-immigration letters in The Times", the then Sir Andrew approached David Coleman, Professor of Demography at Oxford University, and they subsequently set up Migration Watch.

The group first came to public attention in 2002 when it stated that immigration, including an estimate of illegal immigrants, was running at two million per decade "and probably more". This claim was challenged at the time by a number of public commentators, with an editorial in The Independent at the time criticising what it called "tendentious projections and the deliberate citing of the vast populations of countries such as India to frighten people and wreck any rational debate". Two years later, Philip Johnston in the Daily Telegraph would argue that Government Actuary's Department forecasts that the UK population would increase by six million people due to immigration over three decades "appear to confirm claims made by Migrationwatch two years ago, when the group first sprang to prominence". A later Telegraph editorial following the 2011 Census would call the group's initial claims "overly cautious".

The group quickly attracted the attention of Home Secretary David Blunkett, who in 2002 set up a unit intended to monitor and rebut the organisation and sought to control the timing of statistical releases to avoid pressure from it.

The organisation has an advisory council, which is chaired by Baron Green and whose members include David Coleman, Caroline Cox and Alp Mehmet, former ambassador to Iceland.

Outputs Migration Watch's website contains a range of briefing papers to support the organisation's perspective on the statistical, legal, economic and historical aspects of migration, and on topics such as the European Union, housing, health and social cohesion, as they relate to immigration. It has also helped to contribute to briefings on immigration for third parties such as the BBC.

Migration Watch has been frequently cited and seen its spokespeople featured in British newspapers such as the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Daily Express and Daily Star. as well as British broadcast media such as BBC News and ITV News.

In October 2011, the group started a petition on the UK Parliament petitions website calling on the government to take "all necessary steps" to stop the UK's population exceeding 70 million. The petition reached over 100,000 signatures.

Funding Migration Watch has received the lowest rating of E in the Who Funds You? ranking of think tanks according to funding transparency.

Policy stances

Immigration flows

Migration Watch argues that the growth of the population of the United Kingdom through international migration is a key "factor driving problems around pressure on school places, the NHS, housing and the transport infrastructure". The group in 2018 argued that migration was linked to 82% of population growth between 2001 and 2016, when combining both net migration and children born to immigrant parents. In the same year it predicted that the population of the United Kingdom would exceed 70 million by 2026.

A 2019 report by Migration Watch condemned the Conservative government's approach to immigration, stating that its policies could increase immigrant numbers by 100,000. It has called Britain's port security "resourced to fail" in stopping illegal immigration, and has opposed the idea of an amnesty for illegal immigrants in Britain, after it was postulated by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The group criticised the same government for extending the period in which overseas students can stay in the UK from four months to two years, arguing that it would "likely lead to foreign graduates staying on to stack shelves". It was also critical of proposals by Boris Johnson to scrap the £30,000 salary cap on migrants, warning that abolishing the cap could lead to further rises in migration.

The group has expressed opposition to sham marriages, and in August 2019 called for nationality profiling in an attempt to crack down on the practice.

Asylum seekers Migration Watch supports the principle of political asylum, but argues that many asylum seekers do not have a genuine case for qualifying for refugee status and are instead using the asylum system to gain entry to the UK for economic reasons. The group has also been strongly critical of what it sees as the government's failure to remove many of those whose claims are rejected. In a briefing paper published in January 2009, the group's Honorary Legal Adviser Harry Mitchell, QC stated that while the group supported "asylum for genuine claimants", the "overwhelming majority of asylum seekers" were in fact economic migrants and did not have a "well-founded fear of persecution".

In July 2010, Migration Watch highlighted what it saw as the potential consequences of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom's unanimous ruling in favour of two homosexual asylum seekers from Iran and Cameroon, allowing them to stay in the UK. The group argued that the decision would "increase by many thousands the numbers of persons who may be eligible for asylum", as well as "generate a large number of claims that will be difficult to determine", such as instances where people smugglers "tell their clients who come from countries where homosexual acts are illegal to claim that they are homosexual". It argued that assessing such claims "can often take many months during which applicants are supported by public funds".

In August 2016, in response to Home Office data showing that over a third of asylum applications were made by migrants who entered the UK illegally or overstayed their visas, Migration Watch suggested that the data showed that "many of those claiming asylum were in fact economic migrants".

The group has defended the use of the term "illegal immigrant" to describe those who enter a country for the purpose of claiming asylum, against those who associate the term with criminality. The group argues that the term is appropriate, as those who come into a country without permission and outside the law are doing so illegally.

Economic impact of immigration

Migration Watch has argued that, while limited skilled migration (in both directions) is a natural and beneficial feature of an open economy, very large scale immigration is of little benefit to the indigenous population. Migration Watch has said that migration into the UK has and will tend to hold down the real wages of British citizens. In 2006 it expressed concern that immigration from Eastern Europe was depressing wages.

In December 2008, a Migration Watch report stated that while some immigration results in an increase in the number of people in employment, "it seems an inescapable conclusion that the sudden arrival of a very large number of very capable workers willing to work for low pay has had a negative impact on the employment of British-born workers at the bottom of the pay scale". Will Somerville and Madeleine Sumption of the Washington, D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute state in an Equality and Human Rights Commission report that: "Few serious international or UK economists would agree with this conclusion". Their report did, however, note that "the recent migration may have reduced wages slightly at the bottom end of the labour market, especially for certain groups of vulnerable workers".

Migration Watch has criticised sectors that lobby for a permissive immigration policy, accusing them of offering "low paying jobs with poor conditions and little flexibility for workers".

In 2014, the group published a report on population growth in London, in which it said that immigration trends had put "massive pressure on schools and hospitals and especially housing". It has expressed concerns about the effects of migration rates on the national housing market as a whole, pointing to the discrepancy between migration rates and the number of new houses being built to accommodate a growing population. In 2017 the group said that the impact of immigration on future demand for homes in England had been "seriously understated" by the British government.

In 2016, Migration Watch issued a paper estimating the fiscal impact of immigration for the year 2014/15, which found an overall fiscal cost from immigration with a positive contribution only from migrants of pre-2004 EU states. This was in line with a 2014 study from University College London.

Human rights legislation

Migration Watch in 2003 advocated that the UK government should "'cut loose from the straitjacket' imposed by its obligations under various conventions that made it impossible to operate the system in the country's best interests". In 2007 it called for the British government to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and write its own Human Rights Act.

EU membership

The group has been critical of large-scale migration from the European Union, having in 2013 predicted combined migration inflows from Romania and Bulgaria of approximately 50,000 per annum when free movement restrictions would be lifted the following year.

In January 2016, the group published a report claiming that the UK leaving the European Union could result in a reduction of annual net migration from 180,000 to around 65,000, although added that such a number should not be taken as a "precise estimate" but was "intended to illustrate the scale of the potential reduction under the policy outlined". Migration Watch stated that they would not take a position on the UK's EU membership referendum held in June 2016. In 2017 the group backed the idea of visa-free travel between the UK and EU after Brexit, adding that EU citizens who would want to work in the UK should need a work permit.

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