Polling on immigration typically focuses on attitudes towards the level of new arrivals. But polls rarely cover another possibility of public opinion – that not only do people want immigration highly curtailed, but that they might also want to see large-scale removals of migrants.
One person who holds such a desire is Rupert Lowe, a view which brought him into conflict with Nigel Farage during his brief stint as a Reform UK MP, given the party leader had told GB News that it is a political impossibility to deport hundreds of thousands of people.
However, a new YouGov poll testing attitudes to several immigration scenarios has found that almost half of Britons (45%) say they would support “admitting no more new migrants, and requiring large numbers of migrants who came to the UK in recent years to leave” – a figure which rises to 86% of Reform UK voters, but also encompasses sizeable minorities of Labour and Lib Dem voters (27% apiece).
A question of legality
Key to understanding this finding is the belief among the public that immigration to the UK is primarily ‘illegal’ rather than ‘legal’.
YouGov’s research shows that almost half of Britons (47%) think there are more migrants staying in the UK illegally rather than legally, including fully a third of the public (32%) who think the illegal figure is “much higher”.
Crucially, this view is held by 72% of those who want to see mass removals. However, these perceptions appear to be wide of the mark.
Estimates of the population of illegal migrants living in the UK range from 120,000 to 1.3 million, with Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf recently putting the figure at 1.2 million.
Regardless of which figure from this range is chosen, it does not come close to the number of migrants living in the UK legally, with 2021/2022 census data putting the entire foreign-born population of the UK at 10.7 million.
If the British public dramatically overestimate the number of illegal migrants to the UK to the extent that they think that most migrants are here illegally, then the possibility arises that, in reality, those who support removals don’t want to see the bulk of migrants removed.
To check this possibility, we tested attitudes towards specific types of migrants among those who want to see large-scale removals.
Unsurprisingly, those who want to see mass deportations almost universally want to see removals of those who come to the UK to claim benefits (91%), small boat migrants (90%), and those coming without work visas to work in unskilled jobs (85%).
What do Brits actually want?
However, these numbers fall dramatically when it comes to other groups. A much-reduced 39% of deportation supporters say they want to see large-scale removals of asylum seekers who came to the UK via the correct legal process; 26% want to see workers with work visas coming to work in industries with skills shortages removed en masse; and at its lowest level 19-20% want to see migrants coming on work visas to work as doctors or nurses to be asked to leave.
If we recalculate those figures to show them as a proportion of the whole population, rather than just as a proportion of those who support deportations, we can see that the number of Britons who answered that they want deportations AND that this includes small boat asylum seekers, stands at the equivalent of 38% of the general public.
Similarly high are the equivalent national figures for those coming to claim benefits (38%) and those coming without work visas to work in unskilled jobs (36%).
By contrast, that equivalent national figure falls to 16% for asylum seekers following the correct legal process, 11% for migrants coming to work in areas with skills shortages, and 8% for migrants working as doctors and nurses.
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