141,000 Nigerians Migrated to the UK between June 2022 and June 2023
A total of 141,000 Nigerians migrated to the United Kingdom (UK) between June 2022 and the year ending June 2023.
The latest figures were contained in a new report by the Office for National Statistics on Tuesday.
According to the report, in the year ending June 2023, Nigerians were one of the top five non-EU Nationalities for immigration flows into the UK.
Statistics show that the number of Indians during the period at 253,000, Nigerian (141,000), Chinese (89,000), Pakistani (55,000), and Ukrainian (35,000).
The UK’s Office for National Statistics further states that Nigerian nationals studying in the UK grew from 6,798 in 2017 to 59,053 as of December 2022.
As those numbers grew, so did the number of dependents: in 2019 there were 1,586 but last year there were 60,923.
Earlier in the year, the UK government announced changes to its immigration laws aimed at cutting its spiking net migration.
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The new policy, which comes into effect from next January, includes a ban on family members accompanying foreign students for non-research postgraduate courses.
The restriction may force many Nigerians looking to move to the UK with their families to look elsewhere.
Nigerian nationals studying in the UK grew from 6,798 in 2017 to 59,053 as of December 2022, according to the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), earlier in the year.
According to ONS, net migration for YE June 2023 was 672,000, which is slightly higher compared with YE June 2022 (607,000) but down on its updated estimate for YE December 2022 (745,000).
It said it is too early to say if this is the start of a new downward trend, these more recent estimates indicate a slowing of immigration coupled with increasing emigration.
Methods for measuring international migration are in development, and these timely estimates for the year ending June 2023 and December 2022 are provisional, supported by assumptions that are informed by past behavior, ONS explained.
This means the uncertainty associated with these estimates will be reduced in our next releases when we have more data to confirm people’s long-term migration status.
