to think the Migration news story is utter bilge?

[TalkinPeace]

BBC version here
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26367391
BUT
UK ports and airports do not issue exit stamps : so there is no record of the number of people actually leaving.

The numbers arriving I assume include people who got their UK passports in the year.
BUT
At my citizenship ceremony, many of us had been in the UK for many, many years before getting our passports so including us in that years' figures was a lie.

The UK keeps no records of how many legal migrants there are on "indefinite leave to remain" visas.

So why do they make up the spurious numbers, other than to play into the hands of bigots like UKIP?

Agapanthers
I find your racism quite tiring

but as there are over half a million empty homes in this country and over half a million second (and third homes)
getting them into full use
and encouraging people to take in lodgers to reduce the numbers of single person households
would cure much of the non existent housing shortage

widgeon
Having just skimmed the actual report
www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_352080.pdf
upon which the BBC story was based
it transpires that I have never immigrated to this country as I do not fall under ANY of the categories they use!

Racism? Where?

The government isn't building enough homes because nimbys want to preserve the country in aspic. That's got nothing to do with racism, it's basic housing policy.

You seem to be living in la-la land, where government statistics are a racist conspiracy, complaints about housing policy are a racist conspiracy, and where a few empty mansions can house millions of people.

It isn't true that we have vast numbers of empty homes either.

Here are the stats:

www.emptyhomes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/regionaltotals-stats2012.jpg

There are only 259,842 long-term empty homes out of 23 million homes in England. The 450,298 short-term homes are homes that have been empty for less than six months, due to deaths, people moving home, etc.

0.7% of homes in London are long-term empty. In the North West, it's 1.8%.

But I thought that those bastard oligarchs were buying all the houses in London and then leaving them to rot just to laugh at the poor? Fact is the places with most empty homes are the places with fewest jobs, like the North West. No Chinese investment portfolios in Bootle.

The number of long-term empty homes is about the difference between the number of homes we need to build annually and the number that we do build. In other words, not even an issue.

The government isn't building enough homes because nimbys want to preserve the country in aspic
Once planning permission has been granted, developers can then sit on the vacant plots for as long as they like.
tHere is a prime town centre leafy comp plot north of here with permission for 300 homes that has sat empty for25 years.
Nothing the council or Government can do about it.

According to this
www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/owner-occupiers-recent-first-time-buyers-and-second-homes
in 2010/11 343,000 British households had a second home in the UK

they should either be taxed to the hilt on those to pay for houses for the poor or forced to give them up

BUT
to get back to the reason for the thread

the government talks about "getting immigration down" using underlying statistics that are broader brush than the numbers they are talking about

maybe if the government shut up about it a bit, and UKIP were forced to find the numbers for themselves, the holes in the numbers could be (rightly) highlighted.

How are UKIP going to collect data? That's restricted to the government.

There are plenty of government statistics:

census data (ten-yearly)
schools census (annual)

All suggest high levels of immigration, as do basic observational skills. But saying that because net migration figures are inexact that they are 'bilge' is a bit silly. If you operate the same statistical process each year, then trends, up or down, should be accurate. In this case the trend is up.

Actually, if you are talking about the net migration figures, it's not the case that if you operate the same statistical process each year, then trends up or down should be accurate. The margin of error on the net migration estimates (remember, they are just estimates, not actual factual data as to net migration), is 35,000 either way, which is pretty massive given the kind of numbers we are talking about. So if the estimate comes out as 100,000, the true figure could in fact be 135,000, or 65,000. And one year, the estimate might be too high, and the next it might be too low. So it's actually very difficult to get a true idea of levels of net migration.

This visualisation shows it perfectly (click on the graph to see it animate). If you look at 05-06 for example, you can see that net migration either went up, or down, or stayed the same - we just don't know, given the large "confidence interval", or margin or error, in the estimates each year.

This explanation from the creator of that chart is also useful /interesting (although I get a bit lost when he starts going on about coding...).

If you want to have a debate about the reliability of the net migration figures - and there's certainly a debate to be had - then please take the time to understand them. This report I linked to previously, from a select committee of MPs from the three main parties explains all about it.

widgeon
just skimming that report
I was distracted earlier doing my forrin passport renewal
Choice quotes

ONS migration estimates are based principally on the International Passenger Survey (IPS), which is a survey of passengers arriving at and departing from UK air and sea ports. The IPS was not primarily designed for the purpose of estimating international migration, but to provide economic data on travel and tourism. As most people travelling to and from the UK are not long-term international migrants, the IPS must approach around 800,000 passengers each year in order to achieve a sample of around 5,000 migrants.
margin of error .... plus or minus 35,000
Both users and ONS’ statisticians generally agree that migration statistics are not fit for all of the purposes for which they are currently used and require further improvement

But the Government persist in making knee jerk stories out of the data, playing right into the hands of UKIP and their rabid ilk.

Home Office migration statistics record events and processes within the administration of immigration control, such as grants of visas, applications for asylum, admissions at ports, grants of settlement and citizenship, enforced removals and voluntary departures, and detentions under Immigration Act powers. They categorise people by their route of entry, whether as workers, students, or family members.
They only record people leaving the UK where those people have breached the immigration rules in some way

So according to the Home Office, I arrived in the UK last year, over 40 years after I actually did and over 20 years after I started paying tax in this country.

The Government’s policy places all its emphasis on reducing net migration. Research on public attitudes to migration suggests the public is most concerned about immigration rather than the level of net migration.
It also suggests that members of the public identify “immigrants” using a different definition than that used in official statistics.

because nobody passing me in the street would realise I'm in the 2013 figures my kids were a bit shocked as well

TalkinPeace - the point is that you can't point specifically to where you, as an individual, are in the net migration estimates. You are in the figures for how many people got an NI number in the year that you did, how many people are in a particular immigrant category (eg when you got your ILR), how many people got an NHS number in the year you did, and so on. So it's not the case that the Home Office think you only arrived last year. The government has all the data about you, as a specific individual, that you list (and a lot more!). But you don't exist, as an individual, in the net migration figures, because those figures are an estimate based on a surveying a sample of migrants. So it's not correct to say you are in the 2013 figures. You (precisely you) aren't in any of the net migration figures!

I would agree with you, though, that the government play on the general ignorance about how the net migration figures are calculated, to claim that immigration is going down, when in fact they can't be at all sure about that.

widgeon
When ILR status was abolished and they tried to force all of us to pay for ten year rolling Visas, the Home office was asked how many people they thought were living in the UK on ILR status.

their first guess was around 250,000
until the US Embassy pointed out that there are more than that number of registered US voters in the UK!

they genuinely have no idea

the NI database is an utter joke : I know of people with three numbers all legitimate and the NI people get all iffy cancelling a number without a death certificate

Cameroon makes this great play of " getting immigration under control "
when in reality he cannot and will not do anything of the sort
so why does he not just shut up about it?

When ILR status was abolished

ILR hasn't been abolished?

As far as I'm aware it changed in 2012 to being 5 years. Before that, when my DH went through the process, it was just 2 years.

I think the 10 year thing just applies if you can't meet the English language requirement or the financial requirement.

However, I don't know what the procedure is if you're not applying as a partner or family member.

nickmanchester
ILR .....its a process now, with a fee
yes?
it did not used to be
it was just a manky stamp in the passport and when you got a new passport, you got a new stamp
no form, no application, no money, no nothing
and people like me realised that the old passport with the stamp was still usable so refused to pay for the visas

I'm afraid you're totally wrong about that.

You needed - still do as far as I'm aware - to produce loads of written evidence that the relationship was still in existence. You then paid the fee - I think it was about 400 quid when we applied, it's now about 1,400 I think - and you then got a proper visa stuck in your passport.

Then, as long as you have been in the UK for the minimum number of days you then immediately apply for citizenship.

This was 12 years ago that we were going through this process and there was definitely no ''manky stamp'' in those days

Oh sorry, perhaps you are talking about 20 or 30 years ago? I really don't know about that far back.

I think you are talking at cross-purposes.

I think there were three stages:

1: settlement visa £290 I think in 2002 when we did it
2: indefinite leave to remain (after 1 year then I think) - another £300?
3: citizenship (after a further 2 years I think?) - don't remember how much this cost, but it's optional, you don't need to apply you can keep the IDLR

The visa got you in, but the IDLR means you can come and go without needing a new one, and as TalkinPeace says you can keep the stamp.

They keep increasing the cost of everything, and increasing the time taken too. It used to be you could get IDLR after so many years as a highly skilled migrant - longer than if you were on a spouse visa, but I'm sure it's all changed.

I don't remember the IDLR process very well. But to get the settlement visa was difficult, probably the IDLR used to be a lot easier? ANd maybe it was free. Certainly remember them wanting £300 to transfer the stamp to a new passport, which was completely unnecessary, but I don't know if they had charged for it in the first place.

I never ever had a visa for the UK

I got my first ILR in the 1970s
it looks like the bottom picture here
www.brookes.ac.uk/services/hr/handbook/recruitment/related_policies_procedures/immigration/stamps_endorsements.html
my parent's one was identical
they kept getting moved across to the new passport until the early 2000s
when the new visa system was introduced

getting the naturalisation and UK passport last year cost an effing fortune

"Actually, if you are talking about the net migration figures, it's not the case that if you operate the same statistical process each year, then trends up or down should be accurate. The margin of error on the net migration estimates (remember, they are just estimates, not actual factual data as to net migration), is 35,000 either way, which is pretty massive given the kind of numbers we are talking about. So if the estimate comes out as 100,000, the true figure could in fact be 135,000, or 65,000. And one year, the estimate might be too high, and the next it might be too low. So it's actually very difficult to get a true idea of levels of net migration."

Well it's not quite like that.

The published figure was 212,000 for y/e September 2013. The actual figure is equally likely to above as below 212,000. We can say that the figure is 212,000 plus or minus 35,000 (at 95% certainty).

So that means that there's a 95% chance that the actual migration was between 177,000 and 247,000.

But it's a bell curve.

Here's a shitty graph I just made in Excel:

i.imgur.com/ubpE6Sa.png

2012 is in orange, 2013 is in blue.

The green shading is the 95% range for 2013.

There is an overlap between the two curves, but the chance of it being close to 212,000 (the mean) is much higher than it being 194,000 (one standard deviation below the mean), and basically, as noted in the report, the change from 2012 to 2013 is statistically significant (because if you are talking about 2013 being much lower than the sample mean and 2012 being much higher than that's like the square of the respective probabilities, so statistically significant).

My husband was on ILR for over 18 years before he applied for citizenship.

During that time he lived in the UK for 13 years and the US for 5 years.