Given that the subject of immigration-and particularly illegal immigration-was such a big factor in yesterday's voting, it seems a bit strange that the Home Office only released their latest figures today on the above, rather than before the ballots. Not that doing so would probably have made much difference of course.

I won't bore you with all the details because it's on the BBC website and others if you want to look, but "topline" bits for me are the following.

Since records began in 2018 there have been a total of some 200,000 making the crossing in small boats, primarily from Iran, Afghanistan and Eritrea. This is, of course, of great concern, but given that the annual net immigration/migration figure for the UK is a surely unsustainable 400,000 a year, shouldn't considerably reducing legal immigration be the wider issue that needs addressing?

Of those crossing since 2018, females and those under 17 consistently make up around 12% each of those coming over each year. The vast majority are males between 25-39 with a growing number of 18-24 year olds. This data naturally plays into the usual tropes but not all the men are single and many hope that if they were able to claim asylum here, that their families might be allowed to follow but did not want to risk the lives of wives and children in the crossing.

As for performances of the political parties in dealing with the boat crossings, clearly the Conservatives have nothing to crow about. Under their tenure, figures leapt up to a record 45,000 for 2022. In their first year, Labour did little better but with the figures up to May being around 7,000 they are (hopefully) on target for a significant reduction this year.

The truly appalling figures for me are that of this 200,000 that have crossed since 2018, only 108,000 have been processed up until Dec 2025. That is only just above half. Moreover, if 3/5 (or 60%) of these have been granted asylum how is it that of the other 40% -some 43,200- only 7,600 have been recorded as having been deported? Fast tracking this would seem a priority.

If it takes extra funding to catch up with the processing backlog, speed that process up and fast track deportations surely that money will be well spent? It would also, of course, lessen the costs of keeping asylum seekers here for such long periods and timely deportations might make some less inclined to try and come here in the first place.

For humanitarian purposes, I believe that the UK should still offer asylum to a quota number of those genuinely fleeing for their lives but, in the present circumstances, we cannot afford to accept purely economic migrants if their lives are not threatened by severe deprivation in their home country. By the same token, I believe that we also we need to look at the numbers of legal immigration and work far harder to enable our own citizens to fulfil the job roles many of these are coming over for. Of course, we will always be likely to need to recruit a certain number of foreign workers with expertise in particular fields but the present numbers are surely far too high.