What you need to know
Immigration is one of the most politically charged issues in Britain, and Reform UK places it at the centre of its agenda.
But the debate often blurs together several very different things: legal migration, asylum, small-boat crossings, visa overstaying, refugees, foreign students, work visas and people with no legal right to remain.
They are not the same.
The first useful distinction is simple:
- Immigration is the broad movement of people into the UK for reasons including work, study, family and humanitarian protection.
- Asylum is a legal process through which someone asks the UK for protection because they say they face persecution or serious harm elsewhere.
- Small-boat arrivals are one unauthorised route into the country. Most people arriving that way subsequently claim asylum.
- Irregular or unauthorised migration is broader than small boats and includes other forms of entry or stay without the required permission.
Conflating those categories can make a real policy problem look very different from what the evidence actually shows.
Most immigration is not small boats
The scale of small-boat crossings is significant and deserves serious policy attention. But it is not a proxy for total immigration.
ONS estimates that 813,000 people immigrated to the UK on a long-term basis in the year ending December 2025, while net migration --- immigration minus emigration --- was 171,000. That was nearly half the previous year's level and far below the March 2023 immigration peak.
By comparison, around 39,000 people arrived by small boat in the year ending March 2026. Small boats represented about 90% of people detected entering the UK without authorisation, but they were only one part of the much wider migration picture.
So two statements can both be true:
Small-boat crossings are a significant unauthorised-migration problem.
And:
They do not represent most immigration into Britain.
That distinction matters whenever small-boat footage is used as though it shows what immigration as a whole looks like.
Why do people migrate to the UK?
People come for very different reasons.
Home Office statistics show large numbers arriving through authorised routes for work, study, family and humanitarian reasons. In the year ending March 2026, there were around 779,000 visas issued for non-visit purposes. Work-related visa grants alone totalled around 253,000 including dependants, although that figure had fallen sharply from its 2023 peak.
International students have also been a major contributor to migration in recent years, although policy changes have reduced inflows and altered the extent to which graduates remain in Britain afterwards.
This is why claims about immigration need to identify which kind of migration is actually being discussed.
Asylum is not the same thing as ordinary immigration
Someone claiming asylum is asking the UK to recognise that returning them would expose them to persecution or serious harm.
A claim is not an automatic right to remain permanently. It has to be considered through the asylum system, and outcomes include grants of protection, refusals, withdrawals and other decisions. Some refused applicants can appeal.
Most people arriving by small boat do claim asylum. Since 2018, around 95% of detected small-boat arrivals have lodged an asylum claim. In 2025 that figure was 99%.
That is important because it explains why the government cannot simply treat every small-boat arrival as somebody who can immediately be returned. Their legal position has to be determined first.
But it is equally important not to imply that every claim succeeds.
Of small-boat asylum applications made between 2018 and 2025 that had received a substantive initial decision by the end of that period, around 60% resulted in a grant of protection and 40% were refused. Those figures do not include the final outcome of every appeal.
Are small-boat arrivals "illegal immigrants"?
Language matters here.
A person can enter the UK without authorisation and then claim asylum. That does not automatically tell you whether they will ultimately be entitled to protection or required to leave.
The Commons Library notes that if someone arriving without authorisation does not make a protection claim, there would not usually be a legal barrier preventing removal to their home country. But most small-boat arrivals do claim asylum, and under UK law a person cannot ordinarily be returned to the country they say they fear until that protection claim has been determined.
So "unauthorised arrival", "asylum seeker", "refugee" and "person with no legal right to remain" describe different legal situations.
Using them interchangeably makes the debate less accurate.
Who arrives by small boat?
The demographic picture is also often exaggerated.
Adult men are clearly the majority. In the year ending March 2026, around 75% of detected small-boat arrivals were adult men, 12% were adult women and 13% were children.
That means describing small-boat arrivals as disproportionately young and male is broadly accurate.
What does not follow from that statistic is that everyone arriving is male, that they are soldiers, or that their age and sex establish anything about their intentions or whether their asylum claim is genuine.
The nationality mix also changes over time. In the year ending March 2026 the largest groups included Eritreans, Afghans, Sudanese, Iranians and Somalis.
Does Britain accept everyone who claims asylum?
No.
The asylum system grants some claims and refuses others.
The exact grant rate changes with nationality, year and stage of the process, which is why simplistic claims in either direction are usually unhelpful.
There are nationalities whose claimants historically have had very high initial grant rates because conditions in their home countries frequently meet refugee-protection criteria. Others have much lower grant rates.
The important principle is that claims are supposed to be decided on their evidence and legal merits, rather than simply on the route someone used to reach Britain.
Does the UK remove people who have no right to remain?
Yes.
In the year ending March 2026, the Home Office recorded around 39,000 returns from the UK, including both enforced and voluntary returns. Around 9,700 were enforced and 29,300 voluntary. Asylum-related returns reached their highest level in the current statistical series.
So the claim that Britain "doesn't deport anyone" is plainly wrong.
But removal is not always quick or straightforward. It can depend on resolving appeals, establishing identity and nationality, obtaining travel documents and securing cooperation from another country.
That is a practical constraint as well as a legal one.
Is migration currently rising or falling?
The latest ONS figures show a substantial fall.
Long-term net migration was provisionally estimated at 171,000 in the year ending December 2025, down from 331,000 the year before. Long-term immigration fell from just over one million to 813,000. The largest driver of the decline was a sharp fall in non-EU+ work-related migration.
That does not mean immigration has ceased to be politically important.
It does mean that claims presenting migration as still moving in one direction indefinitely need to be checked against current data rather than repeated from the unusually high figures recorded in 2022--23.
Where Anti-Reform differs from Reform
There are legitimate questions about immigration levels, border control, asylum processing, integration and the capacity of public services.
Anti-Reform does not need to deny those questions in order to challenge Reform UK's answers.
The problem is when very different phenomena are collapsed into one story:
legal migrants become "illegal immigrants"; asylum seekers become people who have already been found to have no right to remain; small boats become synonymous with total immigration; and demographic facts become claims about criminality or security.
Those shortcuts may be politically effective, but they are not a sound basis for policy.
Our position is that immigration should be debated using the actual numbers, the actual legal categories and the actual evidence about costs, benefits and enforcement.
That still leaves plenty of room to criticise the current system.
It simply means doing so without turning complexity into misinformation.