The Aim is Mass Minus Migration (not "Net Zero Migration")
- Alistair McConnachie
- 6 days ago
- 9 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
We must take steps to severely limit the numbers coming in, rather than hoping that somehow the numbers leaving will miraculously match the numbers entering each year. We can control the numbers coming in. We can't control the numbers leaving. If we do this, then we will quickly reach a situation of mass emigration from the UK each year; and the over-whelming majority of them will be foreigners, as we show from the official statistics. This article also includes a workable definition of the concept of "Native British". Pic: An AFFG supporter at the "Enough is Enough" rally in George Square, 7-9-24.
The aim is more people leaving than entering, on a massive scale!
Right now, we have the opposite. Huge numbers of people are entering with fewer leaving.
This means that the population is growing far in excess of the ability of the economy to keep pace; far in excess of the social and cultural fabric to hold; and far in excess of the ability to maintain the demographic basis of the nation as an overwhelmingly Native British population. (1)
We don't want our country to be turned into a different country. We don't want our country to be turned into a foreign country. For those of us who live in the big towns and cities, this process is becoming very obvious.
We want to stop this. And we want to reverse it.
We reverse it by ensuring that massively more people are leaving the UK than entering, every day, week, month and year.
We call this Mass Minus Migration. (2)
Since this is our aim, we ask what is the correct immigration measurement (or "metric") which we should be targeting in order to ensure that we are on course for our aim of Mass Minus Migration.
But first…
UNDERSTANDING THE TERMS
Gross means "the total before deductions".
Gross Immigration (Gross-In) means the total number of people entering the country, in a given time period.
Gross Emigration (Gross-Out) means the total number of people leaving the country, in a given time period.
Net means "the total after deductions".
Net Immigration refers to the total of Gross-In minus Gross-Out, in a given time period.
Net Zero Immigration means that the same number come in as leave. For example 100K in and 100K out means the net is "zero".
"NET ZERO IMMIGRATION" – A FAILURE IN REASONING!
Perhaps some people use this "net zero immigration" metric in order not to sound as if they are "against immigration". To their detractors, they can say, "We're not against immigration. We just want the same numbers coming in as are leaving."
However, there are so many practical things wrong with targeting and tracking this metric:
1. Fundamentally, we Don't Want a Balance
We want more people leaving than entering. We want the Net figure to be a minus figure. We don't want it to be zero!
2. It takes No Account of the Practical Consequences of the Size of "the Churn"
For example, 5K could enter and 5K could leave, and they'd be happy. Or 3 million could enter, and 3 million could leave, and they'd be happy. Yet they appear oblivious to the practical consequences of the size of the different churns.
3. It takes No Account of the Types of People Entering versus those Leaving
Say 500K people arrive in one year. Say they are low-skilled, likely to be heavily dependent upon benefits, often from incompatible cultures, and young. Say in the same year, a different 500K leave, but they are highly-skilled, often wealthy, and maybe largely Native British, and older. Is that a reasonable "swop"? No, because it's not "like for like". Some may cheer that it's "balanced" on paper, but it's not balanced in reality.
4. Here's the Clincher! It is Impossible to Target the Net Figure because it includes a Variable – Gross Emigration – which we Cannot Control
What sense does it make to say that you want the numbers coming in to be the same as the numbers leaving, when you cannot control the numbers leaving! After all, people are leaving of their own free will. People are entering, for the most part, via a legal process which requires entry visas.
Putting aside a particular policy plan to deport categories of illegals and foreign criminals, and putting aside policies to encourage remigration in certain fields, there is no means to specifically control the numbers who choose to leave.
We can only specifically control the numbers who enter and we can do that very easily – if we choose.
So it's the numbers entering that we need to target. It is Gross Immigration into the country that we need to target.
To do that, we can restrict work, study and family visas to only a few thousand a year; and we can end, for the most part, our ridiculous "asylum" regime.
WHAT WILL THIS LOOK LIKE IN PRACTICE?
In practice it means that few will be able to enter the country. And if numbers continue to leave at the levels at which they've been doing recently, then this will mean Mass Minus Migration on a very large scale!
Our towns and cities will start to look very different as large numbers of people are prohibited from coming into the country, while many of those who have come in will go back.
Let's look at some figures to illustrate our point.
IMMIGRATION and EMIGRATION, 2012-2021
The above table is taken from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). (3)
It shows "long-term" migration into and out of the UK between 2012 and 2021.
A long-term immigrant is defined by the United Nations "as someone who moves to a country other than their usual residence for a period of at least 12 months, effectively making the destination their new country of usual residence."
Note that emigration out of the UK is consistently around 500,000 a year, rising from 2018, to over 600,000 in 2020-21!
Table 1 in section 3 (reproduced below) calculates in column 5 that there were 5,182,000 long-term people leaving the UK in this 9-year period including British nationals.
HOW MANY "BRITISH NATIONALS" ARE WE LOSING EACH YEAR?
Of this 5,182,000 figure, we see 1,527,000 were British nationals. This is, during this time period, 29.5% of emigrants are "British nationals". So clearly, the majority of long-term emigrants out of the UK are foreigners.
Section 4 of the article reminds us that the definition of British nationals, "include both those who hold British citizenship or another type of British nationality from birth, as well as those who have moved to the UK and subsequently gained citizenship."
That means that not all the "British nationals", coming and going, are what many of us might consider to be "Native British".
That aside...
We also have to remember that each year, many British nationals are returning as well.
So what is the overall net loss (or gain) of British nationals?
We can see that figure in the final column of Table 1 above. It is a net loss of 787,000 British nationals over this 9-year period. That is, 787,000 British nationals who were not replaced by returning British nationals; or an average of 87,445 per year.
Another way of saying it is that, of the total number of 5,182,000 who left the UK in this period, 787,000 did not "come back" as other British nationals.
As a percentage, we can calculate this as 15.2% – (787/5182 x 100) – of the emigrants who left during this period were British nationals who were not being replaced by returning British nationals.
THE LATEST FIGURES for 2024
The ONS has released its provisional figures for year ending June 2024. (4)
Check out these remarkable figures for immigration and emigration, under section 1 of its article!
Long-term immigration
Our provisional estimate of long-term immigration for YE June 2024 is 1.2 million. This is down from our updated estimate of 1.3 million in YE June 2023.
Of the 1.2 million people who came to live in the UK in YE June 2024:
· around 86% (1.0 million) were non-EU+ nationals
· 10% (116,000) were EU+ nationals (EU countries plus Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland)
· 5% (58,000) were British nationals
It also mentions those leaving:
Long-term emigration
Our provisional estimate of long-term emigration for YE June 2024 is 479,000. This is higher than our updated estimate of 414,000 in YE June 2023.
Of the 479,000 people who left the UK in YE June 2024:
· around 44% (211,000) were EU+ nationals
· 39% (189,000) were non-EU+ nationals
· 16% (79,000) were British nationals
That's a massive "Gross Immigration" into the UK of 1.2 million, and a "Net Immigration" of 721,000 in one year, the overwhelming number of whom are foreign.
The net loss of "British nationals" is a relatively small 21,000 (79,000 minus 58,000), or 4.4% of overall emigration (21/479 x 100).
WHAT WE PROPOSE
We should stop targeting the impossible-to-achieve, and irrelevant goal of "Net Zero Immigration", and instead we must target a specific figure for "Gross Immigration into the UK".
So what "Gross-In" figure should we aim for?
Well, what is the historic norm?
We've looked at the post-war figures and found a yearly average of around 100,000 "long-term immigrants" a year, from 1947 up until 1997 inclusive – the year when figures really started to rise after the election of Tony Blair's New Labour. (5)
Our second document on the matter found a historic norm of around 60,000 people per year accepted for settlement (which is a different measurement, meaning that they have been accepted for indefinite leave to remain after a period of legal stay) in the period 1960 to 1997 inclusive. (6)
Therefore, we propose that we should seek to constrain total Gross Immigration – work, study and family visas, and "refugee programmes" – to ensure no more than a number which approximates these historic norms (no more than 60-100K) allowed into the country each year. This is still high, and we should not be considering any number greater than this.
It would still allow people to say "We're not against immigration. We just want to limit it to no more than say, 50,000 gross-in a year." To most people that still sounds extremely generous (and it is)!
Emigration out, would continue as normal.
That means that with the Gross-In figure tightly constrained – and especially if we bias it towards returning British nationals – then there would be, at the present rate, a loss of relatively few "British nationals"; and with the Gross-Out figure left to fall where it may, then there would continue to be 100s of thousands of foreigners leaving each year (just as they've been doing for years now), and not being replaced.
Not only would we quickly hit "net zero immigration", but we'd almost automatically get into "net negative immigration" – far more people leaving than entering.
We can sit back and watch "Mass Minus Migration" just happen naturally!
REFERENCES
1. We define the Native British as: "Those people – currently resident in the UK or elsewhere in the world today – who can trace grandparents who were alive at any age, and who were legal British Citizens, resident within the boundaries of what was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Crown Dependencies, at any time before, or at, the declaration of war on 4 August 1914 and who did not require to register with the Police as a consequence of the Aliens Registration Act of 5 August 1914."
We have chosen this date because this appears to us to be the last fixed date in the modern era where the population of the British Isles resembled the population which had existed for hundreds of years in these Islands.
It is also important to reference this fundamental moment because the conflict was a massive patriotic sacrifice of the British people. Many men who existed on 4 August 1914 didn't exist after it!
Furthermore, by 1916, some of the Irish were starting to politically break away, yet it would be wrong not to include them within our definition. As for WW2, by the time it ended, there were unusual numbers of non-native foreign people either remaining in, or entering into, the UK.
Our definition means that many people will be fully Native British, and some people will be partially Native British to varying degrees. Please note that our category of "Native British" is clearly a different category from "White British" or "British Citizen".
Some people might prefer to move the cut-off date further back in history. For example, another functional date would be right back to when the British political state started to be formed, at the Union of Crowns on 24 March 1603 – although few of us possess the ability to technically "trace" our ancestors to that date.
Those who prefer to speak about Native Scottish, or English, or Welsh, or Irish, can adjust the definition accordingly.
2. We can also speak about "Net Negative Migration". This means the same thing: more people leaving than entering. However, we don't find it as immediately comprehensible. Not everyone understands the word "net", or how that relates to the word "negative".
3. ONS, "Estimating UK international migration: 2012 to 2021", 23-11-23 at
4. ONS, "Long-term international migration, provisional: year ending June 2024", 28-11-24 at
5. Alistair McConnachie, "Finding a Historic Norm for Gross Immigration into UK", 4-10-24.
6. Alistair McConnachie, "The Historic Norm 'Accepted for Settlement'", 27-10-24.
For more articles on this subject see our Territorial Sovereignty: Article Index
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