Recent research in 5 countries showed that migrants tend to come to the United Kingdom for economic reasons, but leave for personal reasons.

Tim Finch, Head of Migration at ippr, says:

'The migration debate in the UK is fixated with the idea that immigrants come to settle and not enough attention has been paid to the fact that more and more immigrants are spending only short periods in the UK. Our research shows that many groups of migrants are now increasingly mobile. They are coming to the UK to study and work for short periods and then they are moving on'

Of course this also applies to the millions of Brits working abroad.

Shall we stay or shall we go attempts to analyse re-migration from the United Kingdom, and to understand what motivates immigrants to leave.

While I'm not arguing that net immigration is falling it does seem to have stabalized from what - yes Keith!, the ippr report refers to 'unprecedented immigration' figures 'in recent years' during an economic boom but also takes a much more objective view of immigration and labour skills.

I'm all for divorcing the issue from the other thread but, given the BNP have made it a major issue, I honestly don't see how they can be left out of any discussion.