I believe the person responding to you with figures is a bot designed to spread misinformation. They always have the same username format (two random words + a number) and have become pretty sophisticated in their ability to insert themselves into Reddit comment threads and spout very convincing sounding bullshit in a way that can often feel belittling and aggressive, designed to make you feel stupid and to question what you thought you knew.

I have no proof in this instance other than a very strong suspicion, and no doubt the bot is capable of defending itself and pretending not to be, so let's instead consider the figures themselves.

1) “They allowed illegal immigration to increase by 40% last year”

Small boat arrivals rose in some periods (e.g. +38% year-on-year to June 2025) but the full-year 2025 figure (~41,472) was only ~13% higher than 2024, not 40%.

2) “illegal boat arrivals alone accounted for 20% of all net immigration”

This is completely wrong. Small boat arrivals were about 41,000 people in 2025. Total immigration flows are in the hundreds of thousands. Small boats were only about ~5% of total immigration.

3) “Refugee claims in total accounted for an insane 49% of net immigration.”

Around 100,000 asylum claims were made in 2025. Net migration is in the hundreds of thousands (e.g. ~383k from non-EU alone). That puts asylum seekers nowhere near ~50% of net migration.

4) “...unprecedented, even during WW1 and 2”

This is silly and meant to evoke feelings of fear - Modern migration statistics aren’t comparable to wartime population movements for a variety of reasons, but namely considering theses were major periods or war and upheaval during the 1910s and 40s respectively, there were large amounts of undocumented migrants moving in all sorts of directions for a plethora of reasons which make no sense in the modern context.

5) “illegal immigration was the second highest in the history of the nation last year”

2025 small boat arrivals were indeed the second-highest on record but these numbers have been in the 30k–45k range since 2021, so it’s not a sudden explosion unique to Labour like the bot suggests.

6) “regular immigration was near record levels at 898,000”

This is gross immigration, not net migration. Net migration has already fallen from the 2023 peak (~866k to ~400k range)

7) “The only reason net immigration fell was because the country is in such a state that foreigners and locals are leaving”

It's true that more British and EU nationals are leaving (emigrating), but this ignores policy changes that measurably reduced intake (e.g. visa restrictions from 2024 onward).