Zia Yusuf, Son of Immigrants, Calls 13.1m Foreign-Born UK Population 'Unprecedented Betrayal'

Almost one in five people living in the UK were born abroad, said Reform UK Shadow Home Secretary Zia Yusuf. He quoted figures from the Office for National Statistics, saying the number is a new record.

On social media, Yusuf said: '13.1 million foreign-born people lived here in 2024. That's up 143% in a decade. That's what the Tories and Labour did to this country. After promising repeatedly to cut immigration. Unprecedented betrayal.'

Zia Yusuf's Sri Lankan Roots

But while Yusuf is complaining about migration, it was not lost on people that he, too, was born to immigrant parents. Zia Yusuf was born in October 1986 in Bellshill, Lanarkshire, Scotland, to Sri Lankan Muslims who emigrated to the UK in the early 1980s.

The older Yusufs worked for the National Health Service—Zia Yusuf's father was a paediatrician while his mother was a nurse. Yusuf also has two siblings. Some social media users accused Yusuf of hypocrisy, especially since he has migrant parents. One of them is MP Kevin Hollinrake.

Another pointed out that there is nothing wrong with being foreign-born in the UK as long as taxes are paid. 'I am a second-generation immigrant. But my family has always paid taxes and worked (quite a significant amount of tax). There's no issue with people coming to this country who are willing to contribute,' she said.

Net Migration and Party Ties

However, it wasn't just about Yusuf's parents. While the Reform UK politician mentioned Labour and the Tories, a social media user pointed out that Yusuf used to be a member of the Conservative Party.

Yusuf was a Conservative Party member until August 2024, when he became Reform UK's largest donor during that year's general election campaign. But even then, he was already concerned that net migration—the difference between the number of people entering a country and the number leaving it—was too high.

His 'unprecedented betrayal' tweet was not the first time he made a controversial comment related to migrants. When it was revealed that Somali-born Camden resident Sagal Abdi-Wali had emerged as Labour's reported frontrunner for Keir Starmer's former MP seat for Holborn and St Pancras, Yusuf highlighted her birth country.

'The frontrunner being foisted on the people of Holborn by Labour to replace the former Prime Minister Keir Starmer in our Parliament was born in Somalia. Do you understand what's happening?' Yusuf tweeted.

Yusuf's Migration Numbers

The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford found that the figures broadly matched Yusuf's numbers. 'The UK's migrant population has increased over the past two decades. There were an estimated 13.1 million foreign-born people living in the UK in 2024. That was a 143% increase compared to 2004, when the foreign-born population was around 5.4 million.'

The percentage increase represents two decades of migration, not just one, as Yusuf said in his tweet. As the organisation explained, the introduction of the post-Brexit immigration system resulted in high immigration from non-EU countries.

The 2021-2022 census revealed that many of the migrant population were born in India (9%), Poland (8%), Pakistan (6%), Romania (5%) and Ireland (4%). Together, those five countries accounted for around a third of the UK's foreign-born population.