A surge in medical card registrations from India and a collapse in those from Poland illustrate a rapid reshaping of Northern Ireland’s migrant population, official figures show. In 2018, just over 1,000 Polish nationals registered with a local GP, compared to about 650 from India. By 2024, Polish registrations had fallen to 100, while Indian applications exceeded 3,000.

The shift, which intensified after Brexit, has seen the region’s inward migration pivot from an EU-dominated flow to one led by South Asia and Africa. National Insurance registrations, a proxy for working-age arrivals, show similar trends: between 2014 and 2024, Indian applications rose from 260 to 1,200, Nigerian from 50 to 330, and Pakistani from 60 to 370. Over the same decade, Polish registrations dropped from 2,700 to 110, and Lithuanian from 1,050 to 100.

The change follows the UK government’s post-Brexit immigration overhaul. A points-based system introduced in January 2021 ended almost entirely the low-skilled and temporary work routes that had supplied labour from eastern Europe to Northern Ireland’s food processing, manufacturing, hospitality and agriculture sectors. At the same time, the government lowered skill thresholds for non-EU applicants, abolished the Resident Labour Market Test, and created a dedicated health and care worker visa with fast-track processing and lower fees.

The number of international students has also grown markedly. A decade ago, there were 85 Indian students enrolled at Northern Ireland’s universities; by 2022, the figure exceeded 2,000.

Overall net international migration to Northern Ireland in the past three years has been around 18,500, below the 22,000 recorded between 2006 and 2008 during the property boom. But the composition has flipped. Before 2021, EU citizens accounted for almost all employment growth among migrant workers, according to an official analysis. Now, the only significant EU inflow is from the Republic of Ireland under separate Common Travel Area arrangements.

This week, racially motivated disorder broke out in several parts of Northern Ireland, drawing attention to the region’s demographic transformation. The Labour government has since tightened many of the Johnson-era visa schemes, and the next official migration figures for Northern Ireland, due later this year, will reveal the impact of those restrictions.