As the Guardian reported on Tuesday, a significant share of western Europeans believe that most immigrants in their country are staying illegally, despite official data consistently showing that legal migration far outweighs irregular migration. The findings are based on a YouGov poll conducted in November 2025 via online interviews in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, and the United Kingdom.
One of the survey’s findings addresses public perceptions of migrants’ legal status. In Italy for instance, 60% of respondents said they believed there were more immigrants staying illegally than legally. Similar responses were recorded in France (57%), the UK (47%), and Germany (44%).
According to YouGov, these perceptions diverge noticeably from official figures, with the proportion of undocumented migrants being much lower than that of the foreign-born population as a whole.
Another important factor that seems to feed into public attitudes are cultural perceptions: majorities of respondents in France, Italy, and Germany said they believed that migrants, including those staying legally, do not share the same values as the majority population.
Negative views were even stronger when respondents were asked about illegal migrants, with large majorities in Germany (79%), France (73%), and the UK (69%) said they felt illegal migrants do not share their values.
Against this backdrop, negative attitudes of immigration’s impact were especially pronounced in France and Germany: when asked whether illegal migration had been mostly good or bad for their country, 75% of Germans, 66% of German respondents, and 64% of French said it had been bad.
Attitudes towards legal migration seemed to be more mixed, with it perceived as mostly good by 36% of respondents in the UK, compared with 24% in Germany and 22% in France.
These seem closely linked to broader concerns about the scale of migration. In France, 52% of respondents said levels of legal migration were too high, a view shared by 57% in Germany. In the UK, 48% said legal migration had exceeded acceptable levels.
The survey also asked respondents which groups of migrants, if any, should be required to leave the country. Here, large shares of respondents said they favoured either a freeze on new arrivals or a reduction in migrant numbers, with between 45% and 53% also supporting the departure of significant numbers of recent migrants.
That said, support for deportation was largely concentrated on migrants perceived to have “broken the rules”. Respondents who favoured removals most commonly pointed to migrants who had committed crimes, claimed benefits without entitlement, entered the country through irregular routes to seek asylum, or were working without a valid visa.
On the other hand, support for deportation fell sharply when respondents were asked about migrants who had followed legal procedures. Equally, skilled workers, international students, and migrants in shortage or high-skilled professions attracted far less support for removal.
Ultimately, as the current public debate on migration is influenced by claims about illegality, scale, and socio-economic impact, the survey points to a gap between perception and official data.
