We talk far more about the people arriving in Britain than the people leaving it. Immigration deserves serious scrutiny, but departures deserve questions of their own. Who is leaving, why are they going, and which of them would we have wanted to stay?
The total alone can't answer that. It includes international students going home, people completing temporary jobs and British citizens moving abroad for reasons that have little to do with dissatisfaction. Treating every departure as a talented Briton fleeing a failing country would be misleading.
Equally, treating emigration as an uninteresting adjustment to the arrivals figure misses something important.
Why would someone stay?
A person who is free to live elsewhere doesn't need a border policy to persuade them to remain. They need reasons to think their future is here.
Wages, housing, public services and opportunities matter. So do family, attachment to a place and whether someone thinks the country is moving in a direction they want to be part of. Different people will weigh those things differently.
If young, skilled people believe they can build a better life abroad, it is worth understanding their decision rather than simply counting the departure. We may decide there is little government could or should do about some reasons. Others may reveal problems it already claims to be fixing.
Two parts of a serious policy
Wanting lower immigration and wanting Britain to retain its own people aren't contradictory positions. A country can control admissions while improving the conditions that make people want to stay.
The figures need care. Net migration describes the difference between arrivals and departures; it doesn't explain the composition of either group or what motivates them. Those questions require more detailed evidence than a headline number provides.
I would like the public argument to ask them more often. Managing who enters is part of governing a country. Making it somewhere its people can imagine a worthwhile future is at least as important.