A dozen key facts on immigration

Updated 1 April, 2009

Migrants are arriving at the rate of 500,000 a year - or nearly one a minute.[1]

1 Allowing for those who leave, net foreign migration reached 333,000 in 2007, three times the level of 1997.[2]

2 The total of migrants who have arrived since 1997 is about 3 million[3] (net foreign immigration of 2.67 plus half the latest estimate of 725,000 illegals).[4]

3 In 2007 one in three London residents were born outside the UK.[5]

4 In 2008 one in nine of the UK population was born overseas.[6]

5 Immigration will add nearly 7 million to our population in the next 20 years, mainly in England.[7] That is equivalent to seven times the population of Birmingham.

6 England is now the most crowded country in Europe (apart from Malta)[8] and the fourth most crowded major country in the world.[9]

7 Nearly 40% of household formation in the period 2006-31 will be a result of new immigration - that is 2.5 million extra households.[10]

8 The government's own calculation is that immigration raised production by 0.15% per annum in the ten years to 2006[11] - that works out at 62 pence per head per week.

9 The number of foreign born workers over 16 had doubled since 1997 from 1.9 million to 3.8 million.[12] Of these 2.6 million came from outside the EU.

10 One in seven pupils aged 4-11 does not have English as a first language - amounting to 466,000 children.[13]

11 81% of the public agree that the government should substantially reduce immigration levels to Britain.[14]

Revised April 2009


Footnotes

  1. ONS Total International Migration Time Series 1991 - 2007 Table 2.01a
  2. Ibid
  3. Ibid
  4. Interim report from LSE London, 16 February 09 "Economic Impact on London and the UK of an Earned Regularisation of Irregular Migrants in the UK"
  5. ONS Population Trends Number 135 Page 28
  6. ONS Press Release 23 February 2009
  7. Show -6 more...
  1. ONS Total International Migration Time Series 1991 - 2007 Table 2.01a
  2. Ibid
  3. Ibid
  4. Interim report from LSE London, 16 February 09 "Economic Impact on London and the UK of an Earned Regularisation of Irregular Migrants in the UK"
  5. ONS Population Trends Number 135 Page 28
  6. ONS Press Release 23 February 2009
  7. Government Actuary's Department (GAD 2007), 2006 Based Principal Projection
  8. Hansard 3 December 2007 Column 1036W updated
  9. UN Population Stats
  10. DCLG Statistical Release at www.communities.gov.uk/publications/corporate/statistics/2031households0309
  11. "The Economic Impact of Immigration" Cm7414 June 2008
  12. ONS Quarterly Migrant Worker Estimates February 2009 Table 2
  13. www.desf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000786/SFR 09 2008.pdf
  14. Yougov November 2007

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