Number of EU migrants 100,000 a year higher over past decade, claims UK study

A new calculation suggests that non-EU migrants were 54,000 a year lower than official estimates since 2012
A new calculation suggests that non-EU migrants were 54,000 a year lower than official estimates since 2012
PA

One hundred thousand more EU migrants came to the UK every year over the past decade than was thought, the latest figures suggest.

But non-EU migrants were 54,000 a year lower than official estimates since 2012, according to the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.

Overall, net immigration was 43,000 higher each year since 2012 — 15 per cent more than official estimates.

The research suggests that government policy on immigration has been based on inaccurate and unreliable data for a decade. This included David Cameron’s doomed target to reduce net migration to the “tens of thousands” as it was targeting non-EU migration, which turned out to be much lower than the government thought, while immigration from the EU, which Britain could not control,