The following statement has been issued by think-tank Migrationwatch in response to the publication today of total international migration estimates and population projections
October 20, 2005
These are staggering figures which totally demolish the Government’s claim that it has a ‘Managed Migration’ policy. In fact they show that immigration into the UK is out of control.
Foreign immigration is up 45% to 342,000 – that is equivalent to the city of Leicester in a single year
This was partly offset by a record number of 120,000 British citizens who left last year. The net increase in 2004 was estimated at 223,000 – the highest ever recorded and 50% up on the previous year
The figures do not of course include any estimate for so called ‘clandestine’ arrivals of whom some 40,000 a year are detected.
The effect of immigration on this scale on our future population is enormous. Buried in the footnotes of today’s official population projections is the admission that 83% of the expected population increase is due to immigration. That is 5.95 million out of 7.2 million increase by 2031.
These figures totally vindicate Migrationwatch’s warnings that immigration will add two million to our population every decade.
‘This enormous level of immigration is directly contrary to the wishes of the vast majority of the UK population and has been allowed to develop without any real discussion about the long term consequences in terms of community cohesion, quality of life and practical matters such as housing where we already have major problems of supply,’ said Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch.
‘We appreciate that highly skilled migrants can make a contribution to the UK economy but only if the process is properly managed and is on an acceptable scale.’
Full details are available at
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=260
